Thought I’d seen it all.

Porn star prom dresses. Kiddie thongs. Little Miss Hooters. Pimp and ho Halloween costumes.

Beyonce’s pedophilia chic.

The 9-year-old and 11-year-old daughters of Bruce Jenner swinging on a stripper pole.

But no.

The Girls Gone Wild culture has sunk even lower.

There are now pole-dancing dolls and kiddie t-shirts with pasties.

Welcome to the Death of Innocence, Pt. 9,990,107.

A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might see in this refusal the self-interest of the state-employee class: social problems, after all, are their raison d’être.

Dalrymple is the great secular Jeremiah of England; no one else has so clearly named the evils that infest it. Not only does he see the symptoms, but the doctor diagnoses the disease: statism, Marxism, a glorification of loutishness, and a hostility to the faith and traditions which once made England great.

I watch her decline the way one would watch a parent with Alzheimer’s: here is a great country (where I once lived) that gave us John Locke, Edmund Burke, George Washington, that gave us our hymns, our literature, our ideas of freedom, our very language, and she is slipping into a useless dotage, unable to stir herself though enemies threaten.

A terror cell caught with details of bomb-making and suicide vests may have been plotting to attack the Queen and members of the Royal family, it can be disclosed.

The cell, which included Britain’s youngest ever terrorist, arrested on his way home from his GCSE chemistry exam, was found with information about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh along with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex and the Princess Royal.

There was another fellow long ago who wrote eloquently of the plight of children in England. Sad to say many of the social reforms that culminated in Dalrymple’s moral desert started in reaction to the poetry of William Blake:

Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel–they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

______________

{Post by See-Dubya, written on my own time, on my own computer.}

The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK) announced today that it has filed an EEOC complaint on behalf of a Muslim woman who was allegedly denied employment at an Abercrombie Kids store in that state because of the applicant’s religiously-mandated headscarf, or hijab.

The woman told CAIR-OK that a district manager claimed he could not hire her because her Islamic headscarf “does not fit the Abercrombie image.”

What, wasn’t the OKC Hooters hiring? This plaintiff is fighting to preserve her modesty while going to work for a company that’s injected more soft porn into our cultural bloodstream than Cinemax?

Next up: the Bada Bing Strip Club gets sued for refusing to let their dancers shimmy inside a burqa.

Of course the plaintiff was going to work for Abercrombie Kids, which is a pretty creepy bit of branding synergy right there. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. But I can see the niche it fills–parents worried that modern society is too sheltering. Some dad’s out there going, “my kids are going to preserve their innocence too long…is there a store where I can get them a head start on that lucrative streetwalker career?”

I remember when Abercrombie and Fitch was basically like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops for the Weatherby and Orvis set. I still have a faded T-Shirt of theirs, with the rhino logo, from the late 1980s. It’s a great loss.

On the other hand, as with Jamal Miftah, this is radical Islam asserting itself yet again in the heartland. This isn’t Manchester or Khartoum or Basra. Based on the A&F store locator, this is apparently either Penn Square Mall, or Quail Springs, or Woodland Hills malls in Oklahoma.

Which shouldn’t be surprising–after all, terrorism expert Steven Emerson first encountered radical Islam at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds on Christmas day, 1992.

So whom do I root against? The worst reactionary impulses of the seventh century, or the engines of postmodern degradation? A pox on both their houses.

UPDATE: It’s Tulsa, again. Thanks to reader MikeOK.

______________

{Post by See-Dubya. H/T to Cuffy at Perfunction–but a CONTENT WARNING on his post. He’s included some catalog samples of what “the Abercrombie image” is all about, which aren’t safe for work.}

Dear Michelle:

You and I could not be farther apart in our politics, but I am totally with you on this issue. Your column on Beyonce’s clothing line appeared in today’s Kansas City Star. I have granddaughters whom I don’t want to be tempted by this stuff, much less wear it! Hopefully by contacting Macy’s and other retailers we patronize, we can get their attention. I hope so. Thanks for the article.

Sincerely, Janelle Lazzo.

***

Hi Michelle

As it says in the subject line, I am a devout liberal (a gay Jewish one at that) and have on many occasions, disagreed vehemently with your opinions.

