yes and no

The only time anyone ever tried to suppress my sexuality was my mom when I started wearing shirts that showed my stomach when I was 13. But that's just how she was, and many of my friends moms were like that.

Also, I never really felt like older girls got better treatment. When I was 13 lots of 17 and 18 year old guys hit on me at school. I was in drama club, and I was always the little darling, being carried on shoulders, being tickled, flirted with, etc. I bet the older girls were jealous!

I think you were mostly talking about 9-12 year olds though. As for that..well it's hard to say exactly what I mean. A lot of the time I was worried about being pretty and popular and attractive, and at other times I was confident about myself. I think it's situational. But I've never felt that I *shouldn't* dress sexy or be sexual. You talked about how society wants to disallow girls' sexiness. I see what you mean. Basically growing up, the impression that I got was that girls should be able to wear whatever they want and men should not notice it until they are 15. lol. When my 12 year old friends and I would be out and old men stared at us, we'd all screech and say "ewwwwww, that creepy old guy is looking at you!" But if it was a 20 yr old guy, it would be like "omg, is that guy looking at me? omg what do i do, do i look ok?"

I think a lot of the problem with girls and confidence is peer pressure. When I was 11 girls started to become sooooooo mean to each other. So much whispering behind people's backs "what is she wearing??" and stuff like that. So I started to wonder if they were saying things like that about me. Then I started to get really paranoid about it, and always wondered what people were thinking about me. The only times I felt truly safe were when I was with good friends. I felt like that for a long time.

I wish that girls could feel good about themselves by doing their best at what they like, and by being who they want to be, not by making other people look bad so that they look good. It's such a capitolist view point-there's only so much admiration and respect to go around, better grab a piece of it by taking it away from someone else.