Ratings and censorship

Lately I've been noticing how much things like movie ratings and censorship are focused on protecting children from adult concepts. This is odd, because that's such a small portion of your life! Before the age of, say, 8 you're more into child-focused media, and by the age of about 16 you can handle adult concepts well enough that you don't need to be protected. It's also starting to annoy me a bit, because I keep coming across things that censor things that are so massively unlike anything from which I need to be protected, and the censorship is way more obvious than the offending concept would be if left alone. For example, I saw a youtube of Christina Aguilera performing Candyman on TV, and they censored the word panties. (The line, as part of a descriptoin of a charming and seductive man: "He's a one stop shop, makes my panties drop, he's a sweet talking sugar-coated candyman".) I saw a video of Nickelback's Rockstar where they censored the word pills (The line, as part of a laundry list of sterotypical rockstar behaviour: "I'm gonna pop my pills from a pez dispenser"). Actually, they also censored the word drug in "Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed-dial," which is ridiculous because "Everybody's got a * dealer on speed-dial" means exactly the same thing! I also somehow ended up with a censored version of Hate Me by Blue October (I think I got it from a Big Shiny Tunes album), where they censor the word fucking (line: "I'll drive so fucking far away that I'll never cross your mind"), but they kept the line about cockroaches leaving babies in your bed. I don't need to be protected from the word fucking, but I certainly wouldn't mind being protected from the image of cockroaches leaving eggs in my bed, thank you very much!

I wish it was possible for us to choose more specifically what does and doesn't get censored in the media we consume. For example, I don't want to watch rape scenes, but I don't need happy sex scenes to be censored. (I don't mind if they tone them down to protect the actors' modesty, but I don't need them toned down to protect my delicate sensibilities.) I don't mind blood, but I'm completely squicked out by broken bones or eyeballs. I don't mind snakes or monsters, but bugs will give me nightmares. Profanity I don't give a fuck about, but I don't want hate speech unless it really is absolutely necessary in the broader context. Remember that V-chip thing they were talking about in the 90s? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could fine-tune it to censor only the precise things you don't want to see?