Author: Eric Jensen, Managing Editor
Your mother is a liar. She may have birthed you, fed you and wiped your teeny, tiny nose when you were sick for the past few decades, but that woman has been deceiving you your whole life, and it’s time you knew the truth: candy is good for you.
Yeah. You hate her now, right? I hate her too. I hate all the people in this world who would take such a magical substance and crucify it in the name of fitness and dental hygiene. All this time they’ve been telling us that candy will rot our teeth and negatively alter our metabolism, and that’s technically true-I’ve got a mouthful of fillings and an abnormal level of enthusiasm to prove it. But that’s because I’ve been fighting the oppression since before I was tall enough to ride the kiddie roller coasters, concocting elaborate schemes to gain access to the granulated sugar on the top shelf of the pantry to chomp by the spoonful.
Where were you? Eating carrot sticks? You probably were, because you were small and gullible. You didn’t know what I’ve always known (perhaps by divine inspiration or my uncanny juvenile brilliance)—that while candy may corrode the body, it uplifts the soul. Like most other awesome things in the world, just because it’s bad for you doesn’t mean it can’t also be good for you.
Candy. It’s delicious, it comes in wild colors and it promotes a godlike level of hyperactivity. It’s not about moderation at all. It’s about understanding the nature of the beast that is candy and harnessing it for your own ends.
But that’s a tutorial for another time, one that I assure you I am willing and qualified to give. The point is that our generation was born into a Candy Prohibition Era, haunted by warnings from “concerned” parents about the evils of Skittles and the impracticality of sugar cereal. However, while adults seem to control the distribution and enjoyment of candy, it’s children who are most likely to be awarded the right to indulge in 30 mini Three Musketeers bars in one night. That’s where the real injustice lies.
Children are once again having all the fun. All this business about “you’re only young once” and “the innocence of youth” is all just one big social construction to prevent the potty-trained population from enjoying life to the fullest. When Emmons sends out little hints in the Digest on how to curb candy consumption during the Halloween holiday, it’s obviously entrenched ageism. If I were four years old, Emmons would pat me on the head and urge me to slap on a plastic Power Rangers mask in pursuit of as much free candy as my flimsy body could haul across the neighborhood. The minute we were old enough to start buying our own candy, they shut off the magic. Halloween as we once knew it was lost forever in a swirl of Clearasil and training bras, and with it went our intrinsic right to candy.
Many would argue that Halloween has only improved with age, perhaps that the joy of excessive candy has been replaced favorably by the joy of excessively slutty costumes. I do not accept this as a fair trade. As far as girls go, they might as well be wearing the same Dorothy costume they wore when they were still allowed to go trick-or-treating—same design, same color, same size. It’s hardly an advancement. Others assert that young adults who still long to trick-or-treat are simply obnoxious hooligans who don’t know their place in society. I say that what’s really obnoxious is the assumption that corsets and platform heels are going to be enough to fill the gaping emptiness left by the miraculous phenomenon of trick-or-treating: free candy, from everyone, all at once.
Still don’t think it’s a big deal? Think about the effects that candy produces: euphoria, hyperactivity, a sense of well-being and heightened talkativeness. These are the very same effects associated with crack use. Imagine the positive high without the problematic side effects like brain seizures and fear of impending death. Wouldn’t you say that if it were socially acceptable for adults to load up on processed sugar, they might not feel so compelled to tweak out?
Just a thought, a little something for law enforcement officials to consider for their next anti-drug campaign—candy is the answer to all our problems. It was true when we were seven, and there is no reason why it can’t be true now.
Emily Jensen is an undeclared sophomore. She can be reached at ejensen@oxy.edu.
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