However, I just read your article “Beyonce’s New Brand of Pedophilia Chic” and you could not be more right about this. Just seeing the picture of that advertisement made me disgusted. Not even your description in the article prepared me for the pictures in the actual ad. One point I think you missed in your article is how truly damaging these images can be for kids. Seeing these glamorized young slappers, as they would say in England, contribute to the whole body image problem we have in our society that affects young women. It breaks my heart whenever I think of some young girl thinking that she is too fat. I cannot even begin to tell you how annoyed I am at my gay friends and the body image obsession that has infected our community. (I’m 280 lbs. and when I hear my swizzel stick thin friends say their too fat, I just slap my belly and say “Excuse ME???”)

You also brought up A&F and honestly I have no problem with them (at least in their regular stores. I do not know about the ads in the kids version of their store), I just wish they would admit what their advertising is, which is softcore homoerotic porn. That I have no problem with, but I guess I didn’t need to tell you that.

Take care,
Charles Bright

***

Ms. Malkin -
I have rarely responded to editorials, but I want to applaud your column regarding provocative children’s clothing and advertising. I wrote a letter to the Kansas City Star and I hope it is published. In fact, I hope many other parents rise up and display their outrage at how our children are being used.

I believe there needs to be a national movement to curtail the pervasive sexualization of young girls in our society – literally offering them up to willing pedophiles and pornographers who traipse about in the guise of “artistic” photographers. These innocents have no reason to be portrayed as or perceive themselves to be “sexy” – most of them don’t even know what that means, and that is called exploitation.

Please write more about this subject if you can. The responsibility for the safety of children begins with the parents and how they help youngsters to develop, how they allow them to dress and how they teach them modesty and appropriate behavior.

Thank you, again, for being one courageous voice and for calling a major “star” to task for her irresponsible, deplorable actions. Just a note – I am not a right-wing conservative offering a knee-jerk reaction. I am a liberal who’s emotions on this subject have been seething for quite some time and who has raised three children to well-adjusted adulthood.

Sincerely,

Rhesa Dane

Jenice Armstrong at the Philadelphia Daily News weighs in, tying the latest prom dress gone wild story to Beyonce’s collection:

Remember the turn Jennifer Lopez’s career took after she attended the Grammys in that green Versace gown opened practically all the way down the front?

Now it looks as if tween sensation Miley Cyrus is one of the latest to get sucked in. Hannah Montana’s alter-ego may be only 15, but I’ll bet she had at least an inkling what she was doing baring all that skin in her controversial Vanity Fair photo spread.

It also doesn’t help that the fashion industry cooperates, despite growing criticism about oversexualization of girls’ clothing. One of the latest companies blasted for this kind of thing was Beyonce’s House of Dereon, which unveiled a print ad campaign for a line of children’s clothes featuring elementary-aged girls all tarted up, wearing pouty facial expressions.

I understand that the little Beyonce wannabes were outfitted like that to show they’re playing dress-up. But the question I have is: dressed up like what? And for what purpose?

Surely, the House of Dereon, which Beyonce heads along with her mother, Tina Knowles, doesn’t have to tart up little kids to persuade parents to buy over-priced jeans outfits. But this shows how girls are getting the message earlier than ever that being sexy is what matters above all else. So, is it any wonder that, by the time they’re high- school seniors, some girls resort to what Marche [Taylor] did?

On a related note, Beyonce is rumored to be pregnant. Let’s hope she doesn’t do for infant apparel what’s she done to little girls’ clothes.

Agh.

***

For those of you who are Macy’s customers looking to voice your opinion on the retailer’s decision to carry the House of Dereon girls’ collection, here’s contact info.

And for those of you looking for House of Dereon contact info, here:

Customer Service
www.dereon.com
eFashion Solutions
888.810.3884 201.601.4236
Monday – Friday 9am – 9pm EST
Saturday 10am – 5pm EST

– Comment posted at the WashingtonPost.com in response to my column on Beyonce’s new brand of pedophilia chic.

Pop diva Beyoncé Knowles, 27, and her fashion designer mother have launched a girls clothing line that makes Miley’s bare-backed glam session look like a Shirley Temple photo shoot.

The Knowles’ family business, “House of Dereon,” recently published advertisements for its “Dereon Girls Collection” with young models who look no older than my second-grade daughter. They are seductively posed and tarted up, JonBenet Ramsey-style, with bright lipstick, blush and face powder. Draped in bling, several of the girls sport leather jackets and studded accessories.

