Now I’ve got your attention…
and don’t teenage girls know it. Mother and step mum to five girls I see tits displayed over Facebook and Instagram (not theirs – they know I’m looking) like a badge of misplaced honour. Friends ‘like’ and comment ‘so beautiful’, while I’m bumping into their mothers in the supermarket in a moral dilemma: do I mention the fact that your daughter’s tits are currently gathering ‘likes’ on Instagram faster than holes in tights. How do I approach the subject: now I’m in no way, shape or form criticising you, your daughter, nor her beautiful tits, but while I can safely admire that she is growing into a lovely young lady, so can all the stalking 55 year old perverts, who are slathering over them as we are choosing our veg.
I don’t consider myself to be easily shocked and I certainly don’t want to be that person who tuts and says: it’s all changed since I was young, because historically girls have always got their tits out – look at the Tudors and their heaving, corseted bosoms. The difference is that with social media, it’s not just Henry the eighth who got to lust, it’s friends, friends’ dads, their teachers, their prospective employees, old Uncles and all and it really bothers me.
Now I’m no prude, but I am a great believer in more is less: more clothes (and I’m not talking a nun’s habit) means less unwanted attention – because at the end of the day, the message us parents want to get across, is it isn’t your tits that define you as a woman, however bloody amazing they are, they are just one part and if your tits are stealing the show, then the rest of you sure is missing out on a whole lot of ‘likes’.