I know this will totally come across as a Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children?! post. But if there is one point on which I agree with the Helen Lovejoy Crowd, it’s anger over the premature sexualization of little girls. It’s always bothered me, and now that I have a daughter of my own, it bothers me even more. The biggest perpetrator of this crime is, of course, Madison Avenue–although Roger Clemens has certainly done his part.

To be fair, this trend is part due to the fact girls now hit puberty at ridiculously young ages. Thanks to all the hormones we pump into the animals we eat, if you poured some milk and slapped a raw steak on a bowling bowl, it’d start growing breasts. But I also wanna say it
started with Britney Spears, ’cause hey, why not?

Way back in the late 1990s, Britney Spears made music that was squarely aimed at the Radio Disney crowd, while cultivating a persona of Slut In Training. She had all the confused sexual politics and virgin/whore complexes of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie, but with better production values and half the self awareness.

The creepiest part about it was, when you heard her talk at this time (and God help you if you did), she seemed blissfully unaware of the Lolita Vibes she gave off. When the subject of sex was actually broached, she sounded like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock trying to fake-hit on Tracy Jordan’s wife. She was clearly being manipulated by a publicity machine capitalizing on the Look But Don’t Touch Appeal of an underage hottie. Not to be alarmist, but look how well that turned out for her.

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