Maybe sexy should have stayed where it was
Suburban parents dote on and hover over their children, micromanaging their appointments and shielding them in helmets, kneepads and thick layers of S.U.V. steel. But they allow the culture of boy-toy sexuality to bore unchecked into their little ones’ ears and eyeballs, displacing their nimble and growing brains and impoverishing the sense of wider possibilities in life.
There is no reason adulthood should be a low plateau we all clamber onto around age 10. And it’s a cramped vision of girlhood that enshrines sexual allure as the best or only form of power and esteem. It’s as if there were now Three Ages of Woman: first Mary-Kate, then Britney, then Courtney. Boys don’t seem to have such constricted horizons. They wouldn’t stand for it — much less waggle their butts and roll around for applause on the floor of a school auditorium.
via “Middle School Girls Gone Wild,” an editorial observer column from the New York Times.
In other girlhood news, check out this article: What’s Wrong With Cinderella?, also via the New York Times. It’s a much longer read, but as a mother of a Cinderella girl, who refers to herself as the princess and me the queen (not to hard to argue with that!), I found it very interesting. Also as someone who is concerned with the limitations and expectations that will be placed on my daughter (as well as my son, of course) simply because of her gender, I found it very interesting. I found it very, very interesting, because I have a daughter, who as I have written before, “lives for sparkly.”
That’s fine and good, just so long as sparkly isn’t all that there is to live for.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:50 am
The hands-down-walking-away most horrible tee shirt I saw this season, which I still might get, says “10 is the new 15.”
February 14th, 2007 at 10:04 am
i’m reading SLUT!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation right now. it’s, obviously, focused on women/girls who have lived through that experience, but it emphasizes the need for society, all of society to break down the double-standard of gendered sexuality. i think you’d really enjoy it.