Ok, first I just need to say. That this morning I got an email from The Children's Place about this big sale they were having.

So of course I immediately went to the website to check it out. They don't always have the cutest stuff and I seriously have an issue with their fleece clothes because I'm like, ok, fleece dresses are too far. They are not cute.

BUT. Their clothes do last. I mean they last better than most other brands. And their sales are something to check out because things go so cheap!

Ok, so I'm there this morning and they had nothing for little girls online. Nothing. So I checked out the little boys after reminding myself that I now have a little boy and need to shop for him and I had better shop for him while its on sale.

I had better luck.

But then, I decided to cross over into the Big Girls Section because Stella is about to cross over permanently....

So as I'm perusing, I come across this section of clothes: Justin Bieber Tees.

Ugh.

So I haven't been able to continue shopping or purchase the items I had in my cart since.

I can't do it. I can't make myself.

And I need to say this. I have nothing against Justin Bieber at all. I don't mind his music and I don't mind his floppy hair. Although I think at the Golden Globes he had gotten a hair cut.

What I do mind is girls wearing t-shirts with his face on them, marketed by a company only interested in the sales numbers and jumping on the biggest fan band wagon to get them.

Doesn't it kind of make you sick?

I was listening to Family Life Today a few weeks ago. Which, I don't know if you like talk radio, and I don't always agree with Family Life Today, but they have a lot of different perspectives and I have heard some amazing incite on marriage and raising children. So anyways, they were discussing raising girls in today's society.

Like five years ago, marketing companies and clothing/make up companies decided there was a ton of money in taking all of their product aimed at teenage girls (Think ages 16-19) and marketing them towards tweens that would spend the same amount of money to look like their ads, if not more.

Think of it as expanding their brand.

Hello Hannah Montana.

And hello girls ages 12-15 who suddenly are dolled up in make up wearing what only their older sisters should be.

Not that Hannah Montana is bad, or that wearing make-up in junior high is bad.

I like Hannah Montana and I wore make-up in junior high. But the point was to age the younger girls to be the same as their older counterparts.

That is clearly an issue this world has, of little girls growing up too fast.

Ok, so anyways there was like some billion dollars spent on the ads and marketing of this project. And it paid off. Obviously. Look around.

Ok, but the next target is girls even younger.

If it worked with tweens, then surely "Expanding the Brand" to their younger sisters would bring in even more money.

Think ages 8-11.

So that's my problem with Justin Bieber at a place like The Children's Place. Girls that want to wear Justin Bieber shirts should also shudder at the thought of shopping somewhere with "Children" in the title? You know what I mean?

Push his logo, his face or his hair or whatever at places like The Limited Too, or Justice or wherever else Tweens shop. I don't really know, because we're not there yet. Thank God.

But not where my four year old walks in wondering why she would ever put the face of a little girl with boy hair on her shirt. He looks like a girl. He's too pretty. Come on.

It's the same thing at dance.

I always tell Lindsay that Dance is like a Time Warp for me because I can never tell how old the girls are.

Stella has had this helper in her dance class since she first started when she was 18 months. At the time I thought the girl was literally 15 or 16. Nope. She was 11.

Same thing with all of the other girls, I will guess an age at like 11 or 12 and Lindsay's like, oh no, she's 8.

What?

And it's not like I'm bad with guessing ages. I nannied way too many children to be that far off.

It's the culture we live in. The culture I'm terrified to raise my little girls in because I'm not sure I know how to protect them.

Protect them.

Not shelter them. I wouldn't do that. Or I'm going to try not to..... But there is a fine line. I think so anyways.

How do you allow them enough freedom to mature and age naturally without giving them too much freedom, allowing our culture to force them to age and mature before they really are ready. Whether they think so or not.

In Mean Girls, (One of my favorite movies...) Tina Fey says to the girls, "You have got to stop calling each other Sluts and Whores, because it gives boys the right to call you Sluts and Whores." That is totally true. And I think its the same for dressing. You have to stop dressing like Sluts and Whores if you want boys to stop treating you like Sluts and Whores.

Ok, and those words are obviously a little extreme. Promiscuous is probably a little bit better. But seriously, you dress like a loose woman, you're going to be treated like a loose woman, no matter how old you are.

I think what I am missing most of all is that these girls today don't even go through an awkward phase.

Ok, don't you remember that? Pictures you were terrified your friends would see once you were through it?

I was an ugly kid for a while. For sure had a terrible awkward phase. Come on, nobody knew what to do with my hair. And my brother, my 6'2 man child of a brother and I were practically identical twins!

And as I grew up I just accepted that that was a natural part of growing up. You need it to help mature.

Granted I would love for my kids to skip it all together. It's awful. And it seems they won't have to. It seems our culture has evolved far enough along that it doesn't exist anymore anyways.

Well, and truthfully I won't have to deal with it because as Stella crawled in my bed this morning to cuddle with me, she told me, "Mommy, you asked me not to grow bigger anymore so I'm not going to. I decided to stay your little girl forever."

Doesn't that melt your heart? And ease your mind, because I suppose, as it turns out, I have nothing to worry about.

Ha.