Are You Even WEARING Underwear?

Because my sensible but flattering panties offer more coverage than your super-tight booty shorts do.

Yes, little super-cute 89-pound 12-year-old girl getting frozen yogurt at the mall.  I am talking to you.  Unless you are auditioning for America's Next Top Superhero, you should not be wearing Speedo bottoms as outerwear.

Dear Lord, where's the modesty?

Please don't assume that I'm just a cranky, angry, overweight judgmental hag who loathes nubile young women with healthy, perfect creamy skin and long, lean legs.  Although I never had the "ideal" teenager's body, and I can't honestly say what I would have worn if I had possessed one, I can firmly say that the clothing options for young girls today are absolutely ridiculous.

We criticize women for dressing in ways that are too revealing, suggesting that the clothing they themselves wear is the cause of sexual assaults, and yet all we offer them to wear are short shorts, paper-thin shirts, string-strapped camisoles and Dorito-sized bikinis.  The trend starts young, never even giving a toddler the chance to cover her knees!  As soon as the onesies are outgrown, we stuff little girls into too-tight dresses and suggestive t-shirts like this one (no, I am not suggesting that cheerleading is the enemy, just sexualizing it is).  Then, when we sign them up for dance class, they're squeezed into this.  Does a 6-year-old really need to be sporting go-go boots?  

Don't get me started on this whole toddler beauty pageant thing.

We are robbing our children of their childhoods.

What breaks my heart is how quickly kids are growing up these days.  When I was 13, I barely understood a single sexual innuendo that was coarsely tossed across the school cafeteria.  These days, nine-year-olds are flipping off their parents and five-year-olds have learned that the "f" word is more effective that saying "please".  Younger and younger girls are getting pregnant, and younger and younger boys are running away, too afraid to man up and become fathers.  Apathy has set in like a silent plague as even the children in my church class whip out cell phones and text during the message.

Although clothing was a lead-in, what I really mean to say is that the trend I am seeing nowadays is that parents are taught, by the media and society, how not to be parents.  They are taught not to discipline their children, because spanking is evil and abusive.  They are taught not to pry or push too hard when it comes to serious matters, because that might would a tween's delicate sense of privacy.  We can't make the strong suggestion to our teenagers that they should abstain from sex, because, unless we supply them with condoms and/or abortions, they will become have it anyway and become careless unwed mothers and or absent fathers.

We can't be their parents because we are too busy being their friends.

I apologize if the tone of this message is too sarcastic or bitter.  I am just aching inside to see parents - and other mentors - rise up and care enough about children, rather than their own images or feelings, to lovingly discipline, patiently teach, and gently encourage the next generation.  I know I have failed in this area.  There are young women I have met who I wanted to reach, and even though it is true that each person must choose his or her own way...I think I could have made a difference, but I didn't commit like I needed to.  I pray that, when the time comes for me to be a mother, I will be brave and obedient enough to teach my children to seek wisdom, love modesty, treasure friendship and, above all, worship God.