This was disturbing to read, and a sad testament to the current state of “feminism.”

Right on trend with the present milieu of “feminist” universalism, we’ve arrived at the point where essentially ANY choice that a woman or girl makes is considered to be inherently good or right, as long as it appears that she has done so with confidence and without any apparent duress.

This fantasy of total female empowerment is belied by many practical realities— and in the case you’ve described, it is belied not only by the incapacity for children to comprehend the full magnitude of their choices (hence needing *parents*) but also by the perversion of your own gaze and descriptions.

Adults in this society barely possess the cognitive abilities to comprehend that our choices have consequences, and that the decisions we make don’t happen in a vacuum. “Society” carries the collective weight of our histories and the reality of what’s here and now.

Sure, there are parts of the world where seeing a girl’s breasts or bums is not perceived as fundamentally sexual. We are not living in those parts of the world.

We are living in the part of the world where TikTok embeds itself into vulnerable girls’ psyches; where the most successful female role models in art and entertainment are hyper-exposed and, in the era of not only unprecedented airbrushing/filtering technology but the mainstreaming of some of the most enhanced and accessible cosmetic procedures ever available, the “sexiest” and most aspirational women are increasingly like bespoke, agelessly nubile sex dolls, tailor-made for the male gaze — but always framed as “feminist” and having made themselves like so “for self-empowerment” alone.

Capitalism functions by sewing aspiration and yearning, which is exactly how girls and women continue to spend billions on makeup (and cosmetic procedures) and clothing. Adults (men and women alike) are often incapable of staving off the FOMO of appearing off-trend (that is, unless they are immersed in communities that offer some kind of belonging or strong morality outside of mainstream cultural conformity — ironically, that often can include religious Christian communities, like the one the author is blaming for her prior belief that 13 year old girls shouldn’t be put on sexual display).

Children have far less developed brains than adults… hence needing parents! Wild concept. Tweens will naturally start pursuing more autonomy, and puberty starts the sexual maturation process which will naturally incline many kids to seek or crave some kind of sexual attention. But that doesn’t always mean that the way children are inclined to act upon that is right or good for them.

Nudity is not at all “wrong,” but we live in a complex and pluralistic and capitalistic society with a strong and enduring misogynistic bent; it is a sad and misguided attempt for self-proclaimed feminists to try to “reclaim” their own gender-based trauma by making the assertion that young girls and children showing off their bodies in ways that are obviously and quite deliberately sexual (and designed to seek broad sexual attention and gain social capital by flaunting the superiority of one’s adherence to dominant paradigms of attractiveness through ideal weight, fashion, makeup, features etc) are fundamentally empowering or “good” because they are reflections of the children’s agency or autonomy.

Part of the reason this society is so frustratingly stupid right now is precisely because too many adults are projecting their own insecurities onto children and treating kids like they know far more than they actually do. And therein lies the problem— far too many adults, notably women who call themselves feminists, have sprung to such a creepy end of the spectrum where their inability to cope with trauma from their own youth is being inverted and projected onto today’s social media- and video game- addicted children; the outcome is that small people with undeveloped brains (that are being infested with constant subliminal messages) are becoming the moral compasses for insecure adults.

Here’s a pro-tip: American culture is still uniquely and disproportionately sexualizing women and girls, whether we want that to be the case or not. Therefore, regardless of your feelings on how it should change or what you wish it was like or if you yourself are a woman, please don’t stare at and write long wistful articles about naked and semi-naked children.