Getty Images It was the high heels that finally got my attention — my daughter received four pairs for her second birthday, pink plastic ones with rhinestones and feathers. Louisa quickly became disconcertingly expert at walking, running, and kicking soccer balls in them. I couldn't put my finger on why they creeped me out. After all, I loved to play dress-up at her age too. My grandmother was petite, almost child-size, and I spent half my childhood swanning around in her low-cut evening gowns, my cheeks rouged up with her Mary Kay. But then I realized there was a major difference: I played dress-up with my grandma's high heels. Louisa plays dress-up with heels that have been manufactured for and marketed to children — with their own celebrity style icon in 4-year-old Suri Cruise, who has been known to wear higher heels than I do as an adult. There's been a lot of noise about little girls acting and dressing way too sexy lately. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't that concerned when Miley Cyrus took her clothes off, or when her then-9-year-old sister, Noah, showed up for a Los Angeles Halloween event dressed in what looked like a Goth hooker outfit. Those crazy child stars, I said to myself. But then I started hearing reports from my real-life friends. One complained that they only make padded training bras now and that her sixth-grader looked like a Pamela Anderson wannabe. Another called to talk about her 6-year-old's dance-recital costume: fuchsia hotpants with heart appliqués on each buttock. The insanity seems to be trickling down to real girls — our girls. Take this so-wrong-I-hope-it's-not-right statistic: According to a survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and , 22 percent of girls ages 13 to 19 have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves online. So I wondered: When do I start taking action to protect her from our supersexed culture — and what do I do, short of sending her to a nunnery? I posed the question to educators and moms around the country — and while I discovered that it all begins much earlier than you'd think, I also learned that there's a lot that parents can and should control. The terrifying truth: It starts with princesses My innocent toddler is already a prime marketing target, I learn when I speak to Peggy Orenstein, the author of a new book,. You may balk — what's sexy about a little girl in a pink princess costume? But sexy, as it turns out, is not the same thing as sexualized. Sexualization is not only imposing sexuality on children before they're ready and viewing girls as sexual objects, but also valuing a girl for her appearance over her other attributes. And what was the first thing that culture told her about being a girl? Not that she was competent, strong, creative, or smart but that every little girl wants — or should want — to be the Fairest of Them All. She describes one study in which college girls shown just two commercials with stereotyped portrayals of women — a girl raving about acne medicine and a woman thrilled with a brownie mix — expressed less interest in math- and science-related careers afterward than girls who hadn't been shown the ads. These days, the average child in America watches an estimated 40,000 ads a year. Simmons points, for example, to the trend of moms treating preschoolers to manicures. Their rapt audience — most in the 6-to-11-year-old demographic — follows the shows and the offscreen lives of their stars with wide-eyed curiosity. And then so many of those tween idols — girls such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, even Miley — wind up as premature sex symbols, headed for a fall. You can argue it has always been thus Maureen McCormick has said she traded sex for cocaine shortly after playing Marcia Brady — Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! Now our 24-hour news cycle brings their skimpy outfits and crazy antics straight into our homes, where our kids can get a load of them. They take their clothes off or head to rehab. The road to female identity is rocky right now, and these stars are traveling it in a writ-large, public way that reflects, in a smaller way, the dilemmas real girls face. I'd heard about it from other parents; my girls had no idea what it was. In retrospect, she feels foolish for buying her girls a full-on salon experience when they hadn't even thought to want it. But what happens when they do want it, expressing interest in something you can't stand like, say, Bratz dolls, those bedroom-eyed plastic playthings that appear to be dressed for a shift at the Hustler Club? Veteran teachers I spoke with said one of the biggest changes in students over the years is they've grown less and less accustomed to the word no. People are putting their kids in the driver's seat, but, let's face it, kids are crappy drivers. Your daughter may love the sweats with JUICY emblazoned across the butt — but she also may love eating Pixy Stix for lunch. Your child wants to know your values. Some parents take the tactic of watching shows with their kids — and offering play-by-play commentary. Keeping an eye on what they're doing shouldn't stop at the TV screen, either. Karen Mallow of Ancram, NY, told me her 13-year-old likes to try on outfits with her friends and take pictures like fashion models. One afternoon, as Karen perused the shots on her daughter's MacBook, she saw a few way-too-provocative poses one girl had struck on her daughter's bed. If this gets out, you don't know where it'll end up. And in fact, one tactic advertisers use is to paint parents as big spoilsports. Encouraging girls to play sports is another way to get them focused on the strength of their bodies, not just on how they look. Sports also create healthy common ground between girls and boys. Educators say they're seeing the end result of the all-blue-for-boys, all-pink-for-girls marketing trends: boys and girls who have a harder time playing together, which ultimately leaves both sexes lagging in academic and social development. Further, there's evidence that kids who play well with the opposite sex grow up to have more positive, long-lasting romantic relationships. The key is not to sexualize those friendships, Orenstein says. A 5-year-old girl's friend who is a boy is not a boyfriend. Laughing about how cute they are and their impending marriage is a surefire way to embarrass the poor thing and send her running into the safety of making hot-pink sparkle jewelry with her girlfriends. Her point leads to an important lesson in all of this: As counterintuitive as it may feel, sex is not the enemy. That's why sexualization is so detrimental. If they're hurried along before they're ready, they can associate negative feelings with being sexual. The right time is great. But the wrong time really messes with their heads. It's every parent's judgment call, Silverman says, but it's when a young woman has not only developed physically but also possesses the maturity to understand the message she sends with smoky eyeliner and a tight skirt — and to handle the reactions they elicit. Protecting your daughter doesn't mean never talking about sex or never telling her she's beautiful. It was the first thing I said when she was born, and then I cried because I was so happy to see her. I still feel that way. Every morning, I'm just so delighted to see that little face, those strong, chubby limbs. We call her The Viking because she's so exuberant, so gung ho. The idea of her some day comparing herself to Cinderella, or Barbie, or some simpering teen queen on TV and finding herself lacking — too fat, too skinny, too loud, nose too big, lips too small — and trying to compensate with store-bought sexiness breaks my heart. I don't want anyone to take that light out of her heart or out of her eyes. My goal then, I suppose, is to teach her to see herself as I see her, and to love herself as I love her, as someone who already possesses everything she needs.
