Hooker Tweens, or Whither the Women's Movement?

Making the rounds in these Taylor-Momsen-esque times is a dance contest video featuring 8 and 9-year-old girls in sizzling red and black bras and panties bumping to Beyonce's "Single Ladies." A Times magazine piece , "Playing At Sexy," calls watching it akin to "rubbernecking a 12-car pileup of early sexualization." I call it a sorry slutty distortion of the lofty notion of empowerment. My 7-year-old daughter Lâm calls it "cool, but..." "They have nice outfits, but they look like kids and they're doing things women do. They are what they are and they shouldn't act like grown-ups, 'cause they're not." - Lâm

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