By TARA LEE
On a Saturday night last month, I begrudgingly took my 16-year-old daughter to see the Janoskians at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre. It was the last night on their world tour.
The Janoskians are a group of five Australian teenagers who perform pranks. They became big on You Tube and shot to internet fame, having since released a couple of singles. The world’s general view of them is that they’re immature, harmless fun.
Beforehand, I was well aware of what I was getting myself into – or so I thought. I expected gross pranks, silly skits, stunts where they harm each other or themselves. I even expected the miming, having taken my daughter to the signing of their first single and finding it strange how in the hours we were there, they never sang an actual song. They are “entertainers” and make it well known they are “not a boy band”.
I expected swearing, albeit still found it a little shocking when they came out and said to their audience “girls, shut the f*ck up!” — and warned parents there would be quite a lot of swearing and said that if we didn’t like it we could get our kid and “f*ck off”.
But it wasn’t any of those things that had me wondering what I wasted my money on.
It was the bewilderment of how the theatre, the promoter and the act itself thought it was okay to be so utterly degrading to teenage girls who were there watching an underage show.
The pathetic oops-left-my-mic-on-backstage joke about someone with big tits in the front row, barely touched the surface. At Q&A time, when asked about what their favourite body part was, one boy said that while he liked a good tit, he preferred arse and commented on how many great arses there were at the meet and greet.
Then it progressed to how the Sydney girls were sexy bitches, corrected by another on-stage star to “sexy SLUTS”. This prompted cheers from the audience, who seemed to think this was a good thing.
In one game the Janoskians called “paper, scissors, cock”, one of the boys warned the crowd, “if I get hit in the balls I can’t get you pregnant.” As if getting teenage girls pregnant was what the girls wanted and a positive thing.
The so-called stars also commented on how Sydney girls were the horniest before asking “do I make you wet?” to huge applause, before spraying the crowd with water. This coming from an almost 20-year-old man to young teenage girls.
When one young girl was called up onstage for a game and she couldn’t think of a good question, they suggested she ask one of the boys, “how big is your dick?” to which he replied, “you’ll find out tonight”.
Again, this was said to an underage girl.
This was at an all ages show, where there were not only young teenagers but even younger children. I saw one boy who must have been about 10-years-old. I shudder to think that these boys were his role models.
The girls cheered as the boys treated them like pieces of meat and made sexually explicit comments at them. If it wasn’t bad enough that the boys showed no talent and appeared to make little effort (they rehearsed? Really?), they then had hundreds of girls leaving that theatre, acting grateful for the wonderment they had beheld.
Top Comments
WOW! " .........but fans look up to these boys because they are fun and carefree ... they teach girls and guys to live how you want because its your life and stuff other" What sort of soviety teaches that! What about self respect as part of your life and stuff!?
It's been 2 years since this post but i just wanted to say that they are now on their third world tour and the standards of their shows have increased as well as their respect for women and girls. I agree that as a mother you would not like to see them calling girls sluts etc but as for your daughter if she was an actual fan of them she would have known what was coming seeing as the inappropriateness of their shows are no worse than their videos. They do not call fans sluts to degrade them, it's an inside joke which they have many of and unless you were a fan yourself you would understand. Obviously I am a fan but the fanbase is more like a family and trust me when I say the majority of us would not accept them talking to us like sexual objects if it was anything more than a joke that we have been in on for 3 years. The boys have now released more songs and a movie and are doing very well in their lives as well as improving other people's lives. Thanks
I'm a very very very big fan of the janoskians and I've met them many times, they might seem like very rude ignorant teenagers(adults Now actually) they are the sweetest people ever, they no longer are as immature as they are, if you go to a consent now they aren't like that anymore. Actually i seen them in birmingam and Manchester this year. Clearly you don't seem like a fan and personally you should have been aware of what they're like, if your daughter or son watches them. They are loonaticks and idiots but that's what makes them special, beau tells girls to not give a fuck about what people think, each lad in the group tells how beautiful we are etc they may have been rude and dirty yo before but they aren't as much now, mind you who are they trying to impress they're having fun, let them be