Redbook Article on the Sexualization of Girls

Redbook posted an excellent article today on the sexualization of young girls.  I wholeheartedly agree with the author’s sentiments, barring a few miscues stemming from her clearly secular mindset.

Here’s a sample–

[G]irlhood really is different today: more commercialized (companies spent $100 million in advertising to kids in 1983; today they spend almost $17 billion), more girly (nearly everything manufactured for girls — from birth — is screamingly, irritatingly, blindingly pink), and increasingly sexualized.

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. “Princesses are just a phase,” Orenstein writes, but they mark a girl’s “first foray into the mainstream culture…. 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.”

So does it all start with the Disney Princesses?