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.
My mom would never have bought me that.
Reminds me of the other commercial with Yaya who thinks the woman dresses like a prostitute. Hahahaa.
Here in L.A. you can play the guessing game “High School girl or Hooker?”.
I realize there may indeed be some overlap, but the game is to determine if they are on their way to or from school or not.
Does any radio station actaully broadcast any president’s “radio address”? I can’t say I’ve heard one.
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Ironically, girls who are close to their fathers are much less likely to behave this way. The involvement of fathers in their children's lives is essential. Mothers are not enough.
They did in the past.
Communist goals:
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Movin' right along they are. Sound the alarm daily!
I for one have a 23 yr old daughter, I raised her by myself from the age 0f 5, TELEVISION was not allowed in our home, No Internet, When questioned by her teachers about her behavior or should I say the Lack of her wanting to emulate Harlets on TV, i Explained to them That Television was not an Option in our Home and she would never see it til she was on her own. No Bull SH**, She wore modest clothing and today she still does. I saw Lots of little Harlets in her schools everyday. Absolutely Disgusting, and My daughter agrees now. And by the way has turned out pretty good, two jobs and school full time, NO PUBLIC ASSISTANCE OR PUBLIC AID OF ANY KIND. Including NO STUDENT LOANS. She is 23 now.
This is a lie. It is every woma's fantasy to have three men at the same time - One cooking dinner, one washing the bathroom, and one mowing the lawn.
Have you seen Agenda yet?
http://agendadocumentary.com
Actually, I loved the movie Grease. I loved the music and was a big fan of Olivia Newton John.
As an adult, I realized, I could not let my kids watch it because of how inappropriate it is/was. I liked High School Musical movies and found it to be more appropriate than Grease for my kids.
ROFLMSS!!!!!!!!!!
We don't have any talk radio around here on weekends, so come 6PM on Friday the other radio with the local country station programmed on gets turned on and stays until Monday morning when we switch back to the other radio with the talk station.
Who cares what Obama says about anything?
If someone is running a clip of him talking, either on the radio or TV news, Jax always wants to know if she can change it --- she can't take his voice, let alone what he has to say.
I was in high school in the mid 80’s, and we had plenty of girls dressing like sluts. I loved it. I’m not condoning it now, of course, but I think it’s a little dishonest to think the issue hasn’t been around for a while. I mean, it didn’t get much more slutty than leather mini skirts with baby doll socks and pumps.
I noticed that too and therein lies the problem. With a strong, involved, loving Dad at home many times the girls do not have to dress or act like hookers to get a boys attention... they have it at home with their Dad's.
You young Dad's out there, spend the same time with your daughters as you would with your sons. Teach them how to mow the lawn, change the oil in the cars, go to ball games with them and teach them how to hunt. If you pay the same attention to your daughter's as your sons you may avoid many of the troubles young girls have with the opposite sex looking for a Fathers love.
I totally agree. I aim to follow the example of my wife’s aunt and uncle. They have three kids, 2 girls and a boy, who are probably 3 of the most stunningly beautiful people ever. All were atheltes and hunted.
The best rule: If you want to go out on Saturday, your date comes over Friday for dinner with the family. That automatically rules out most of the scumbags and bagettes who would never show up. Plus, it gives mom and dad a chance to size up the date face to face.
Honestly, all these men in their conservative business attire and then the babe with the skin-tight mini skirt with no sleeves and boobs hanging out.
Does Fox make them dress like this?
Harris whats-her-name on Fox goes for the cleavage 95 percent of the time...
If birth control really meant that girls didn’t have to worry about getting knocked up, this wouldn’t be the huge problem that it is. It’s another Big Lie. BC only works a certain percentage of the time, with a small but significant failure rate. And they have to use it in the first place if they want it to work. Unfortunately too many girls seem to regard getting pregnant as a way to say FU to their parents.
My kids are screwed.
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I noticed that too.....she seems so nice but I think someone is making her expose her breasts, anyway I just turn her off now.
Darned if I know. I suppose it’s possible NPR does, or that lefty Sirius/XM station with no listeners.
I have never heard an Obama speech. Once in a while I read a bit of a transcript on FR, and that’s bad enough. I’d rather listen to the byos fight over which one of them gets to be a triceratops or the baby reciting the “Big Bang Theory” theme song. Or even Bill’s ghastly white-noise “music.”
http://agendadocumentary.com
No I haven't. Thanks for sending. The trailer is fact on. Will get the DVD. Every kid in high school should see this. Education of Truth is the Key. . .
And I hate that commercial.
Daddy's trying to protect his little girl. And Mom...
And of course the message in the commercial, is that dad is a prudish idiot, Mom is hip and cool, and the daughter is pretty and innocent.
The reality, Mom is the idiot, Dad is wise and protective, and the daughter is on her way to being a slut unless she wises up, and dad grows a spine.
What a disgusting generation.
Not only is there no stigma, it is viewed as a status symbol. That and you get free daycare, tutoring, and applause for being “A dedicated single mom!”
My wife has students in high school with three or more kids. Think about that.
Yes! NPR.
Padded bikini’s for 8 year olds from A & Fitch.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2694534/posts
My Mom would not have phrased that as a question. It would have been “You are not wearing that!” Period.
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