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WTF?

zuzu

Check out the headline on this Broadsheet piece by Carol Lloyd, about concerns that fat kids will go through puberty early:

Chubby child, future hoochie mama?

The hell? Since when do secondary sex characteristics equal promiscuity? That’s a serious throwback attitude there, Salon (though given your decision to hire Camille Paglia again, should I be surprised?). It’s the same attitude Ann Althouse displayed when Jessica Valenti had the temerity to show up at a blogger lunch with President Clinton and brought her breasts along. It’s the same attitude that girls with big breasts get when their perfectly modest clothing fails to obscure the fact that they have breasts. They’re called sinful, or slutty — not because of anything they did, but because of what their bodies look like.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the headline that reflects retrograde disdain for women’s bodies — Lloyd’s description of her fear of her chubby toddler going through early puberty betrays her belief that girls who hit puberty early are oversexualized:

I’m not too proud to admit that reports that a study found excess weight in preschoolers could lead to early puberty had me eyeing my naturally chubby 3-year-old daughter with some anxiety. Would she be one of those 9-year-olds sauntering through the elementary school halls sporting a brazen teenage glare, a bra and a purse stuffed with tampons?

If these girls have “brazen teenage stares,” it’s likely because the people who see their bodies are sexualizing them, and they react to that. If they wear bras, it’s because they have breasts. Tampons, also obvious. I just don’t really know where to go with the “sauntering.” What does she imagine, a bunch of child Mae Wests, little preteen temptresses?

And later:

Though the relentless smorgasbord has given me obesity research fatigue, the study equating chubby toddlers with premature hoochie mamas disturbed me.

There’s that “hoochie mama” thing again. But talk about unintentional hilarity:

And with the added social and psychological risks of early puberty well documented, the “stakes in the control of childhood obesity may turn out to be even higher than we thought.”

Gosh, Carol, I can’t imagine why early puberty might be socially or psychologically difficult.

64 thoughts on WTF?

  2. If these girls have “brazen teenage stares,” it’s likely because the people who see their bodies are sexualizing them, and they react to that. If they wear bras, it’s because they have breasts. Tampons, also obvious. I just don’t really know where to go with the “sauntering.” What does she imagine, a bunch of child Mae Wests, little preteen temptresses?

    No shit! Like, hi, dipshit, what do you think happens to girls who get breasts two or three years earlier than their classmates? How do you think their peers react to that? With sensitivity? With maturity?

    Christ.

    Stuffed with tampons? Don’t anyone let this woman see Ginger Snaps.

  3. I just don’t really know where to go with the “sauntering.”

    …I think she resents them having hips.

  4. Jesus, yes.

    I was an early bloomer, though I didn’t get my period until I was 12 or so. But I was way taller than my classmates, and had breasts. Far from sauntering, I was trying my best to hide all that and deny it.

    I suspect food additives and hormones are responsible for early puberty more than mere weight.

  5. Also: being “the fat girl” could well spiral with involuntary sexualization. Overweight people, and overweight girls and women in particular, are already subjected to invasive bodily scrutiny. A young woman who’s bigger and curvier would deal with that, too, and might well have even earlier exposure to the idea that her self is the same as her body.

  7. Ugh. Like I really needed my C-cup-in-junior-high nightmares coming back to haunt me once again. (Not you, zuzu — I mean the idiot writer.)

    I’m sure she’ll be glad to know that, because of the extreme amount of attention I got as an early bloomer, I didn’t have sex until I was 30. Because that’s way more mentally healthy than having it in my early 20s like everyone else.

  8. I was not an especially chubby kid, but early menarche runs in my maternal family. I was nine when I started, and taller than average (by the next year everyone had passed me by), with breasts and everything. My mother put me on my first diet right around then. Not that she was trying to stave off sexual maturity, but more of a “honey, you’re a woman now” type thing.

    It was unhelpful in absolutely every way.

    And I absolutely hated being looked at — and spoken to — in overtly sexual ways in public by grown men who had no clue that they were talking to a kid who was seriously into Nancy Drew books.

    I escaped the ‘slut’ label for the most part due to my enthusiastic adoption of the ‘brain’ label and a complete indifference to teen fashion. Not without its heartbreaks, obviously, but marginally safer.

  10. So Ms. Lloyd is displacing her “OMG my kid is fat!!!1!!!” anxiety by saying oh, I’m just worried she’s going to grow up to be Lolita.

