Oh no- you got me started on how much I hate the "girls today are skanks" theme rampant in press and in conversation! And I'm going to start raging about how people seem to adore saying even our little girls look dress sluts. What's more tacky and more ugly than the tackiest and ugliest thing for sale at Limited Too? Saying little girls are prostitots for whatever reason. Leave your classist misogyny behind and give three cheers for modern girlhood. These kids are smarter and bolder than any before them and I'm their biggest cheerleader.

It was indeed a terible article for the very reason that the author clearly did know better, but gave the conservative Newsweek what it wanted; a piece of pandering, hysterical parentsploitation. (Well, also because it was pointless and poorly written.) But beyond that, it only tangentially and toward the end dealt with the worst repercussions of this current zeitgeist; not the the sex and drugs, (which actually don't strike me as wholly negative, particularly girls actually being the sexual aggressors)but the rampant consumerism that is increasingly shown as normal and desirable.

Just shows the level of seriousness and journalistic integrity that a magainze that actually calls itself "Newsweek" has nothing better to put on the cover in these weeks, months and years than this pandering, mysogynistic, simplistic, hysterical story. Surely everyone can think of a few things that are even more scary than pantiless Britney.

i think there is basic biology involved. Has there ever been a time in human history when the middle aged weren't worried about the young, especially young women, having too much/indiscriminate/whatever sex?

I haven't been a teen for 3 years, but I think I'm qualified to answer the question posted in the last letter.

Yes, they are, they are that easy, teen guys don't date them,they run through them like hurdles at a track meet, until the girls learn to quit giving it out like halloween candy. (they learn this in their early twenties after being repetedly hurt by guys who won't date them -- why date if the next girl is giving it out too? why invest in a relationship?) there is your answer.

FYI - they're getting pregnant less because they use the pill more and often delay real sex but keep kevin happy with oral.

Have a nice day!

seriously, if the girls are missing out on relationships which would ONLY be invested in and therefore would only exist because the guy needed sex and couldn't get it any other way then they may not be missing much. I think this may be one reason why so many people have such bad relationships.

Then the boys must be pretty easy too...

...and don't start going on about the biological differences between males and females, and male need for variety, blah blah blah. Easy is easy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

we conveniently ignore the fact that as a society, we could do much better. There is no shame in attempting to raise our children with a sense of decency, with adequate and appropriate information about sexual relations, and with a strong dose of "wait."

Maybe it's a guy thing, but I'm with Richard Allen: The repugnant thing about Paris, Britney et al isn't so much the sex (though using sex to sell music, in Britney's case, and whatever it is Paris is selling, strikes me as pretty repugnant) as the mindless consumerism. And for that I don't blame the young women, I blame the handlers who pimp them as sex objects (though I realize that in Paris Hilton's case, she serves as her own pimp).

It might have been nice to clarify that Lindsay Lohan learned pole dancing for a role in an upcoming movie.

Why is it wrong to Newsweek to cook the evidence but OK for Salon to cook it for the sake of a sexy headline?

provided the other party(ies) are willing people sleep with who they want to sleep with and have relationships with who they want to have relationships with.

the only question is if girls are going to be easy too.

Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are 25 year old women, hardly girls.

More marketing from the school of uber-bore Madonna and how to parley crotch shots into $$. Women dropping their drawers for money. What else is new?

Oh, and now self-righteous ponderings on Time from Salon!

Can a new tape of one of them making whoopee suddenly turn up soon?

Stay tuned!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I have to say, I think Ms. Clark-Flory's objections are misplaced. Look, I'm the father of a 17-month-old girl, and believe me, the sex-and-romance values I hope to raise her with are anything but, well, paternalistic. I am no hypocrite, and so my daughter will enter her teens armed with as much education as she could possibly need about love, sex, STDs, pregnancy, and the hormonal urges of the boys she'll be interacting with (or girls, if that's the way she goes, although I'll probably rely on her mother for more of the intel there).

So understand that I'm in no way coming at this from a position of sexual prudishness when I say that what I find indefensibly horrifying about young girls seeing Lindsey, Britney, and, worst of all, Paris as role models is not the freedom of their sexuality or even their despicable materialism (ghastly though it is), but rather their total lack of substance. Their one goal in life is to be famous and rich - not to have done anything to earn those conditions, mind you, but simply to make them happen.

At least Spears and Lohan started out as people with some minute spark of creative passion, at some dim point back in the prehistoric days of 1998. Paris Hilton, however, is to my mind the poster child for everything that is most wrong with the culture my daughter will, despite anything I can do, grow up immersed in: she is shallow, uneducated, narcisstic, self-satisfied, racist, and possessed of a sense of entitlement that would embarrass a Windsor. And she has achieved nothing - not one thing, not one iota of a mere thought of a thing - worth celebrating. She has achieved nothing, and very likely WILL achieve nothing, in her grandly offensive life.

I'm frankly not sure how this is an issue for "Broadsheet" in any case. To deplore the example Hilton and her cohorts set should not be mistaken for subconscious chauvinism. It should properly be seen, rather, as the moral duty of anyone who hopes to see more happy, healthy, empowered, strong young women in the world. (And certainly of anyone who hopes to raise one. :-) )