Girls Gone Wise

In the film Gigi, Maurice Chevalier sang “Thank Heaven For Little Girls.” The lyrics begin:

Thank heaven for little girls,
for little girls get bigger every day!
Thank heaven for little girls,
they grow up in the most delightful way!

I’ve been blessed with three daughters for whom I’ve helped provide a pathway to the confident loveliness of womanhood. Now I pray, watch and “counsel” them in preparing their own daughters to find their highest calling as women some day.

The song line, “They grow up in the most delightful way!” is being changed in our culture, as it encourages promiscuity -- “They grow up into the most frightful way!” The Girls Gone Wild tour is more than a bus tour that makes one videographer rich; it’s an attitude that can detour and devour the lives of those who board this bus with self-defeating choices. Coverage of the spring break bikini contests, where dancing girls "flash" the crowd on video, leave us asking: What is going on? Where are their mothers? Mary Kassian, Professor of Women’s Studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, penned her take on the way it can be for our daughters in her book Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild, to counter the Girls Gone Wild movement.

Kassian encourages women with these words: “I believe the time is now for a new movement—a seismic holy quake of countercultural women who dare take God at his Word, those who have the courage to stand against the popular tide, and believe and delight in God’s plan for male and female.”

Girls Gone Wild goes beyond crazy “fun” on the beach. It's a mindset that promises personal empowerment and sexual liberation, and it's spilling over into other behaviors like "sexting." What are girls thinking when they send naked pictures of themselves via text message? It's about the thrill now and the price later. Join Kassian and me this week on Woman to Woman® to learn how to help our daughters, and even ourselves if we’re stuck in looking forever young or risky behaviors, regain the loveliness and power of true femininity.