From 'Pretty Little Liars' to future women leaders?

The onslaught of television shows targeted at teenage girls might lead you to believe that TV executives don't think highly of young women. At least that's the message implicit in much of the current programming.

Some of the hugely popular primetime shows aimed at female teenagers bear a close resemblance to soap operas?except their thin plots hold even less substance and somehow manage to present females in a worse light. Gossip Girl and the even more disturbingly named, Pretty Little Liars, portray the virtues of manipulation, purging to become slim, using feminine wiles to get anywhere and everywhere, and of course?trampling on others as needed. The message of self deprecation in these shows is staggering.

Consider the opening theme in Pretty Little Liars, an ABC Family show about a clique of glossy high school-aged girls, which shows four girls surreptitiously burying a dead female classmate who became "too powerful." New York Post's Linda Stasi called the series "a nasty piece of work filled with underage sex, vulgar, hateful kids and references to young girls that are flat-out ugly and disrespectful."

Then there's Gossip Girl, whose male protagonists are portrayed as nothing more than lowly scavengers. Says one male classmate to another about leading lady Serena, "Serena looked effin' hot last night. There's something wrong with that level of perfection. It needs to be violated." The same character also counsels his friend, "What we're entitled to is a house in the Hamptons. Maybe a prescription drug problem. But happiness does not seem to be on the menu so smoke up and seal the deal with Blair because you're also entitled to tap that [expletive]." Among so many vapid aspects of this show, the fact that it is based on a book written by a woman leaves me even more uneasy.

Another bit of "entertainment" can be found in the innocent seeming The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which portrays weekly what Time magazine called, "a parental sex-horror show....Campily depicting high school as a den of sluts and predators...." An interesting commentary indeed considering that Secret Life was developed in partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Rather than frittering away your time watching these displays, I'll boil them down to the most essential message espoused: As a young woman, your best bet is to conform socially, obsess about your body to the point of self loathing, and leverage rumor and hearsay as a means to damage others and gain power.

Whether you call these shows aspirational, the norm, or plain irresponsible, they don't bear much resemblance to real teenage life. Sure, teenagers are famously interested in sex, but they also have other challenges, realities, and interests that these shows don't bother to represent.

My critics would point out that protagonists in shows like The Closer, Saving Grace, Hawthorne, and Medium represent examples of strong female role models for young girls. But let's be honest, teenage girls are not watching shows about 40-somethings.

Could it be that the booming industry of commercials casts women in a better light? Most likely not...unless your highest hopes for a woman are to see her wielding a toilet brush or ushering a lasagna out of the oven.

What's more, television is playing parent to our teenagers more than ever. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a study that found that the amount of time spent watching regularly-scheduled TV declined by 25 minutes a day, but that the many new ways to watch television?on the Internet, cell phones, and iPods?actually led to an increase in total television consumption from 3:51 to 4:29 per day. Said Victoria Rideout, Foundation VP and director of the study, "The bottom line is that all these advances in media technologies are making it even easier for young people to spend more and more time with media. It's more important than ever that researchers, policymakers and parents stay on top of the impact it's having on their lives."

And what about the networks? The bar that TV's top brass has set for young women is below the curb. To be sure, parents are the end-all and be-all with regard to rearing, but do the people putting these shows in front of us carry no responsibility whatsoever?

If you're like me, you're wondering who the call-makers are who guess what girls want and decide what ultimately airs. The answer is most likely not women. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women comprise a minority of television executives, making up 25 percent of all creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and directors of photography working on situation comedies, dramas, and reality programs. While this percentage is more encouraging than the number of females reflected in film, women make fewer media decisions than we think.

I can't help but wonder how a mom or dad can encourage leadership traits in their daughters when they're competing with the lowest of the low in terms of media influence. Oddly, the very group we're "dumbing down" life for is the demographic who will be graduating with the majority of bachelors and advanced degrees, becoming one of the biggest talent pipelines in the workplace.

When a group's experience is continually told by others, a certain truth is lost. If teenage girls were in charge, how would they tell their own stories?

Soap opera parodies depicting shrews are not doing our girls any favors. Unless you want your daughter, niece or sister to endure?and possibly absorb?the scheming, conforming, skewed outlook of these shows, steer them elsewhere.

I thought that being a teenager was already hard enough.