Posted on 03/25/2011 7:33:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many Americans were disappointed when President Obama devoted a Saturday radio address to a celebration of the progress of women in society. Most of us were more interested to hear about the progress (or lack of it) in dealing with the crisis that threatens to become a new war in Libya.
The president was excited about a new White House report on the status of women, the first such report in 48 years. John F. Kennedy assigned Eleanor Roosevelt to explore the subject on that occasion.
Obama told us that women earn more high school diplomas and college degrees than men, and the number of women in the workforce almost equals the number of men. But they still don't hold as many power positions.
You might not have noticed this report's significance, however, since it was issued just before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Samantha Power, a senior director of the National Security Council -- three of the most powerful women in the Obama administration -- effectively persuaded the president to put America into the coalition against Moammar Gadhaffi.
It was a throwaway speech but dear to the president's heart. He wants to see his two daughters grow up in a world "where there are no limits to what they can accomplish." Fair enough -- but the growing problem for the female sex in this country is less political than cultural, and it starts in the home, not the White House. We're talking image rather than achievement.
The problem that needs our undivided attention could have fit under a chapter head in Betty Friedan's celebrated '60s best-seller, "The Feminine Mystique." You could call it the "The Sexual Sell." The sexual sell is seen first in little girls who graduate overnight from demure princess dresses to party dresses with what they imagine is cleavage, from playing dress-up in mom's shoes to wearing their own spike heels.
Superficial sophistication is no longer a way for a child to try on different adult styles for size, but rushes young women into a false feeling of safety that is sexually enticing, disarmingly seductive and potentially explosive.
The slinky dress on the preteen may be "cute" when she's hanging out with her girlfriends, but it quickly becomes "hot' on a teenager hanging out with boys, blurring the boundaries between innocence and sexuality.
"Why," asks Jennifer Moses in The Wall Street Journal, "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?" The answer indicts a generation of mothers who grew up as the most liberated generation in history, and who are only now having second thoughts over what they want for their daughters.
"We were 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," she says. "We were the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputation but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom." And now thousands of moms don't have a clue about teaching their daughters the perils and foolishness of giving away their bodies so readily.
There are lots of reasons for the current excesses of little girls whose sexy style goes way beyond their psychological ages. We could round up the usual suspects in media and advertising, with focus groups and consultants, but common sense is all anyone needs to see what happened. It's one of those pesky unintended consequences of the sexual revolution.
Post-Pill mothers worry more about appearing like hypocrites with their daughters than assuming parental authority, setting thoughtful moral guidelines. They can expect to hear the same excuses from their daughters that daughters have made since the first cave girl donned a well-off-the-shoulder leopard skin.
High-tech complicates matters. Coinciding with a mother's ambiguous messages are the peer messages bombarding the adolescent's cell-phone network, merging texting with "sexting." When these young women get to college, parents can expect no surrogate gatekeepers to help them resist the increasing pressure for "hooking up."
This mother's plaint about young girls in "plunging necklines, built-in-push-bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos" is getting none of the buzz of a similar plaint of the famous Tiger Mom about permissiveness in educational discipline. Modern moms seem to be more animated over how their children study for the SATs than how they deal with their beckoning sexual lives.
They should reprise the cliche nearly every mother once asked her daughter on her way out of the house dressed like a hooker: "You're not wearing that?"
I hate that commercial where the mom helps the daughter clean up the next-to-nothing skirt that dad has ruined with oil. Then she struts out past dad and mom smiles.
MY dad would have kicked my butt.
um... maybe if they didn't buy 'that' in the first place?
The words “Dad” and “father” appear nowhere in this article. I guess Ms. Fields thinks fathers have nothing to say about how their daughters dress and act ... ?
The “feminists” used to say that no woman needed a man in her life,
now they’re saying that only the man’s paycheck is required.
Yes, I also despise that commercial. Of course I would have simply torn the little mini skirt into shop rags and put them on my workbench rather than relying on a greasy stain to dissuade the little darling. And my wife would never have bought it for her in the first place.
Me too, I said to my wife, “ What parent would allow their daughter to dress like that, and approve of it?”....
I think Ms Fields recognizes that mothers will have more influence on how their daughters dress and act, just like fathers will have more influence on how their sons dress and act. A permissive mom will undermine even the most conscientious of dads if she buys clothing for her daughters from Whores-R-Us.
When you are a tart, your kid will be a tart.
We have a neighbor who thought it was JUST DARLING that the 14 year old across from us had boys hanging at the house while mom was at work.
Now since that 14 year old has dropped her first offspring, it’s an example she doesn’t want for her own daughter.
We reap what we sow.
And consider how the popular culture views everything related to sexuality. It’s all titilation, all the time.
And, we live in a world in which Keith Olbermann calls Bristol Palin the worst person in the world. Her crime was getting pregnant without a husband, and trying to help other young girls avoid her own mistakes in life. We have institutionalized teen pregnancy and the whole “baby mama” culture. So in the liberal view, all this sex activity and dressing like sluts and all the rest is a good thing. It’s all supposed to be liberating.
And if you want to make a political statement, all these baby mama girls will grow up and vote Democrat, since they then will rely on government programs to raise those kids.
14 years old and having a baby??? Sheesh......
And remember, since you have to subtract nine months from her age to learn when certain things happened, she may have been 13 at that time. And remember, girls don’t always get pregnant the very first time they do something they shouldn’t be doing. Could she have been 12 even when she was doing things with boys which should not have happened? Sheesh, the mind is boggled by all of this.
And I even think that liberalism aids and abets this, because a major tenet of liberal ideology is that we’re not supposed to make any judgements, especially any sorts of moral judgements about someone’s behavior. So, if we can’t say that something is wrong, and bad things happen as a result, liberals then can’t say anything about the consequences.
Step back, take a look at the big picture, and see that all leftist policy has the intent and the goal of destroying the traditional family.
The “sex positive” movement is just another part of that overarching goal.
Yeah, darling isn’t it?
Unfortunately once you have a generation in which many of them had moms or at least friends with moms who were unmarried and pregnant the dam is burst and it loses the shame factor. More and more people I know (much younger than me) had at least their first child before they were married. And these are not poor, minority or underprivileged. Because it is now seen as an “everyone does it” sort of thing, the stigma is gone and basically, Dan Quayle was right. Thank you Murphy Brown. And it’s all tied up with the whole permissive “it’s all about me and sex and whatever makes me happy” thing. It’s certainly not about what is the best way to raise kids and make a stable family thing.
No problemo - most middle schools and high schools now have day care centers for the little ones.
The grade schools are next.
Thank you Johnson's 'Great Society' and every democrat since then. Now it's have a baby to help with the family income. End welfare as we know it. Another job after November 6, 2012. .
Many Americans wouldn't notice if President Obama devoted a Saturday radio address to a celebration of interesting dryer lint. Who listens to anything but conservative talk-radio or music? Who cares what Obama says about anything?
Yes, I hated Grease anyway, but I thought that it had the dumbest message on the planet. Dress slutty and you’ll get your good-for-nothing guy. Off they drive into the sunset without a bank account.
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