And this disturbing trend is the very unsettling fact of young girls--some as young as eight or nine--who are effectively sexualizing themselves!

Yes, you read that right. I am not talking about insidious deviant adults with no appreciation for the sacrosanct concept of innocence who are filming young underage girls acting sexy and showing off their beautiful bodies in concert with displays of their natural youthful exuberance and zest for life. I am talking about young girls who make such films featuring them acting in such a manner themselves! What is this world coming to? Why won't girls honor the paradigms society has created around them, and work so hard every day to preserve and protect? Why does the fact that these paradigms have no basis in nature or reality have to make so much of a difference to to these misguided girls? Why do these girls refuse to do as we say, as opposed to doing what we do?

Main case in point: I'm sure many people with online access--regardless of whatever their preferences may be--are fans of YouTube, as there tends to be something to accommodate all conceivable tastes there. I am sure all have noted the trend of young girls to take advantage of the unparalleled freedom of expression in all ways that YouTube allows them. As one would expect, the interests and topics displayed by girls who own their own YouTube channels vary greatly, but many of them enjoy putting on swimsuits or other scanty clothing and dancing joyously to various popular songs, including songs that our society would consider to have "adult" lyrics and themes. For instance, very popular with young girls at this writing is the music of the lovely and talented 20-something-year-old Katy Perry, and these young girls who dance to her songs on self-made videos clearly seem to "get" the meaning of what Katy exemplifies more than anything else: enjoying life with unbridled energy, celebrating her feminine beauty and sexuality, and paying homage to all the simple things that nevertheless bring us much pleasure in our lives. And it should be noted that her music, and those of others who work in her specific musical genre, are found as captivating and worthy of emulation by very young girls as it is by young women over the age of 18, for whom our society considers it "okay" to embrace such themes to whatever extent they may choose as individuals. This, of course, begs perhaps a very important question: If young girls (or boys) are naturally asexual, as our societal paradigms insist, then why does the sense of freedom and joy for this type of expression exemplified by Katy Perry and others like her appeal so much to underage girls?

The very popular stereotype in society is that young girls would never even think of themselves as "sexy" or have the slightest interest in expressing such a side to themselves if not for "irresponsible" adults who act in such a manner in front of them. Only then, the cultural narrative goes, will young girls start acting in such inappropriate ways, all in an attempt to imitate adults, but allegedly without understanding the implications of what those adults are doing. As our own Dante would likely say in response to this: "o rlly?"

I second Dante's likely response. If such was the case, why do these girls regularly create such videos of themselves with no direct adult involvement whatsoever? When you see the types of comments these girls receive (both polite and totally uncalled for), it's absolutely silly to suggest that they have no idea why so many adults watch their videos. Yet they continuously ask people who watch their videos to leave comments, and to subscribe to their channels. And if their channels are deleted, or any individual videos within those channels are deleted, they soon start another channel under a new name and incorporate the deleted videos there. And they have even started a habit of leaving "instruction" videos in their old accounts where they explain in detail to their valued subscribers how to reach their new account if the old one was given up for lost due to frequent deletions by the YouTube staff, often courtesy of multiple flagging by the moral police. And these are girls often as young as nine years old. One type of comment they frequently receive are complaints from moral do-gooders who exclaim with impassioned aplomb about how awful it is that these girls are being "sexualized" (even if the girls are doing the "sexualizing" themselves, which is very often the case), asking where the hell the parents of these girls must be (as if kids shouldn't have a single aspect of their lives apart from parental or educational overview), and how they would slap the hell out of any kid of theirs who created and uploaded such videos of themselves (yup, that always helps keep kids in line).

So it's quite clear that young girls do indeed have a sense of sexual identity, and do to varying degrees (depending upon the individual) find it flattering for people of all ages to admire them. If such was not the case, you would see them telling only people in their general age group to subscribe to their channels (even though that wouldn't work, of course). But they don't. This doesn't mean that most of them are interested in having relationships with adult men (or women); it simply means they enjoy being admired in a general sense, and aren't overly concerned about who is giving them such a healthy subscriber base. They are well aware of the age groups stats (which are made public by YouTube), and they are more than aware that adult admirers have much to do with creating the growing number of "Internet celebrities" that these girls hope to be. These girls clearly find sexual expression and identity as a natural part of the joy and adventure of life that they demonstrate when dancing in the videos, or acting "crazy" and just being their "amazing selves." These videos provide a voice for girls and a medium of expression for their age group that they can find almost nowhere else in our heavily controlled gerontocentric society.

Not only that, but despite some of the weirdos who undoubtedly surface on YouTube (and weirdos are hardly unique to this particular venue), the media is not filled with reports of adults stalking or otherwise harming underage Internet celebs. If adults who admired underage girls (or boys, for that matter) were inherently unbalanced and prone to violent behavior, then there should be thousands of reported incidents per month, because it's well known that a large bulk of these YouTube girls' (and boys') admirers are adults. I'm not saying these girls and their male counterparts shouldn't exercise caution when it comes to communicating with any person of any age whom they meet online but do not know very well, and I am not encouraging adults to risk crossing the legal line by establishing friendships with these kids over the Net. However, I am making it clear that the facts and stats at hand do not bear out the many popular cultural narratives that underlie the sex abuse hysteria that routinely cause law-makers and orgs like YouTube and Facebook to initiate rules that suppress and punish youthful expression of a sexual identity or sexual awareness, as well as harass adults who show any degree of admiration for such underagers, and ultimately create further barriers between the age groups interacting with each other.

Western society continues to wage a bitter war against youth sexuality, as well as youth rights in general, yet despite all of this, the hordes of older adult lawmakers and government constituents continue to fail in stifling what is increasingly becoming clear to be a natural inclination for young girls to express as much as young women. They aren't simply aping what Katy Perry and other adults do; they are displaying an appreciation for what they represent, and they want to share the same type of natural expression to the public as their idols do. There is a good reason why young girls idolize the Katy Perry's of the world, and why they admire teen celebrities who similarly displayed the sexual side of their being, such as Brittany Speares and Christina Aguilera back in the day.

Continuing to attempt to enforce a falsehood that is primarily designed to control younger people and keep them subservient to older adult interests and demands rather than protect them from harm (whether that harm is believed to come from an external source or themselves, or a combination of the two) is accomplishing nothing beneficial for any age group in society, and only serves to promote new forms of hysteria, moral panics, and segregation of the age groups. This in turn serves to terrorize the people of the nation while bolstering the power and scope of the police state to intrude in our personal lives.

I completely agree with the oft-exclaimed statement, "Just let kids be kids!" And that motto should include, "Let kids express themselves as they individually choose!" Apparently, the evidence suggests that a sense of sexual identity, and awareness of themselves having sex appeal, is not something that is inimical to our conception of being a "kid," despite how much our society feels a strong need to marginalize this aspect of life from anyone under the Magic Age.