What Is Happening To Our Children?
Photo from WCVD Boston
...when we allow eight-year-old girls to dance like they are in a strip club, dressed like this? You all know I am not a ranter here on this blog (not much, anyway), but this needs to be said. The controversy surrounding a recent World of Dance competition in California (gee, what a shock. My apologies to those Californians who would never allow such a thing) has reached far and wide. The children's parents are defending their choice to let their daughters participate in this, saying they've "worked hard" and don't deserve all of this criticism. I have seen actual videos of the moms and dads of these girls outraged that this would even be an issue.
Sigh. Where do I even begin? And to be fair, it is not even just these poor girls, above, that are robbed of their childhoods. I see girls in my own town, skimpily dressed, with words like "juicy" and "hot" on the backsides of their short-shorts. A couple of years back, I saw a pre-teen girl who actually had a t-shirt with the Playboy bunny on it...and she was WITH HER MOM.
Parents, what are we teaching our kids? To be sex objects before they even hit puberty? It's bad enough to see scantily dressed teenagers at the Dairy Queen, letting it all hang out, but girls this age? It's disgraceful. We absolutely must think about the values we are teaching these young girls, and how we want them to see themselves: with dignity, worth, and respect. As Daughters of the King.
The above photo (and video on YouTube) is vulgar. It made me ill. But you know what is worse? Parents who defend it. One of the girls' dads said that "they don't even really know what they are doing." I want to scream, "But YOU are supposed to know!" Parents have lost sight of the word "NO." Would you take your child to a strip club? Yet so many parents are taking the strip club to their children and they are not even seeing it. They are oblivious to the many ways they are allowing their children to be exposed to this filth, this degradation of the human person: through books, movies, TV shows, magazines, radio, and video games.
In some respects, you can't really blame the eight-year-old girls. They are children. But the parents should know better. Would you send your little girl out into the middle of a busy street? Of course not. The physical danger is imminent. To send your little girl out onto a stage dressed in stripper clothes so she can gyrate to the Beyonce song, "Single Ladies"? Not only physically dangerous (think of the perverts), but spiritually dangerous. Because if this is okay at age eight, what is considered to be okay at age eleven, twelve, thirteen?
"They don't dress like that in school," a parent said. Ya think?
Parents need to be parents. It takes common sense...and concern for their well-being. I wonder where that all went. I wonder where these girls' childhoods went. Because their childhoods are now gone, you see. Once you gyrate onstage in skimpy costumes like that to an adult-themed song, the innocence is pretty much gone. How do you go from that to thinking the Tooth Fairy is going to leave a dollar under your pillow?
This makes me even more motivated to continue writing books for pre-teens that celebrate modesty and a wholesome childhood. So, in that sense, some good has come out of this. For those who seek the Truth will prevail, and those who work for the good of the souls of God will never be stopped.
Oh, I wish I could give every girl on that stage a copy of Olivia and the Little Way.
But I'd make sure their parents read it, too!