One of the children wears sparkly, killer high heels (more pint-size Pussycat Doll than Dorothy from “The Wizard of the Oz”) and another slouches, gangsta gal-style, with a neon pink boa, leopard-skin fedora and stilettos. An even younger model is a toddler-aged Beyoncé Mini-Me with huge hair, skinny jeans, spike-heeled leather boots and attitude to match:

Abercrombie & Fitch prompted an outrage a few years ago with its line of thongs for elementary school girls and pedophilia chic catalogues. And, of course, Calvin Klein started it all with 15-year-old Brooke Shields purring that “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” But the House of Dereon photo spread sinks even lower. It’s sick and it’s wrong, and it’s not social conservatives who first said so. Fashion and celebrity websites have been buzzing with outrage over the past week:

“Pimp my kid,” decried one blogger. “Dereon Girls ad too adult,” concluded another. Gossip king Perez Hilton polled readers on whether the ad was appropriate. The overwhelming consensus: Hell, no.

The creepiness factor is heightened by the fact that women were responsible for marketing this child exploitation. I’d ask: “Where was Beyoncé’s mother to tell her daughter to wipe all the gunk off the Dereon models’ faces?” But Beyoncé’s mother—who has helped manage the “Bootylicious” singer’s career from childhood—is her eager and willing partner in crime.

As for the mothers of this new crop of Little Girls Gone Wild models, they were undoubtedly thrilled to see their daughters painted up and posing like Victoria’s Secret angels-in-training. If we’ve learned anything from Lindsay Lohan and her hard-partying mother, it’s that the Lolita-posing apple doesn’t fall far from the bosom-flaunting tree.

So, what’s next? Nine-year-olds performing stripper routines? Oh, wait. It’s been done already. I saw that very nightmare last fall on the cable TV reality show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”—featuring the grade-school-age daughters of Olympic star Bruce Jenner strapping on stilettos and twirling around a stripper pole in their parents’ bedroom as friends and family cheered them on. Future House of Dereon clients, no doubt.

Beyoncé’s clothes, you should know, are available at Macy’s department stores and other “fine” establishments willing to carry titillating tot wear. Shame on them all. Shame them all. It’s time to redouble our efforts to fight back against the Forever 21 culture that poisons Hollywood, Halloween, prom season and every season in between. In our indecent world, 7 has become the new 21.

Shouldn’t a child’s innocence last longer than a porn star’s .25-ounce pot of lip gloss?

Where was the adult in this teenager’s life to block the door and say: “Nuh-UH, no way in hell you’re stepping out that door. Go put some clothes on or I’ll make you wear a sleeping bag to your prom.”

Classiness, RIP.

***

Commenter Send_Me:

?Where’s Wendy Shalit when you need her? A Return to Modesty will be mandatory reading for my daughters by this age.

Mine, too.

***
Related:

Prom season gone wild
Pornified: It ain’t just on Halloween
Mommyblogging: Porn star prom dresses

***
Shopping at Party City last week for my toddler, I saw a “Mack Daddy,” blinged-up costume for three-year-olds (!!!) amid the Diego and Thomas the Train outfits. Mercifully, my son was too distracted choosing Ninja Warrior gear to ask me what exactly a “Mack Daddy” was. This Washington Post piece on the travails of Halloween shopping has become a staple every October: Parents express outrage at pornified costumes. Girls pout at fuddy-duddy parents. Social critics bemoan oversaturation of sexed-up teens, pre-teens, and tots. Collapse of civilization continues.

But this sleaze isn’t limited to Halloween. It happens at prom season and every season in between. And it’s happening at younger and younger ages. I talked about the phenomenon here with my good friend and anti-pornification crusader Laura Ingraham, who focuses on the problem in her book and radio show. My Girls Gone Wild archive has more.

The latest horror is on exhibit on E! Entertainment network. The newest Paris Hilton knock-off and sex kitten, Kim Kardashian, has a family reality show in which her 9- and 11-year-old sisters have been put on weekly display wearing stiletto heels, mimicking “Girls Gone Wild,” and twirling around a stripper pole in their parents’ bedroom. Their father is Olympic star Bruce Jenner:

Keeping Up With the Kardashians – Kylie Works The Pole
Uploaded by TheDlisted

In this video, the underage girls pretend to flash their stepbrother and his manager friend, who videotapes them parading around the pole:

Keeping Up With the Kardashians – Girls Gone Wild

Unbelievably, Jenner and his wife give other parents advice on rearing children and reining in wild girls.

