The birthday party ad was featured in the back of the parents’ magazine in our area.
It promoted both spa birthday parties for “little Divas” and also Spa Diva Day Camp for little girls, beginning at age 4. For the price of $350, eight little girls could have fake champagne, pedicures, manicures, sparkly make-up and their own “show-off, runway walk.”
The other option was Rock Star Day Camp where “girls just wanna have fun.” It was a small ad with a big and tragic message about American girlhood: It’s been ruined.
It is ironic that at a time when sex crimes against children are rampant, tarting up little girls is now an industry fueled by TV shows. The thinking processes of a mother hand delivering her little preschool-aged daughter to be trained in how to be a “spa diva” are incomprehensible. It is a grotesque moral failing with consequences for all of society.
The consequences of sexing up little girls are everywhere. Anyone with access to a news site will read about even late elementary girls sending nude photos of themselves via their phones. “Hooking up” and oral sex are commonplace subjects for middle-schoolers now. STD’s are at an all time high for young girls. Clothing becomes ever more raunchy at younger and younger ages. Girls just wanna have fun, see? They were made to be eye-candy for guys. (And pedophile bait, apparently.) Yet Mommy and Daddy sit in the audience at the end of Spa Diva Day Camp and applaud their little girls writhing their way down the runways for the pleasure of adults.
I don’t think a society can return from the brink once it reaches this stage. The challenge is protecting and raising our own daughters as Christians in a way counter to this filthy culture. It is no easy task. The more prevalent this sexing up of little girls becomes, the more difficult it is to present a different vision of girlhood to our own girls. Even Christian schools are filled with this carnal mindset, because so many professing evangelical mothers have bought the world’s lies about womanhood and what it should be.
I don’t believe in social isolation for children, but I do believe that the values and beliefs of tender young girls should be shaped by mothers and fathers, not by Hollywood and the little girls at school, fresh from their latest airhead and sleaze training at the Day Spa.
Commitment to providing a different vision of girlhood takes a great deal of energy and prayer. Only God can root a girl’s heart in what is lovely, true and worthwhile. But as mothers and fathers, we will give an account for the influences we allow in our daughter’s lives. If our daughters make bad choices, let it not be because we were too busy to teach them the bedrock truths of God’s Word and model them in our homes.
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July 25, 2012 at 03:06
Jean Selden
My sister often admonishes me for not going out more. But every time I do my senses are assaulted by what I see and it leaves me feeling overwhelmed by the things that I see. I grieve as you do for this godless society. I honestly don’t know how I would have to parent these days in order to preserve my child’s innocence. The filth is everywhere. So few professing faith and living it. I do know our God is faithful to us that follow Him and I know that He has the power to keep us til the end. “Where sin abounds, there that much more grace abounds.”
In Him,
Jean (Tizzy) Selden.
July 25, 2012 at 03:24
Lisa Green Kentala
Your post reminds me of last winter when I went to a musical stage version of White Christmas – the old Bing Crosby movie. There was a young girl in the cast – about 12. Amazingly (and probably only because the show was set in the 1950s) at NO point was she sexualized. She sang a solo number wearing saddle shoes and jeans and wore an age-appropriate holiday dress in the finale. The sad thing is I’m so used to girls this age being made to look “sexy” – in sitcoms, fashions, etc – it’s become unusual to not see it!
July 25, 2012 at 12:26
carolyn
Whatever happened to little girls being “sugar and spice and everything nice”?
Spa Diva Day is sadly not even remotely a shock to me anymore. There’s a mall in a city near me that has a racy women’s “foundation garments” store. The worst part is it has a sister store right next door for little girls. I kid you not.
But truly nothing’s new under the sun. John the Baptist lost his head because of a young diva’s “dance”.
Until the Lord returns, let’s walk in a manner worthy of our calling; circumspectly, shining as lights in the midst of this crooked and perverse nation, so that more may be saved.
July 25, 2012 at 15:37
elaine
parents should have learned when Jon Bennet died.
July 26, 2012 at 02:40
Rose
All so true and so sad. My kids are grown now and I have no grandchildren yet. This is a good reminder for me to pray more for those who are trying to raise Godly children in this wicked society. (It was hard enough when I raised mine who are now in their 20′s.)