Does it disturb you that a simple shopping trip exposes children to a stream of images promoting sexual availability? Or that, searching ‘kitten’ or ‘toy’ online, they risk stumbling upon violent porn? Does it bother you that 12 year old romance is  reduced to an exchange of naked pictures?

Sex is everywhere; on billboards, in films, on TV, in fashion stores and in the music that streams out of them.  In our culture:

Eight year olds sing on the trampoline, ‘We can dance all night. Get me bodied. That means come closer to me, while we grind to the beat, and your body’s touching my body.’

You try to buy a pair of shorts for your 12 year old daughter.  The store offers ripped, studded, black PVU and specially ‘whipstitched’.

A cinema showing promises ‘Sleeping around in the city that never sleeps was never so much fun’. Alternatively, it offers 1 hour 42 minutes in the company of a sex-mad ‘foul-mouthed Dirty Grandpa’.

‘Is this OK?’

If you believe that young people are being seriously short-changed, if any of this strikes a chord with you – will you join the conversation? Surely it’s time?

Soulscape are hosting Made In Our Image at Wokingham Baptist Church on Friday 11th March at 7.30pm. We are joined by Joanna Jepson who’s book ‘A Lot Like Eve’ exposed cultural idols and preoccupations with body image that plague our age. She regularly speaks at conferences, schools and retreats about faith, body image, spirituality and fashion.

With Joanna as guest panelist, and a live performance of ‘Object’, a theatre piece based on young people’s views and experiences of pornography, it promises to be a challenging, fact-filled evening. Parents, grandparents – anyone at all who cares. You need to be there.

Tickets for Made In Our Image are £10. Telephone: 07464 069037

or email: tickets@madeinourimage.org.uk

Don’t miss this opportunity. We really need to talk.