I read a really interesting article in the last week in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?” The author of the article, Jennifer Moses, asks why parents today encourage their girls to be slutty (in essence). She says, “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?”
Do parents merely want their girls to look good? “There’s a difference between presenting ourselves in the world in an attractive light, and presenting ourselves to the world as a piece of meat,” Moses says.
Is there a movement within the secular United States away from the hyper-sexualization of our youth? Is someone other than evangelical Christians concerned with the way our young women are dressing?
Moses has a 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?’”
Are people realizing that the feminist revolution—the sexual revolution—wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?
Another aspect of the discussion (mentioned in the video below) is the value of fathers in the rearing of young girls. Moses says that one of the key things that fathers can do is to teach their girls (and their wives) what dressing a certain way does.
What are your thoughts? How do you deal with this in your family? If you’re a father, how do you teach your daughters about modesty?