Instead of cackling in their beds and treating the exploitation of their daughter as a joke, they ought to grow up and set those young girls straight before it’s too late.

***

E! network, which broadcasts the Kardashian reality show, is owned by Comcast Entertainment Group.

Contact info:

E! Entertainment and Style Network
Sarah Goldstein
Senior Vice President of Public Relations
Phone: 323-692-4552
sgoldstein@eentertainment.com

Staffers at fashion emporiums all over the city are brimming with anecdotes of teenager spending gone wild.

“We definitely have girls coming in here and trying dresses on for prom,” said a saleswoman at Dolce & Gabbana, where frocks regularly fetch $3,000.

One seller at Barneys said she recently peddled a $2,700 ivory, ballerina-style dress to a Manhattan private-school senior.

And it’s not just the perfect dress – a few rich kids are getting plumper puckers and Botoxed brows for their big night.

Dr. Lewis Feder said two teens came to his Fifth Avenue office for some pre-prom primping that included Botox between the eyes.

“They both had very hyperactive muscles,” said the Fifth Avenue doctor. “We gave them each half a syringe, and the muscles are smooth and beautiful.”

He said he has also given three other girls – two from Westchester and one from Manhattan – Restylane injections for artfully fattened lips that cost about $600 each.

“Their parents authorized me,” he said.

***

On the flip side, a story about a girl with the right values:

Some underprivileged teens are going to have some glamorous gowns for their school prom thanks to the dream of South Florida girl.

A prom dress drive is being held on Tuesday in Pembroke Pines. The drive is headed by “Becca’s Closet”, a charity started by the family of 16-year-old Rebecca Kirtman, who was driven by the phrase: “Little things can make a big difference.”

Rebecca launched a dress bank during her freshman year in high school which provided dresses and formal accessories to high school girls who wanted to attend their prom or homecoming, but did not have the money to purchase them.

Tragically, Rebecca passed away in an automobile accident on August 20, 2003, but her family and friends continue to keep her dream alive.

Last spring, “Becca’s Closet” single-handedly collected over 250 prom dresses, enabling many girls throughout South Florida to attend their High School proms in style.

Find out more at the Becca’s Closet website.

So, what’s a rainbow party? Here’s the column intro:

Here’s a rich irony: I’m writing today about a new children’s book, but I can’t describe the plot in a family newspaper without warning you first that it is entirely inappropriate for children.

The book is “Rainbow Party” by juvenile fiction author Paul Ruditis. The publisher is Simon Pulse, a kiddie lit division of the esteemed Simon & Schuster. The cover of the book features the title spelled out in fun, Crayola-bright font. Beneath the title is an illustrated array of lipsticks in bold colors.

The main characters in the book are high school sophomores supposedly typical 14- and 15-year-olds with names such as “Gin” and “Sandy.” The book opens with these two girls shopping for lipstick at the mall in advance of a special party. The girls banter as they hunt for lipsticks in every color of the rainbow:

“Okay, we’ve got red, orange, and purple,” Gin said. “Now we just need yellow, green, and blue.”
“Don’t forget indigo,” Sandy said as she scanned the row of lipstick tubes.
“What are you talking about?”
“Indigo,” Sandy repeated as if that explained everything. “You know. ROY G. BIV. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.”
“That’s seven lipsticks. Only six girls are coming. We don’t need it.”

What kind of party do you imagine they might be organizing? Perhaps a makeover party? With moms and daughters sharing their best beauty secrets and bonding in the process?

Alas, no. No parents are invited to this get-together. A “rainbow party,” you see, is a gathering of boys and girls for the purpose of engaging in group oral sex. Each girl wears a different colored lipstick and leaves a mark on each boy. At night’s end, the boys proudly sport their own cosmetically-sealed rainbow you-know-where bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of “party favors.”

Why on earth would a publisher market such smut to kids? Says author Ruditis:

Ruditis says the book was never meant to sensationalize sex parties. “We just wanted to present an issue kids are dealing with,” he says.

