My Daughter’s A Tramp, Isn’t It Cute?
A while ago while shopping at Best Buy I couldn’t help but start people watching. One such couple, a mother and daughter, were buying CDs and DVDs in front fo me. The mother was a pretty lady, probably in her mid 30’s, well dressed, probably your typical white, upper class, religious republican. What I couldn’t help notice was that her daughter, who was probably aged 10-12, was wearing a glittery cut-off shirt with the words “I faked it” emblazoned just a few inches above her exposed pierced naval.
Immediately questions started racing through my mind: Did I just read that? What did you fake? A temper tantrum in front of the vending machine? Does the girl really know what the shirt means? Does the mother know what the shirt means? How come they make cheese-filled hot dogs but not chili filled ones?
Thinking about it for a while I realized that with a little bit of hard work and venture capital I could easily rule the stuffed hot dog market. Then the door alarm sounded, and as I watched the security guard demagnetize her new Britney Spears CD more questions started racing through my mind. How could she let her daughter wear such clothing? How could she let that CD anywhere near her stereo?
Chances are good that the girl had to explain it to her mother, or that the mom thought it was “cute” and harmless.
It’s not just this family either, its happening all over America. Kids see sex symbols on TV and want to mimic what they see. After all, it looks good on Britney, it must look good on me too. It’s not just kids, fashion designers know this too. Somebody obviously made the shirt big enough for an 80lb girl to wear.
So the kids want to wear it, the fashion designers make it for them, who else can we blame? Somebody has to be at fault, and as tempting as it is to try and point a finger at MTV, Rockstar Videogames and those damn liberals, it’s obviously the parents who are culpable here.
People wonder why we have such high teenage pregnancy and STD rates, and immediately think stronger laws are needed. The answer is simple. Stop teaching our children that sex is funny or cute. Stop treating sex education as a forbidden subject. Everybody knows that the more you forbid something, the more a child is going to want to do it.
Parents raise a fuss when schools want to teach sex-ed, yet they turn around and allow their 10 yr old daughters to dress like hookers. If you want your kid to grow up right, stop telling her that this clothing is “cute”. It’s not cute at all, it’s sick.
Remember, parental responsibility is not a dirty word.
June 6th, 2006
