You'd have to have been living under a rock or in a cave to have not heard about the Vanity Fair photo controversy involving the 15-year-old Miley Cyrus.
The photos are tasteful, yet even my extremely open mind was a little taken back at the sexualization of a girl who really is still a child.
I've been reading blog after blog and have been interested to see how differently folks are thinking of this. Celeb blogger Perez Hilton keeps referring to her as "slutty" ( pet peeve of mine). This from a man who draws pictures of penises on celebrities, so yes, he is certainly the purveyor of good taste. And of course that moral compass himself, Bill O'Reilly, a man I cannot tolerate, was talking about it, saying she should go on Oprah and apologize.
Even actress Jamie Lee Curtis wrote a column for the Huffington Post about parenting our children in the era of Britney and Paris.
I've been thinking a lot about all of this over the last 24 hours. I write about pop culture and follow all these young women. But, closer to my heart is the fact that I am a mother of three - two sons and a daughter. When I see photos of a young girl like Miley the first thought I have is: is this how I'd like my daughter portrayed to the world?
Last week photos of Miley from MySpace leaked onto the World Wide Web and we all saw pictures of her showing her stomach and her lime green bra. They made me very sad for several reasons.
In the larger scheme of things it seems many girls feel the only way to get attention and be special is to flaunt their bodies and sexuality at younger and younger ages. And we in the media do not help things. Girls seem to feel their only value is in their looks and ability to be sexual. I caught a bit of "Middle School Confessions" on HBO the other night and was shocked, completely shocked at what these 13-year-old girls were doing.
Over and over young women like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are shown getting lots of attention for not wearing underwear, dancing on tables and even going to jail. Good Lord, CNN covered Paris getting out of jail in her designer jacket and jeans.
My daughter is 22, and about to graduate from one of the best women's colleges in the country. I am relieved that she's as old as she is and I don't have to navigate this minefield of skanky behavior that is hitting girls at younger and younger ages.
The thing is we can't have it both ways - we can't be a culture that shows salacious commercials during the Super Bowl and then wonder why our daughters think they are only valuable if they have big breasts and grant sexual favors to boys in the back of the school bus.
When my daughter went off to college I remember driving on to this lovely collegiate campus and seeing banners flying from all the lamp posts that said, "Women Who Will." I want my daughter to be a woman who will see that as beautiful as the outer package may be, she is so much more. My wish is that every girl would get that lesson.
The fervour over Miley Cyrus' pictures will fade, but maybe we should be paying more attention to the lessons within the drama: How can we help our daughters see there is more to them than what they look like? What kind of women do we want our daughter's to be? And what can we, as a culture do to support them in seeing their value as people, and not just commodities?
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