Barbara
Kay, National Post
Published: Wednesday,
August 08, 2007
Which is
the greater oppression -- sexual virtue imposed by the patriarchy, or sexual
libertinism imposed by the matriarchy?
They call
it empowerment, but in fact the decade-long vogue for "girls gone
wild" -- "bad" as the new sexual "good"-- is just
another form of cultural tyranny. Except now the oppressors are post-morality
theorists and "desperate housewife" moms urging public
"hotness," rather than stern, moralistic fathers suppressing it.
Today, the
sexualization of girls begins in infancy with 12-month sized rompers announcing,
"I'm too sexy for my diaper." At age four, it's The Bratz Babyz,
singing "You've gotta look hotter than hot! Show what you've got!" At
six it's a pouty, scantily dressed My Scene Bling Bling Barbie draped in
diamonds. By 12, it's Ludacris singing ( Ruff sex): "make it hurt in the
garden." Fully brainwashed by 13, lap dancer is by then considered a more
desirable profession than teacher, as one British survey of 1,000 teenage girls
found to be the case by a 7-1 ratio.
We've all
seen countless variations on the theme, but these particular examples came from
Torontonian Wendy Shalit's new book, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim
Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good.
Shalit's
1999 book, A Return to Modesty, acknowledged feminism's legitimate triumphs,
but deplored its obsession with girls' right (turned obligation) to
boundaryless sexual exploration. She identifies the pressure on girls to
experience early, frequent and emotionally detached sex as the primary cause of
cynicism in both sexes, resulting in a systematic atrophy both of appetite for
deep love and aptitude for long-term attachment. Shalit holds that voluntary
sexual modesty throughout adolescence with a view to eventual loving monogamy
more accurately dovetails with women's basic nature, and therefore results in
their greatest emotional fulfillment. A solid researcher, citing wide-ranging
statistical, professional and anecdotal testimony, Shalit builds a persuasive
case for promiscuity's harsher toll on women than men.
Radical
feminists despise this precocious, politically incorrect "modestynik"
who herself remained cheerfully chaste until marriage. For her apostasy against
the "bad is good" orthodoxy, Playboy scornfully dubbed her "A
Man's Worst Nightmare," and The New York Observer caricatured her as an SS
officer. Shalit has even received death threats simply "because being a
romantic is nowadays an unpardonable sin."
Girls Gone
Mild throws into detailed, sickening relief the actual content the average girl
in North America is subjected to from birth onwards in the determination to
make her "bad." By their early teens, girls' resistance to bad-girl
brainwashing is ground down and they are ill-equipped to resist the paradigm of
sexual largesse promoted by educational and celebrity authority figures. Last
year, actress Sharon Stone, offering characteristically voguish
"advice" to young teens, suggested, "If you're in a situation
where you cannot get out of sex, offer a blow job." Cannot? Why not just
say "no"? Ah, but that would make her appear "good," the
one forbidden sexual choice.
Shalit
offers quite hopeful evidence, through personal testimonies of the 100 girls
she interviewed and examples from thousands of e-mails to her Web site,
www.ModestyZone.net,that a -- well, modest -- but real counter-revolution is
under way amongst young women and girls. She adduces the cases of sexually
disciplined daughters rebelling against permissive mothers (notably Molly
Jong-Fast, daughter of famously promiscuous, four-times-married novelist Erica
Jong,) and the spontaneous 2005 "girlcotters" who challenged
Abercrombie & Fitch on their degrading T-shirts (such as "Who needs
brains when you have these?") and succeeded in having them withdrawn from
inventory. In Canada, a similar phenomenon is taking shape with TRENDS: Teens
Reacting Effectively 'NDiscovering Style. Conceived by four Toronto teenage girls
in 2004 who were fed up with the unremitting sexualization of girls in the
media and the fashion world, TRENDS is now active in six Canadian cities. These
girls understand that the medium -- clothes -- are the sexual message. Girls
are lured to TRENDS by the promise of involvement in fashion shows, but they
stay for the group validation of sexual virtue. Canadian girls who are sick of
"bad girl" culture should check it out (www.trendsfashion.ca). The
girls in TRENDS and the "girlcotters" Shalit describes as bellwethers
in the pendulum swing back to a more natural restraint aren't sexually modest
to please the patriarchy or the matriarchy, but to please themselves. Free will
choosing principled modesty because it confers self-esteem? Now that's true
sexual liberation.