Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?

It’s about time people ask questions about how they allow their daughters to dress and act.

We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn’t have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. … scads of us don’t know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We’re embarrassed, and we don’t want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.

It isn’t going to get better any time soon- celebrities young and old flaunt their bodies and their promiscuity, and unfortunately most kids are focused on celebrities as their role models. It’s what they spend the most time doing- listening to music and watching tv and movies. Next to their immediate family and friends, the people they see on the screen are the people they feel they ‘know’ best.

Parents are the same way, though. I’m amazed by how many women my age (and I’m getting up there) idolize and fantasize and read gooey tripe like Twilight. If parents are barely grown up themselves, how are kids supposed to mature?

Just look at this- http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Elizabeth-Everything-Secretly-YourBody/dp/039…] Ask Elizabeth:Real Answers to Everything You Secretly Wanted to Ask About Love, Friends, Your Body… and Life in General

…after Berkley’s husband Greg Lauren commented on the amount of girls who came to her asking for advice and joked that she should have her own column. Berkley decided to take action and created her own website to help teen girls.

The website, which she facilitates herself is a self-esteem program and has been very successful. She regularly meets with young girls to discuss different issues and topics and to help them with any problems that they are going through and speaks of her own troubles in the past.

So girls would rather go to someone they don’t know personally, a not-so-successful actress, famous for one of the worst (in every way) movies ever made, and ask her advice about personal issues. She seldom has enough clothes on to cover the essentials, and yet she’s being presented as a role model, surrogate mom and best friend all rolled into one.

I don’t recommend Googling Elizabeth Berkeley. Your computer will have a very bad hair day.

There is an article this morning on the Fox News website about Abercrombie and Fitch selling padded bikini tops in sizes for girls around 8 years old.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/03/25/abercrombie-fitch-spark…

“It doesn’t matter much, these days, as to what the comments are surrounding what the fashion industry has decided our teeny-bopper sex tantalizers should adorn themselves in. I’m slapping the blame on moms for not seeing any further than their own breast implants when it comes to purchasing push-uppers for girls that don’t, as yet, actually have any breasts,” said Shirlee Smith, CEO/Founder of “Talk About Parenting With Shirlee Smith.” “Who is paying for this sexy- kiddie marketing? Mom in the short run, sex object girls in the long run.”

This isn’t just worldliness, this is perversion. But it certainly starts with letting down our spiritual guard on modesty and sexual topics with our kids.

Roland, I think the “deafening silence” might be more to a general lack of disagreement rather than a lack of concern with the issue. There is no controversy to discuss here, no “outrage” to express.

There is the occasional squeak from pulpits about modesty, but because no one seems to be able to give any meaning to the word ‘modesty’, churches have apparently thrown up their hands in surrender to accepted cultural norms.

Quite literally, you can’t tell women not to expose their cleavage, midriffs, or thighs any more. You can’t tell them that form-fitting clothing draws a man’s eye to her body. You can’t point out that material so thin that a mosquito could fly through it without breaking a wing is too revealing, and that underwear should never become outerwear. That’s all too legalistic, and besides- if men weren’t such perverts, women could walk around in their birthday suits and not incite lust, right?

Saints preserve us.

To be fair, an overwhelming majority of children are abused by a parent or other person with whom they have a trusting relationship. Abusers focus on children because they are inadequate in their adult relationships. It isn’t about lust, and ‘stranger danger’ is statistically rare. But there is the fact that child sexualization does allow a predator to objectify his prey just as adult porn objectifies women. If she ‘looks like’ a ‘woman’, then in his twisted mind he will think of her as a consenting adult and justify his actions.

My concern is actually more about how the sexualization of children confuses the child. It sends a mixed message of “Be sexy” but “Don’t be sexual”. If an adult treats them as if they are desirable, that is a powerful lure for a child who is already getting the wrong ideas about propriety and relationship boundaries. It also send the wrong message to the boys about how they should view and treat girls.

Bottom line is parents hold the purse strings, and children will take their behavioral cues from their parents if the parents are caring, involved, and communicative. And it’s high time parents have some spine and create healthy boundaries for their kids that includes how they dress.