We must protect our daughters!

On KSL.com today, they had a story (click here) which discusses a study that kids clothes are becoming more sexualized.  While not particularly impressive as a piece of journalism, the article it cites and links to from CNN makes a number of points in a very candid and straightforward fashion (click here for the CNN article).

The following quotes from the CNN article articulate better than I think I could my own feeling on this issue:

• The fact remains that sex only sells because people are buying it.  No successful retailer would consider introducing an item like a padded bikini top for kindergartners if they didn't think people would buy it....which raises the question: what in the [world] is wrong with us?
• I get it, Rihanna's really popular.  But that's a pretty weak reason for someone to dress their little girl like her.
• Friends bow to peer pressure.  Parents say, "No, and that's the end of it."
• A line needs to be drawn, but not by Ambercrombie.  Not by Britney Spears.  And not by these little girls who don't know better an desperately need their parents to be parents and not 40-year-old BFF's.

The article also cites a 2007 study by the American Psychological Association which found that early sexualization of girls was linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression.  This is the primary harm from which we must protect our daughters.  The effect such clothing has on those of us not of the fairer gender is secondary to the psychological effects of such dress on the girl/young woman.

Jacob, the Book of Mormon prophet records that "it grieveth me that I must use so much boldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God."  We as parents should be no less concerned with the tender and chaste and delicate feelings of girls and young women, but not just in the moment--we must consider the long term effects and sometimes that requires difficult choices now to get blessings later.

What the author of the CNN article left the reader to figure out, I'll say outright: We as parents are both the correct people to be drawing the line and the ones with the responsibility to draw the line.  This may mean continued difficulty in hunting for cute, but modest dresses, swimming suits and other attire.  This may mean that during that hunt we have to explain to our daughters that in order to follow the prophets and protect them from harm, we have to insist on modesty.  It might even come to the point that if you want something modest you have to make it yourself.  But at the end of the day, all of those efforts will be worthwhile.