Moreover, Ruditis told Publisher’s Weekly:

“Part of me doesn’t understand why people don’t want to talk about [oral sex],” he said. “Kids are having sex and they are actively engaged in oral sex and think it’s not really sex. I raised questions in my book and I hope that parents and children or teachers and students can open a topic of conversation through it. Rainbow parties are such an interesting topic. It’s such a childlike way to look at such an adult subject with rainbow colors.”

You can’t make this stuff up. Or can you? Some have downplayed the phenomenon as apocryphal, but that didn’t stop Oprah Winfrey from having one of her magazine editors blabbing and giggling about it in explicit language on a show ostensibly teaching parents about their children’s “code language.” A transcript of the exchange is up at Howard Stern’s website.

For once, I agree with Stern, who points out a glaring regulatory double standard. Oprah’s broadcast (on daytime network TV, accessible to children) was as indecent and titillating as anything Stern puts on the air. Why should she be allowed to hide behind the disingenuous guise of “education” while Stern faces a crackdown for vulgar entertainment?

But back to the book. The author and publisher pay lip service to the informational value of the book to families, teachers, and students. In the end, the main characters abandon plans for the event and news of an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases rocks their school. But as I point out, the front cover and book marketing (not to mention the inclusion of frequent profanities and other graphic sex scenes that I couldn’t include in the column) emphasize titillation over education, overpowering any redeeming value the book might have. Indeed, according to Publisher’s Weekly, the bound galleys sent to booksellers carried the provocative tagline, “don’t you want to know what really goes down?”

As Ruditis suggests, this book will end up on public school library shelves in the very near future, along with other “educational” crap like this. Those who raise even the least objection are cast as out-of-touch theocrats who need to “deal with reality.” Small wonder an increasing number of families are homeschooling.

If “proper socialization” means teaching 14-year-olds about group oral sex, we can only pray that more parents choose to raise social misfits.

It’s often mortifying being a mom of a young daughter these days. Can the Girls Gone Wild culture get any wilder? Some jaded folks will dismiss the Post story as an exaggeration. But any parent who has been to the local mall lately has probably seen enough exposed flesh to make Vincent Gallo blush. Ok, I exaggerate. A little.

Witness kiddie thongs.
Ultra-low riders.
Little Miss Hooters.
Pimp and ho kids.

The answer to this excess is not more government regulation, but more parental regulation. I’m disgusted when I see a pre-teen with her butt crack hanging out of her low-riders at the store. But I’m even more disgusted when I see her mom with her butt crack hanging out of a matching pair of low-riders. Grow up already and stop shopping at Forever 21!

What others are saying:

Ace of Spades says parental apathy is a terrible thing.
A Small Victory is relieved her daughter prefers baggy styles.
Kim Swygert writes: “My first reaction was, ‘No way in HELL would a daughter of mine wear this.’ And I don’t even have a daughter.”
Palm Tree Pundit wonders where the dads are.

Related: Wittenberg Gate blogger Dory’s excellent essay on feminine modesty is here. Her final thought:

As in many things, we must walk that line between legalism or pietism on the one hand and licentiousness on the other. I think the best way to do that in regards to modesty is to ask the question, “What am I communicating?” and if we are to err, err on the side of caution.

Words to live by.

Students at a Palo Alto middle school learned more than school officials ever expected when a recent “career day” speaker extolled the merits of stripping and expounded on the financial benefits of a larger bust.

When two intrepid parents filed formal complaints, the school’s principal, Joseph Di Salvo, huffed that “the matter had become overblown.”

There was a similar dust-up in Britain a few months ago. For more on the “Girls Gone Wild” culture, click here.

In a nondescript office building near the Ventura Freeway here, and in far-flung studios in Luxembourg and China, as many as a thousand animators, editors, sound engineers and the like are hard at work on what they intend to be the next obsession of 4-to-8-year-old girls.

Their handiwork involves an unlikely makeover: They are reinventing Trolls, the big-haired dolls once compared by the comedian Jimmy Fallon to Don King on Viagra, as Trollz, saucy little creatures who borrow a dollop of Phoebe from “Friends” and a dash of Summer from “The O.C.,” as well as pinches of Eeyore from “Winnie the Pooh” and Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City.”

Trollz come prepackaged with an ethic, summed up as “B.F.F.L.”: Best Friends for Life. And they certainly have a look. “Instead of doing the post-Janet Jackson, Britney Spears thing, we went for Avril Lavigne, Hillary Duff, Jessica Simpson,” said Estevan Ramos, a stylist who worked with Ms. Spears and Christina Aguilera before he was hired to help create Trollz for DIC Entertainment…

Aggh! What’s next? Precious Momentz in micro-minis? American Girlz in Daisy Dukes?

