MAMAS, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE SKANK WHORES...

It's got a nice ring to it, no?

I know going into this blogpost I'm about to leap over the generational fence into the "Hey, you kids, stay off of my lawn!" realm but I don't give a damn.  This needs to be said.

What the hell are little girls - I'm talking elementary school students, pre-teens, tweens, and teens - wearing these days?  (Told you -- cranky out-of-touch old lady territory.)

I went to a Bat Mitzvah last weekend.  Let me just start by saying, in a zillion years, my parents would have never let me out of the house in what some of these girls wore TO SYNAGOGUE.  Skirts that barely covered their ass when they were standing (and were invisible when sitting,) platform shoes with buckles and straps I'd expect on an S&M dominatrix, and clothes so tight every remaining ripple of baby-fat was on display.  On Shabbos.  For Saturday morning services.  Back in my day,  it wasn't trendy but you wore a skirt and a sweater or a dress with a cardigan.  Show some respect.  "Know Before Whom You Stand" -- it said it right there in Hebrew atop the ark!  (Then you went home, changed into your Sassoon jeans and rainbow suspenders and hit the Levittown Roller Rink for the late session... ) 

Fast forward to Saturday night: a stunning black-tie affair, which is license for guests to wear anything they deem black-tie appropriate.  God bless the men (and the Bar Mitzvah boy's friends) because they have it so easy; their clothing options are limited -- Rent A Penguin it is.  But women can go long or short, sexy or classy, matronly or hip, simple and elegant or overly ungapatchkah'd (yeah, Yiddish!)   But the girls.   Oh, dear... the girls.

Seventh grade is hell.  The girls are maturing so much faster than the boys - physically, mentally, emotionally... and they're still at the age where, aside from a few couplings, you can really still witness pods of boys on one side of the dance floor and gaggles of girls flocking to the other.  The boys didn't look so much different than the boys at the Bar Mitzvahs of my youth (sometimes, two and three to attend per weekend) but the girls... the girls looked very, very different.

I'm absolutely aging myself but  the truth is I wore a white lace Gunne Sax dress for my Bat Mitzvah.  And the dresses worn to friends' celebrations involved ruffles.  And often bows.  And high heeled shoes with clip-on bows that matched that ruffled dress.  It may not be fashion-forward by today's standards but it was the standard of the day and looking back, 12- and 13-year old girls looked like 12- and 13-year old girls.   Not the case nowadays.   (Although the tradition of changing into socks in order to get your dance on, thankfully survives.)

During the cocktail hour, what I was noticing was put forth into simple question form.  I take no credit for it.  Someone mentioned it to me, after it had been said to them... but it resonated, sadly.  Take a photograph of a gaggle of girls at one of these big Bar Mitzvah parties nowadays and ask: LONG ISLAND BAR MITZVAH or UKRANIAN CALL GIRL CONVENTION?    You decide.   Platform stiletto heels.  Slinky, skintight black dresses that leave nothing to the imagination and don't hit mid-thigh.  They're either on their cell phones, or gathering in the ladies room, or (when on the dance floor) displaying moves way beyond their years.  It's all very... what's the word?  ICKY.

I'm sure this and much worse is witnessed at Sweet Sixteens... but these kids are still babies.  And I don't entirely blame the girls themselves.  At twelve and thirteen, unless they babysit and/or get an allowance, they are not buying their own clothes and shoes.  No, I thoroughly blame the mothers more interested in being friends than parents and the fathers for turning a blind eye.  And this is a 'special event' -- how do they dress for school?  Yes, I come from a generation who thought oversized Champion sweatshirts, leggings, and elephantitis-of-the-ankles socks were brilliance... and I admit we had our own overly-sexualized moments too.   Remember the Madonna wannabe phase?  With the black rubber bracelets and the lace bows in your hair?  Girls running around wearing crosses and rosaries as fashion accessories and suddenly lingerie was worn outside your shirt... but I distinctly remember black bike short and tights which were worn under the short skirts.  Sure, it was a minor compromise but there was some sort of modesty amidst the Material Girl fad, at least for the younguns.