    Or maybe she just figured that being breathlessly anxious and misogynistic is a most excellent means of getting published at Salon.

  11. I suspect food additives and hormones are responsible for early puberty more than mere weight.

    I very much share your suspicion, zuzu. Why is it that additives and hormones in our food are not big news? There’s a corporate aspect to this that rubs me the wrong way. And unless one buys entirely organic animal products (which is a good idea in many ways but damn are they expensive) there is no way to stop this insinuation.

    I know the above is somewhat of a derail, but I think it goes back to the idea that fat-phobia is really not a concern about health (though some people with those views have become convinced they really are trying to save people). The attention to this (not necessarily the research itself, though of course someone had to think to do it) is part of the fat-will-get-you-one-way-or-another mentality.

  12. I think most elementary school girls would be EMBARRASSED to have their periods and to wear a bra, not proud. I remember talking about how bras and pads were gross during elementary school (this was in the 90s, not the 50s) and no one talked about periods until high school, because by then, most of us had started them.

  13. Oh pffa, I hit puberty at around ten and I didn’t go all “hoochie mama” on anybody. In fact, I became a born-again, abstinence-only Christian. (I’ve since recovered.) So there.

    And not to drift or anything, but what’s up with the font weirdness going on? Everything looks strangely squished.

  14. Oh, yes, how dare they have breasts before the socially approved date? Those little tramps, they did it on pupose.

    Everyone knows breasts are caused by estrogen and estrogen is the Woman Hormone and therefore naughty! And puberty is totally an opt-in experience under the control of the individual.

    Or not. Maybe puberty is something outside the child’s control and the author is among the many idiots who think there is some correlation between big breasts and sex drive.

    Naaaah. That’s just crazy talk.

    My head just exploded from The Dumb.

  15. Yeah, this was pretty horrible.

    Also: Cary Tennis has a lame response a woman who got pregnant using Plan B, says abortion feels difficult but right, and doesn’t feel ready for a pregnancy. Guess what Cary thinks she should do?

    http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/03/14/abortion/index.html

    (my favorite line: Consider this also: How would you feel if abortion were not an option at all? Would you still feel great distress at this news? yup, because before abortion, women only ever felt unfiltered joy at an unplanned and pretty clearly unwanted pregnancy. just like before contraception, women always wanted to get pregnant. and that’s why both of those things no longer exist today. …wait.)

  16. the study equating chubby toddlers with premature hoochie mamas disturbed me.

    I have every reason to believe that this is exactly the term used by the study. Hoochie Mamas are a very underresearched type of Mama. Especially compared to Yo Mama.

  17. I got my period when I was 10 (almost 11). I was hardly sauntering around. At that age, none of my peers carried a purse, so carrying my supplies around became a logistical problem. If I used a purse, I’d stand out. So my mother started putting them in a lunch bag for me, which I’d then hide in my locker all day. This worked fine until one day some kids at the bus stop decided to use my “lunch” as a football. Luckily nothing fell out, but I was mortified. The whole experience was pretty traumatic, it was at least 2 years before any of my friends had their periods so I felt pretty weird during that time. I dropped out of a lot of activities during that time, like softball, because I just preferred to stay at home and not deal with things. I also went through a phase where I would only wear overalls to cover my breasts, which were developing early as well. The whole thing was pretty socially isolating.

    If her daughter is going to go through early puberty, she is going to need a supportive mother and not some shrew that equates the girl’s period with sluttiness. Damn.

  18. Oh, and one more thing… I am so tired of these mothers who are so gung ho to prevent that obesity in their children that they are looking at their beautiful little three year olds and thinking “uh oh, she’s getting fat”. My sister-in-law would only give her children nonfat milk (even as 1 year olds) because of this. Forget about robbing their bodies of the needed fat for brain development, she was going to give them the gift of thin.

    Enough already.

  19. I guess what a lot of the commenters missed is the class and racial overtones of the entire piece.

    In the U.S. in 2007, being overweight correlates with both being black and being of lower income regardless of race/ethnicity. “Hootchie-mama” is not a term commonly used by or regarding “white people” i.e. Euro-Americans; it describes a (perceived) immoral black woman coming from an impoverished neighborhood. The word is not a synonym for “slut.” This online dictionary gets the word’s meaning roughly right, though I think it iis used much, much more for the black ghetto than for the white trailer park.

