Monday, October 22, 2007

My heart hurts for our daughters and for us...

My niece Grace is 4 years old. I adore her. She is a very bright, sweet, little girl. When I was taking pictures of her new house, she kept posing for the pictures. They were all along the lines of underwear ad poses. I tried to get her to stop, but she kept insisting that this was how women posed for pictures.

My first instinct was to judge my sister. You know the thought line...Where is Grace seeing this? Why is she acting like this? Why isn't my sister sheltering her from this sexuality?

When I talked to my sister about this and showed her the pictures, she was horrified. Then she remembered that her downstairs neighbor had put some catalogs out on the stoop to be recycled and she found Grace looking at a Victoria Secret catalog. And still I felt this sense that somehow my sister should have protected her from that.

But as I drove home that day, I saw a Victoria Secret billboard. I realized that I have had to steer my kids in opposite directions walking by various stores in our occasional trip to the mall. Then I passed a bus sign of the latest "Brittany Spears," she was sprawled on satin sheets in her underwear. My daughter is being exposed to the same images everyday...and so am I.

Danigirl has brought to my attention the new Dove film. I've posted about these before. I love them and they make me cry.

2 comments:

Mel said...

I too hate seeing that side of our daughters which is so at odds with their little girlness. They will always be exposed to posy sexy chick on car bonnet kind of images so we just have to counter balance with the other amazing side of real women and try and not get too freaked when they pose sexy or act sexy. I think I might need to move to 'Little house on the Praerie' and we can all wear bonnets and long dresses.

Anonymous said...

Wow. That made me cry too.