In a Wall Street Journal op-ed , Jennifer Moses, a Jewish New Millennium mom, wrestles with this question of why we allow our teenage daughters to dress like prostitutes :
It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘Look how hot my daughter is.’” But why? “I think it’s a bonding thing,” she said. “It starts with the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there.”I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?”
We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didnt have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regretI know women of my generation who waited until marriagebut thats certainly the norm among my peers.
So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didnt), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us dont know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. Were embarrassed, and we dont want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.
Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I dont know one of them who doesnt have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman Ive ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes shed experimented more.
(Via: Justin Taylor )