    I don’t know Lloyd’s ethnicity, nor do I care. But translated into its real meaning, the title of the piece would be “chubby child, future fat ghetto n****r bitch.” Lloyd either needs to acknowledge that she is making a provocative class- and race-based piece, or needs to stop using derogatory terms in American English until she learns their connotations better.

  20. you know what’s most characteristic of brazen teenagers? bras and tampons. yes, yes. they should be ashamed of themselves.

  21. Carol Llyod is worried that her toddler will become a “hootchie mama” because she drinks milk at three?!?! I guess that she is aware of diet and sex statistics but not that the primary influence in her child’s sexual behaviour is the attitudes and information that she receives at home from her parents. Yes, her child is going to be hit with the hormone storm of puberty, early ot late, and yes, she may make stupid mistakes about it as she grows into her new body but supposedly Carol is going to be around to help her through it. This may be a stupid assumption on my part- Carol may be like the mothers of my more sexualized teen friends, the ones who were always away, never paid attention to what their teen was up to and generally avoided the sex talk. My more ‘permissive’ parents gave us the “TALK” as soon as they felt we would actually listen, got us to the age appropriate doctor for more information and then grilled us as needed for the rest of puberty. We made mistakes but we were never alone in it the way my friends were.
    I went from nothing to a D-cup in under 3 months and I still have the stretch marks. I needed more than just maternal support. 😉

  22. We should look at the other side of the early bloomer=slut logic, too, that late-bloomers, and A-cups are sooo much better off and WON’T saunter, etc…

    Breasts are a weird thing to me, since I definitely fall into the “late-bloomer, A-cup” category, and believe me, there’s trauma on both sides of the fence. All of my bigger chested friends share stories of longing to have a guy look them in the eye once in awhile, and I remember a particularly harrowing experience in the 7th grade locker room when it was discovered that I (gasp!) stuffed my bra (insert sobbing and mortification here). I get that breasts have been revered for years and are still, in our culture, held up to a certain size-ist sexual standard, but puh-leeze, people, this is getting old.

    Why is it that my double-D-cup friend who goes out of her way to cover up any cleaveage will still have men harrass her at any given time of day (as well as have other women be bitchy and insecure around her…and I’m not just generalizing. She has a fit, six-pack toting female peer who has admitted that she doesn’t want my friend talking to her boyfriend because she was insecure about my friend’s breast size), but I could probably wear a shirt cut down to my navel and booty shorts and not garner the same amount or type of attention. In fact, I will most likely be labeled “cute”.

    Look, breasts are attractive and womanly and beautiful in all shapes and sizes, but there is a certain aspect about their attractiveness and desireability that we are very clearly TAUGHT. I feel as though Ms. Lloyd is building up a nice case of “self-fulfilling prophecy” for her “naturally chubby three year old”. THREE YEAR OLDS (BABIES) ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHUBBY, LADY. If your precious little one gets to age fifteen, and decides that she would like to eat a bucket of lard sandwhiches for lunch every day, then you may have reason to be concerned for her health…but until then, back off. Quit thinking about your kid’s future breasts and calm the hell down.

  23. Yeah, and plenty of blacks live in trailer parks and plenty of whites live in a “ghetto” so be careful of your chosen generalizations.

    As for early onset of menses more research is pointing to synthetic estrogens in plastics as a possible cause. They are also linked to breast cancer.

  24. i tended to feel undersexualized as a chubby kid- i have to kinda feel a little warm and fuzzy inside knowing that the fatgirls of today can wear that “brazen teenage glare” just like everyone else. i wish i had.

    but yeah, fat = slutty is bs. i think she just doesn’t want her kid to be fat because fat = fat.

  25. Did you catch the Slate article on the same research? The article was actually pretty good, but the headline on the home page was something like “Why fat chicks go through puberty early” and had a picture of a fat chick eating from a Chinese takeout container. I’ll leave decoding the subtext as an exercise for the reader.

    I suspect food additives and hormones are responsible for early puberty more than mere weight.

    You got some actual data to back this up? Or have you been reading too much vegan nonsense again?

  26. Might be regional, but hoochie mama is used pretty generically in the NYC area for all skintones. I don’t know about San Franciso, where the article indicates she lives. But there are definitely race & class issues. Interesting how she notes the skintone of the girl in the billboard, comparing her holding a half empty juice cup to a “drunken lush”. Interesting that she uses alcohol imagery not once, but 2x, referring to her 3 year old as a milkaholic.

