Why We Let Our Daughters Dress Like Tramps

Entertainment News Fashion Featured Health & Beauty Parenting/Education Sex Talk Travel — 19 March 2011
Why We Let Our Daughters Dress Like Tramps

In the pale-turquoise ladies’ room, they congregate in front of the mirror, re-applying mascara and lip gloss, brushing their hair, straightening panty hose and gossiping: This one is “skanky,” that one is “really cute,” and so forth. Dressed in minidresses, perilously high heels, and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade, they look like a flock of tropical birds. A few minutes later, they return to the dance floor, where they shake everything they’ve got under the party lights.

But for the most part, there isn’t all that much to shake. This particular group of party-goers consists of 12- and 13-year-old girls. Along with their male counterparts, they are celebrating the bat mitzvah of a classmate in a cushy East Coast suburb.

Today’s teen and preteen girls are bombarded with images and products that tout the benefits of sexual attraction. But must we as parents, give in to their desire to “dress like everyone else?” asks author Jennifer Moses. She talks with WSJ’s Kelsey Hubbard.

In a few years, their attention will turn to the annual ritual of shopping for a prom dress, and by then their fashion tastes will have advanced still more. Having done this now for two years with my own daughter, I continue to be amazed by the plunging necklines, built-in push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos. And try finding a pair of sufficiently “prommish” shoes designed with less than a 2-inch heel.

All of which brings me to a question: Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we’re being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?

I posed this question to a friend whose teenage daughter goes to an all-girls private school in New York. “It isn’t that different from when we were kids,” she said. “The girls in the sexy clothes are the fast girls. They’ll have Facebook pictures of themselves opening a bottle of Champagne, like Paris Hilton. And sometimes the moms and dads are out there contributing to it, shopping with them, throwing them parties at clubs. It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘Look how hot my daughter is.’” But why? “I think it’s a bonding thing,” she said. “It starts with the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there.”

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?”

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. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that’s certainly the norm among my peers.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn’t), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, 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.

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don’t know one of them who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I’ve ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she’d “experimented” more.

As for the girls themselves, if you ask them why they dress the way they do, they’ll say (roughly) the same things I said to my mother: “What’s the big deal?” “But it’s the style.” “Could you be any more out of it?” What teenage girl doesn’t want to be attractive, sought-after and popular?

And what mom doesn’t want to help that cause? In my own case, when I see my daughter in drop-dead gorgeous mode, I experience something akin to a thrill—especially since I myself am somewhat past the age to turn heads.

In recent years, of course, promiscuity has hit new heights (it always does!), with “sexting” among preteens, “hooking up” among teens and college students, and a constant stream of semi-pornography from just about every media outlet. Varied sexual experiences—the more the better—are the current social norm.

I wouldn’t want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you’re the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.

But it’s easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn’t dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: “Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven’s sake, get laid!” But that’s essentially what we’re saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they’re still living under our own roofs.

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(1) Reader Comment

  1. March 22, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    To Jennifer Moses, and ALL feminists,
    You are RIGHT that todays teen and preteen girls are bombarded with images and products that tout the benefits of sexual attraction., BUT it is up to EVERY mother who bought 3 liberal LIES, “free love”, “protection” using condoms, and “choice” to get informed on all of the negative consequences of “hooking up” , and have the courage to sit down with the daughters and tell them you engaged in what you thought was “free love” but you regret that choice!
    Many people who call themselves “feminists” or “progressive’ were raised in a generation that adopted the “free love” mantra, which is the acceptance of hetero/homosexual sins of fornication, sodomy, oral sex…, but we have MUCH data from the CDC on the millions which have been harmed/killed by STD’s like HIV/AIDS, but many others like HPV, which is the causal agent of cervical, anal and now throat cancers from oral sex! The the other major negative consequence of out-of-wedlock pregnancy which leads to people making the “choice”–the second LIE, because that choice ALWAYS ends with the terminating of a growing unborn human life-go to http://www.abortionno.org and view the IMMORAL choice. ANd lastly the LIE of “protection with condoms” when we have data from our own CDC that condoms CANNOT protect against many STD’s because they are found in areas like the inner thighs-which are NOT covered by condoms,! ALL of these LIES are NOT compatible with teachings from MOST major faiths.

    PLEASE read the detailed summary letter which documents the individual and societal devastation since we adopted these LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE LIES, and abandoned the protective boundary that MOST major religions endorse-tradtitional marriage–and think about the great reductions in societal ills if we implemented the conservative solution of directing youth to the healthy, responsible, and moral message of abstinence from sexual activity-and return to that sacred boundary?

    I have all of the detailed data- particularly the SAD statistics on how blacks are negatively affected because according to our own CDC-they engage in uncommitted no-marital sexual behaviors at much higher rates than their peers–THUS more devastating numbers in ALL of the areas mentioned in the letter–here is a copy of the letter–I hope to hear from you:
    Although we have numbers for white and Hispanic
    youth, which are also very troubling, the sad numbers reflect that black youth
    are particularly negatively affected.

    Blacks account for 12-13% of the U.S. population–yet they have higher
    numbers as a percentage of their race in all of the following social ills:
    POVERTY-The #1 group trapped in poverty are single female -headed
    households–NO marriage–sadly, blacks have a 70% out–of-wedlock birth
    rate–so more will be trapped in poverty. Choosing to engage in sex before
    marriage is the contributing factor! Time Magazine recently had the statistic
    that we spend $500 billion on poverty-related programs.
    STD’s –Blacks have higher numbers of ALL STD’s -not just HIV/AIDS–which
    in
    some areas they account for 50% of the new cases–but also for Herpes,
    Chlamydia, Gonorrhea..and others,.-we know that STD’s are directly related
    to sexual choices-very few to rape/incest! One estimate noted that we
    spend $20 billion on screening/treatment.
    CRIME–We know that black youth engage in higher rates of criminal
    behavior and on
    more black victims–we also know that 70% of the men in prison came from
    homes with NO fathers–NO marriage–thus NO positive role model–people
    making sexual choices, but then abandon their responsibility! How does one
    begin to factor the costs of an unproductive life spent behind bars, along
    with the estimated $40,000/year per inmate for upkeep in prison?
    ABORTION–We know that since 1973-Roe v. Wade that 45 million unborn babies
    have been KILLED in legal abortion–BUT 1/3rd of those-15 million– were
    black and Planned Parenthood-et.al. sets up more inner city abortion
    clinics
    targeting blacks-Black Americans for Life calls it genocide-! Statistics
    show that 85% of abortions are choices made by unmarried women.

    If any of you claim that abortion should remain legal–PLEASE go to
    _www.abortionno.org_ (http://www.abortionno.org/) and view the IMMORAL
    reality–how can any sane person support this atrocity?

    My research from the CDC states that black youth engage in sex at
    younger ages and with more partners than their white and Hispanic peers–so we
    will see more of ALL of these devastating numbers!

    I also want to include the devastation from emotional effects of
    pre-marital sex like
    increased rates of depression and suicide, loss of self-esteem and many
    other emotional negative effects that we spend millions on counseling!
    Two new books, “Unprotected” by Dr. Miriam Grossman and “Hooked” by Dr.
    McIlhaney discuss the hormonal influence with sexual choices, and how many
    youth do not understand why they feel so depressed after being used/dumped
    after casual sex.

    I hope we can stop the promotion of progressive secular LIBERAL LIES, we have seen unbelievable individual and societal devastation by adopting/funding them, until we return to the consrvative ideals of LIFE, traditional marriage and abstinence/chastity, we will continue to see the devastating consequences–may GOD bless us everyone!

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