Where Have Our Little Girls Gone??
Toni S. Johnson
?About one in three women will become pregnant at least once before they are 20.
Only a third of teen mothers earn their high school diploma and only 1.5 percent will have a college degree by age 30.
10,000 teens are infected by STDs per day or one teen every eight seconds.
There’s a fifty percent increase in violence by teenage girls.
By the numbers, teenage girls outnumber the boys in use of prescription drugs, and usually use more marijuana, more alcohol and more cigarettes.
Girls ages 14-15 who used marijuana daily are five times more likely to face depression at age 21.
The question remains where have our little girls gone?
By the facts, it seems like they have packed up the “Barbie” dolls, unscrewed the light bulb in the easy bake oven and headed to the street. Gone are the 80’s babies who rode around on banana bikes, made friendship bracelets and played hand games until the street lights came on.
No longer around are the little girls who wore thousands of barrettes, wore stockings to church on Sundays, helped mom bake cookies on Saturday mornings and walked around the mall with the “bestie” shopping for the latest headbands with the $10 dad gave them.
Little girls have traded pink shoe laces and purple sweatshirts for tube tops, heels and a joint.
Instead of a cabbage patch doll birth certificate it’s now a fake ID and no more “lik-m-aid” candy packs and candy cigarettes, only Newports and ecstasy pills for her now.
Instead of the skating rink she heads to Planned Parenthood and rather than attend school she hangs out at “his” house.
This new little girl doesn’t stand for her eyebrows not to be done, she’s getting highlights next week, her waxing is on Thursday and her nail appointment is on Saturday morning.
Although, don’t pay attention to the fact that this little girl is probably ten years old.
No more dancing at the school dance with three feet in between her and her partner—now she has to grind, pop it and “cock it up” in order to catch the rhythm of the song.
Condoms are for lames, hey—she’s on birth control anyway and being so drunk that she passes out on the couch—well that’s her next facebook status. Don’t you find that hilarious?
So where are the little girls who played with dolls, did their homework in different color pens and waited for their dates to ring the doorbell instead of honk the horn?
They must have grown up and forgotten the little girls behind them. They have forgotten that growing up is not something that should be done in a rush.
They forgot to turn around and hold another little girl’s hand and tell her that she can wait for everything that her friends are doing.
That there’s life beyond that young tender age and preserving every precious moment of it will only bring her happiness and joy.
Yes, those grown up girls have failed to tell another little girl that she is beautiful inside and out and no boy can ever verify or make that statement true.
The little girl who is now grown up has to realize that the new little girls these days that are around her only want to imitate and understand how she got to be so beautiful, so fun, so “fly.”
They want to do everything she is doing and experience all the things that she has gone through and know how she became who she is today.
The grown up girl from the 80’s has to realize that from one generation to the next, we must pass on our lessons learned, those that are both unspoken and realized from our own mistakes.
She should take a moment and look this new little girl in the eyes and say, “I am who I am now—because I was not afraid to be just a little girl back then.” |