Update: Reader Greg Lawrence forwarded me a link that contained this cartoon. The artwork was done by “Mrs. R,” creator/webmaster of “Are You Conservative?”

I’m appending the full speech below.

Standing up to the “Girls Gone Wild” culture

Speech for the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute’s Conservative Leadership Seminar

July 26, 2004

Much of my reporting and writing is focused on national security and immigration enforcement. But I also write about cultural issues and this afternoon, I want to address the need for a different kind of “homeland defense.” As the mother of a 4 year old girl and an 8 month old boy, I am increasingly dismayed by the liberal assault on decency, the normalization of promiscuity, and the mainstream media’s role as shameless collaborators.

First, let me tell you about my new hero. Her name is Ella Gunderson and she’s a student at Holy Family Parish School in Kirkland, Washington. As reported in the Seattle Times a few months ago, Ella recently wrote a remarkable letter to the Nordstrom’s department store chain.

“Dear Nordstrom,” she began. “I’m an 11-year-old girl who has tried shopping at your store for clothes, in particular jeans, but all of them ride way under my hips, and the next size up is too big and falls down. They’re also way too tight, and as I get older, show everything every time I move. I see all of these girls who walk around with pants that show their belly button and underwear. Even at my age I know that that is not modest�With a pair of clothes from your store, I’d walk around showing half of my body and not fully dressed…Your clerk suggested there is only one look. If that is true, then girls are supposed to walk around half naked. I think maybe you should change that.”

All it took was one little girl to speak her mind about the excesses of our “Girls Gone Wild” culture. And guess what? The market, in a small way, responded. Nordstrom executives wrote back and pledged to young Ella Gunderson that they would try to broaden the clothes choices for girls. “Your letter really got my attention,” wrote Kris Allan, manager of the local Nordstrom’s where Ella shopped. “I think you are absolutely right. This look is not particularly a modest one and there should be choices for everyone.”

Do you remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous phrase “Defining deviancy down?” This ultra-low-rider trend has given that phrase a whole new meaning. Even pregnant women can’t escape it! When I was in my second trimester with my son last year, I wrote about a trip to my neighborhood mall’s maternity store. The only jeans in my size were ridiculous low-risers with flared bottoms that needed hiking every time I exhaled. Trust me. I speak from personal experience: Plumber’s crack looks as awful on pregnant mommies as it does on plumbers.

Back to little Ella Gunderson’s story. Here’s the best part. She and her friends didn’t wait around for Nordstrom’s to change its inventory. With help from her mom and 37 of her classmates, Ella organized a fashion show to model decent clothes for girls aged 10 to 16. The sold-out show, called “Pure Fashion,” drew a crowd of 250; two other clothing stores donated modest clothes; the girls got a standing ovation; and the event raised money for the Catholic Challenge Club network, which encourages young girls to stand up for their faith and their values in an increasingly secular and hostile world.

Nordstrom’s deserves some credit here, too, for its modest display of corporate responsibility. Compare them to Abercrombie and Fitch, which refused to pull a line of thongs for young girls after receiving pressure from thousands of parents across the country. These kiddie thongs, which had the words “eye candy” and “wink wink” printed on the front, were marketed to children as young as seven. “It’s cute and fun and sweet,” said Hampton Carney, a spokesman for Abercrombie and Fitch.

This is the dictionary definition of what Hoover Institution scholar Mary Eberstadt dubbed “pedophilia chic:” A grown man getting paid to say that he thinks dressing pre-teens in rearless underwear is “cute and fun and sweet.”

Cute and fun and sweet. That’s probably the same thing a Florida Hooter’s restaurant manager thought, too, when he attempted to hold a “Little Miss Hooters” contest for girls 5 years old and under. According to Stacy Tabb, who called up the restaurant after spotting a billboard advertising the contest, the toddlers would be required to dress in little orange spandex shorts and tiny Hooters t-shirts tied-up like the waitresses wear them. Sick. Tabb used her popular weblog, titled Sekimori, to publicize this atrocious event and shame Hooter’s management into doing something about it.

