The other morning on my way in to work I was listening to 93.3

My daughters are the ones that tuned it to this particular radio station. Not me.

I don’t ever really care too much what it is I am listening to in the morning anyway.

Through my early morning haze, I have managed to notice two things about this station though.

For one, right now they have a drawing every morning and call out people’s names who have sent in one of their bills that they want the radio station to pay for them. I keep thinking that it is probably worth the effort to sign up and request for them to pay one of my bills…. and maybe when I stop blogging I will google their web site and actually go sign up. Instead of merely thinking about it.

I can be such a procrastinator.

The other thing that I have noticed is they seem to be trying to turn their morning “show” into a talk show. Each morning they ask a trivia question and then based either on the question/answer itself or something that comes up during the guessers calls they then encourage callers to call in and share their opinions about the topic.

A couple mornings ago they asked the question: What is the number one thing parents are worried about this Halloween???

Folks called in guessing at the answer.

I thought to myself crassly- “I’m just worried about whether or not I will be able to take my day off Friday….” *grumble grumble*

The answer to that trivia question was that parents are most concerned with the risqué outfits their too young children are going to wear this Halloween.

It was at the point in which the lady caller answered the question correctly that folks were invited to call in and share their thoughts about the Halloween costumes available out there for our children to wear.

Without rehashing every comment made between Aspen’s school and my home and then again (once I was dressed) they were still talking about it from our home to my office.

Some of the comments went like this:

“Back in our day if we dressed like THAT we were considered whores and sluts!”

*guffaw*

“I know right?”

“My mother would never have let me out of the house in an outfit like that!”

“It is the parents responsibility to teach their daughters correctly how they will be perceived by society if they dress like THAT and shame on parents who purchase these outfits anyway.”

As I take a moment to gag back my vomit (excuse me) I have to say that some people are just really dumb.

Now if we are talking about risqué outfits for little teeny girls here.

Yea ok, no parent in their right mind should be buying crap like that for their little girl to wear. Further, if they are going to, then at least they won’t be heard bitching on a talk show about the inappropriateness of their costume buying decision. No.

I don’t think they were talking about little teeny girls though because I can’t remember the last time that I have I heard an adult refer to a second or third grade girl as a slut or a whore.

So then this is the part that bothers me.

I can vividly remember dressing up for Halloween and Halloween parties in particular, as a teenager.

I can say with all confidence that I was not the only girl that looked like a slutty whore.

In FACT I feel confident that the very idea behind dressing up for Halloween parties was to figure out a way to look about as whorish as you possibly could, while pulling off some sort of a theme, and still be able to pass through Mom & Dad’s front door to get to the party.

Which is, in retrospect, why we always tried to get ready at someone else’s house- with someone else’s parents, who always had much less to say about how we looked. It was always easy to find those parents that really didn’t give a crap what we looked like or what we did.

I am not one of those parents.

Still-

give me a break people!

All other arguments aside; completely ignoring the fact that all those women calling into the show and indeed running the show have probably dawned at least one slutty looking outfit in their day. At least once.

You only get to be that kind of young once.

For one reason or another (most likely esteem related not parental) some people never even get to truly enjoy being that kind of young, and it’s a shame since you spend the whole rest of your life aging.

Most of the girls that are lucky enough to flaunt around their petite little frames only get to enjoy them for a short time before babies and binges take over their hips and breasts transforming them (though certainly not ruining them completely)

forever.

Isn’t that right fella’s?

When you are out of school and you have a nice job you can only look like a slut to go out to the bar and isn’t that a lovely sight?

So all of you radio snobs and “uber Mom’s” should really get a grasp on reality.

I’m not suggesting that you sit back and allow the tainting of your young daughters to take place without a bit of a struggle- but at some point you have to get realistic about what it really means to be a strong parent.

Sometimes the “strength” everyone if referring to comes from not fearing every experience your daughter has, not fearing their boobs and not fearing their self expression and finding a way to breathe through it all but even if you never really do find that happy balance- drop the nasty labels.

They are very unladylike.