Fourteen year-old Amber Cole performed oral sex on her ex-boyfriend on school grounds, it is believed, a last ditch effort to win him back.
What she did was wrong. What he allowed (or asked) her to do was wrong. Where she did it was wrong, the teens that caught the act on tape were really in the wrong.
Several Facebook fan pages, Amber Cole, were created; at least one had a racy profile pic of Amber on her knees in the act.
Twitter caught on, with #LeaveAmberCole alone as a trending topic.
Of course, there are some teen boys who have made a song about her.
Amber Cole is a real person, with a family, and she is only fourteen years old.
Amber Cole is also a modern day tragedy, a story of our little girls gone wild in a 24-hour news cycle. We don’t need the major media outlets to catch us in the act, becoming famous, or in this case, infamous is as happenstance as standing in the view of someone with a cell phone.
There is a teachable moment here and it extends far beyond the cyber bullying comments. (Some of the thousands of comments are so mean, as if there is a plot to make her continue to live in seclusion, or do something far worse.)
The lesson we must all learn and know, without any doubt, is that the cameras are always rolling. There are no more stolen moments, or midday rendezvous “on the low.”
The risk associated with being bold and amorous anytime, anyplace, now includes having your most intimate moment splashed over the social media networks, where it will remain forever.
When the outing of a private moment involves an under-aged girl, it is especially tragic.
At 14-years-old, a young woman may think that she’s grown enough to handle the emotional burden that sex too soon or sex without love or sex for trade entails, but typically she is not. If her love is immature and just out to score, she will get confused and hurt. If her immature love makes a video of their intimate act and shows the world, all bets are off for her to have a healthy self-esteem.
No one can force the commenters to get a grip and #LeaveAmberCole alone.
Perhaps the long arm of the law can slow down the sharing of the viral video—after all, Amber Cole is a minor, and, downloading and sharing that video is disseminating child pornography.