“The cretin who thought up this little sideshow should be hung by his/her heels from the nearest tree, beaten with sawgrass whips, then covered with sugar water and fire ants,” Tabb wrote. “My displeasure has been expressed to the local news outlets and will shortly be expressed directly to whatever corporate suits I can get my hands on.” Thanks to Tabb’s scathing online campaign, the corporate suits cancelled “Little Miss Hooters.”

Internet Web logs can be an incredible force for good. With help from the talented Ms. Tabb, I’ve recently started my own blog at www.michellemalkin.com, and I can’t tell you how many incredibly smart, dogged, and invaluable bloggers I’ve “met” online. They provide some of the most trenchant analysis on the War on Terror, domestic politics, and everyday life.

But blogs can also serve as exhibitionist outlets that highlight the worst of America’s tell-all and show-all tendencies. Which brings me to Jessica Cutler, the former Capitol Hill staffer who was fired earlier this spring for using Senate computers to post to an explicit blog that chronicled her casually deviant trysts with six different men in Washington. The Washington Post ran with the story after an online Washington blogger originally “broke” the story. So what was this blogger’s ground-breaking investigative technique? She drank and danced the night away with Jessica Cutler and they posed for soft porn pictures together at a club.

Both women ended up all over TV and the newspapers. Jessica has a $300,000 book deal, an upcoming Playboy photo shoot, and a Washington Post magazine front cover article coming soon. Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox, nabbed appearances on CNN and FOX, and signed on to an MTV reporting gig during which she’ll cover the Democratic National Convention this week. I guess the lesson is that if you are a young professional woman in Washington, the key to success lies with Lesbian Chic.

I’m sick of the skankettes and their pimps in my business and I’m not alone. Let me read one of hundreds of positive mails I received:

“Michelle, when I found out about the slutty (I don’t use the word flippantly) actions of one of my former “colleagues,” I was disgusted and shocked. I just wanted to make sure that people didn’t paint all bottom-of-the-barrel staffers on the Hill with the same brush as used for Ms. Cutler. I gave up a $60k job to intern without pay for 6 months. Then I accepted a job as a staff assistant that has a salary that does not cover my living expenses and school loan payments. To make up for it, I work part-time as a barrista at a local coffee shop on the Hill. This isn’t to pat myself on the back, but to give people the assurance that there are individuals with morals and class that are trying hard to make a positive impact on politics in this town.

Sure there are shallow people on the Hill that are only interested in power and influence (for power and influence’s sake), but you will find people like that in many fields. But here on the Hill, there is a significant population of staffers that are committed to ideals that we hope will make America a better place… and we promote those ideals with our morals in tow.”

As I look around this room, I am confident that each and every one of you shares this letter-writer’s commitment to defending American ideals and morals. But from the way the mainstream media covers your generation and mine, you would think this room was empty.

From the way the mainstream media covers your generation and mine, you would think that we are the freaks and misfits.

From the way the mainstream media covers your generation and mine, you would think that it’s normal to dress up in Hooters outfits at 5 years old, to wear sex bracelets and discuss oral sex at 10, to flash your breasts for the cameras at 15, to get paid for anal sex at 20, to keep Excel spreadsheets of sexual conquests, and to use abortion as birth control until menopause.

When conservative women say “Have some self-respect,” liberals in the media call us self-righteous.

When conservative women say promiscuity is degrading and self-destructive, liberals in the media call us prudes.

When liberals won’t shut up about their sordid sex lives and we object, they call us rude.

When liberal women raise their voices, they are praised as “passionate.” When conservative women raise their voices, we are condemned as “shrill.”

Liberals and libertines who can’t complete a sentence without using gutter profanity have turned modesty, monogamy, faith, and self-restraint into dirty words. Well, if teaching young girls to act like ladies instead of animals is now considered offensive, I support obscenity 100 percent.

How do we stand up to the Girls Gone Wild culture? Ella Gunderson, the girl who asked Nordstrom’s to sell decent clothing has shown us how. Stacy Tabb, the outspoken blogger who killed the “Little Miss Hooters” contest, has shown us how. The Capitol Hill letter-writer who stood up and rejected the idea that getting ahead requires shedding your morals and your clothes has shown us how. Go ahead and be “self-righteous.”

Be “prudes.” Be “rude.” Be “shrill.” And never, ever feel ashamed for asking out loud: Have you no shame?