Shouldn't We Worry About Male Teen Stars, Too?

Sorry, Angus Jones, but all the focus is on the girls: Lux Alptraum
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 30, 2011 3:27 PM CDT
Updated Apr 2, 2011 7:00 PM CDT
Shouldn't We Worry About Male Teen Stars, Too?
In this undated publicity image released by CBS, from left, Charlie Sheen, Angus T. Jones and Conchata Ferrell are shown during the taping of "Two and a Half Men."   (AP Photo/CBS, Greg Gayne)

A recent New York Times Magazine article about the challenges that a female teen star (Nickelodeon's Miranda Cosgrove) faces as she grows into adulthood struck Lux Alptraum more for what it didn't say: Why don't we worry about the boys as well? In that old boys-will-be-boys double-standard, we just assume they'll turn out fine no matter what, an attitude that does them a "tremendous disservice," he writes at Pop Culture Pen Pals.

Consider that, like Cosgrove, Angus T. Jones of Two and a Half Men fame also turns 18 this year. But unlike her, "he hasn’t spent the decade sheltered in the bosom of Nickelodeon—he’s spent it at the side of a womanizing, drug abusing, violent, emotionally disturbed man (yes, that would be Charlie Sheen)," writes Alptraum. "Given the two situations, I’m vastly more concerned about the long-term mental wellness of Jones—yet I’ve yet to see any columnists agonizing about his future." (More Angus Jones stories.)

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