By the time I was attending Motley Crue and Whitesnake and Def Leppard and Aerosmith concerts in high school, as far as fashion statements went, the skankier the better.  Lycra and bustiers and thigh-high boots and fringed leather jackets.  However... I'd like to go on record, Your Honor, noting that: a) I did not have the figure to pull this look off.  Never have. Never will.  And at least I knew that.  Early on.  (Trust me -- people don't learn.  Some of the fashion sins I've witnessed at Bon Jovi shows, and we're talking current tours, make me want to flush my eyes out with Lysol.)   And, b) if I did have the figure, I'd have been sixteen, seventeen, eighteen...  those few years make a huge difference.

Oh, Prom in the eighties -- it was all about taffeta and ruffles and hair.  Lots and lots of hair.  Lots and lots of hairspray.  You can remember it fondly or mock it but prom still had a certain nostalgic simplicity to it.   Prom fashion today borrows more and more from the red carpet sense of style and personally, I like that immensely.  The problem is, choose your red carpet role models carefully.  Kate Winslet? Gwyneth Paltrow? Penelope Cruz?  Emma Stone?  By all means -- evoke the classics.  Embrace the glamour.  You may never have seen a movie starring Grace Kelly, honey, but you very much want to have her sense of timeless style.  But these teens aren't watching the Oscars.  Every event, every party, every appearance (for cash) made by "celebrities" these days has a red carpet and a step/repeat photo call... and who are the celebrities whose fashion is being mimicked?   Kim Kardashian?  Paris Hilton?  Snooki?  Famous for doing nothing (well, if you don't count making money for having sex on film or being drunk and slutty on cable TV,) these "women" help the Eastern European hooker look take hold.

Sexualizing children -- and it's never little boys, it's only ever little girls -- is flat-out creepy.  And it's more and more prevalent these days.  TODDLERS AND TIARAS -- it's child abuse, no matter how you package it for TLC.  The parents who dress their kids up in thousands of dollars worth of taffeta and rhinestones, spray-tan their toddlers, make them don wigs and fake teeth and teach them to strut their stuff for approval and prizes and trophies and cash-winnings... way to build self-esteem.   I hope you'll be just as proud of them when they're working the pole for meth money.  (Yes, pole dancing is a legitimate sport for some.  And yes, lots of very intelligent, well-adjusted, successful women have come through the beauty pageant scene- "it's a scholarship pageant!"-  and rodeo circuit -- but the mothers profiled on TODDLERS AND TIARAS should be investigated by Child Protective Services, period.  It's just effed up, people.)

I want little girls to look like little girls.  And that doesn't mean they have to be obsessed with Barbies or the Disney Princesses.  My favorite 7-year-old girl likes dinosaurs not dolls and prefers her butt-length pin-straight hair unencumbered by bows or braids.  Growing up, I had a friend who at age 5, was such a jock and so looked up to her (male) cousin, she got a crew cut.   Nowadays, good luck dragging me out of a Sephora but back then?  I only wanted to wear football jerseys; after all, that's what Jo wore on THE FACTS OF LIFE.  Seventh grade make-up in 1983? It consisted of two things:  blue eyeliner and frosted pink lip gloss (usually tucked into your kidney-shaped leather Jordache bag.)

Ever witnessed these children who wander out of the Bibbity-Bobbity-Boutique in Walt Disney World after mommy and daddy have plunked down $189.95 plus tax on their Discover Card for a Castle Package make-over?  They churn out an army of  "magical" miniature drag queens.   These little girls are wearing too much make-up; their hair is teased and full of product which is gross and sticky in Orlando heat mid-June; they're covered in body glitter and wearing shiny princess outfits...  Makes them all look like they walked off the TV set from MY BIG FAT GYPSY WEDDING (don't even get me started on those 6-year-old Brits all dolled up and pre-planning their own weddings before learning to write cursive!)  I'm sorry.  Put that poor kid in cotton shorts and a cotton t-shirt, let her run around and when she's hot and sweaty in the Florida afternoon, find a fountain she can jump into and cool off.   Let a little girl be a little girl and behave naturally... not this glammed out distortion. 

I don't think I'm being a prude.  And I don't think I'm old-fashioned.  And my generation has its fashion sense and fashion sins for which we have to answer.  But a generation of lazy parents (including a lot of mothers who themselves have no real sense of what is or isn't appropriate or classy attire and thus are poor role models for their daughters) and a society so addicted to trashy pop culture, we've arrived at time where the rate at which little girls are being asked to stop being little girls is speeding up exponentially.   And that's just sad.