Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Why Booty Shorts on an Eight-Year-Old Is Horrifying

(Guest post by Owen Strachan)

My title devolves a bit from the rich themes being tackled on this blog at present, but the issue is pretty important.

Over at Christianity Today, I've written a piece entitled "Tiger Dads vs. Sexualized Daughters" on gospel-driven modesty inspired by LZ Granderson's recent CNN column decrying tiny girls dressing sexy. The CNN piece got 440,000 "likes" on Facebook, so I thought it worth considering in light of a redemptive cultural hermeneutic.

Here's a snatch:

Should you get Botox for your ten-year-old daughter? What would you think of breast augmentation for your eleven-year-old girl? These and similarly startling issues cropped up in a recent CNN column by LZ Granderson. Writing in an outraged style, Granderson tackled how parents allow the culture to sexualize their daughters. The piece, entitled rather prosaically "Parents, don't dress your daughters like tramps," began with a word of personal experience (from Granderson):
"I saw someone at the airport the other day who really caught my eye.
Her beautiful, long blond hair was braided back a la Bo Derek in the movie "10" (or for the younger set, Christina Aguilera during her "Xtina" phase). Her lips were pink and shiny from the gloss, and her earrings dangled playfully from her lobes."

Go here to read my response to this important essay. I try to show how care for our little girls is a more prominent--and precarious--scriptural topic than one might initially think, and how our care images either the father God or the prince of darkness.

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