    While it’s not implicitly stated, I think she’s got a lot of that middle-upper class fear of fat. Which regards the incidence of obesity in poorer communities like it’s some sort of moral failing of the poor. That always irks me. It’s freakin’ common sense. I’ve made changes in my eating habits for health reasons and generally, it’s more expensive to eat healthy, especially outside of the home. So right there, that’s one factor. Poor neighborhoods have less choice foodwise (less produce available, etc). And there’s less likely to be gyms or the money for memberships. Neighborhoods can be more dangerous, so that’s less opportunity for walking and other outside physical activity. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

    Getting back to hoochie mama, I think it’s absolutely awful anyone would use that to describe a young girl entering puberty or to refer to a 3 year old as a milkaholic. What sheer & utter idiocy.

    Too bad she didn’t use the opportunity to advocate more support from families, friends and schools to help offset the negative emotional impact of early puberty. Because no matter what, some girls are still going to hit puberty early. Or changes in the food/exercise opportunities kids get, particularly in poorer neighborhoods.

  27. Hasn’t the age of menarche dropped considerably over the last 150 years? Some of it due to better nutrition, but now I’m wondering about the effect of the exposure to chemicals in the environment. Also note the drop in testosterone that has been occuring in males recently–saw an article that said there might be a link to exposure to a chemical used in plastic bags and which is pretty prevalent. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if long-term exposure to certain chemicals below the level that is presently called “pollution” couldn’t have an effect on us.

  28. Did you catch the Slate article on the same research? The article was actually pretty good, but the headline on the home page was something like “Why fat chicks go through puberty early” and had a picture of a fat chick eating from a Chinese takeout container.

    Slate is not one of my regular reads, but I suspect I’ll have to start in order to catch the misogynist goodness.

    You got some actual data to back this up? Or have you been reading too much vegan nonsense again?

    Fuck off.

  29. Since when do secondary sex characteristics equal promiscuity?

    In the experience of my family, it works out the opposite way. Me (and my brother even more so) were early bloomers in terms of puberty. And I was always very interested in girls. And yet I could in no way be called promiscuous and my brother even less so. If anything, always being interested in girls when the other boys thought girls had cooties and thus being a “suspect” boy ’cause I always hung out with the girls (I liked girls, so why wouldn’t I hang out with them?) helped lead into a big case of Nice Guy(TM) syndrome on my part, which understandably hurt my dating prospects.

    Anyway, though — what’s with the sexism of only worrying about girls maturing earlier becoming promiscuous? What about boys who mature earlier? How comes no-one’s worrying about us being promiscuous? Well maybe, as my examples above would indicate (if the plural of anecdote were data — in which case my boss wouldn’t be mad at me about my lack of publications as I’d be reeling them in 😉 ) boys who mature earlier don’t become so promiscuous. But in which case, do girls who mature early really become promiscuous?

    Of course, if the mentioning only of girls in this sort of article relates to a real difference in the results of early maturation (rather than the more likely explanation of sexism), then what does that say about how dating, etc., work? When a boy matures earlier, he’s at risk for Nice Guy(TM) syndrome which kills his dating prospects … but when a girl matures earlier, she’s targetted longer and that kills her resistance to sexualization? Note even this construction is blatantly sexist, but it may very well occur because kids absorb the prejudices, including sexism, of society around them: thus, if there is a problem, is the real problem not girls maturing early, but societal double standards in how sexualized relationships are constructed?

  30. I had to stop looking at Broadsheet because I so despise Carol Lloyd on everything. What’s crazy is that she also quotes Sandy Szwarc who’s Junkfood Science blog does an excellent job of debunking this kind of crap. It’s not hard to know which study to listen to, Carol, listen to the ones that don’t reek of stupid and sexist and victim-blaming.

  31. refer to a 3 year old as a milkaholic – SpiritofMargaretBrent

    Have you considered the effect milk actually has on young kids? They really do act drunk if they’ve had a good dose of milk (ever heard the phrase “milk drunk”?). Milkaholic might not be that inaccurate of a phrase … If I were a Freudian (which I’m not), I’d relate alcoholism with a desire to return to the carefree period of youth when Mommy and Daddy take care of everything — and you get your bottle (later glass) of milk and get, well, drunk off it.

  32. Oh and, FWIW, I agree that issues of class and race that get involved in this sort of thing. Interesting, since issues of race/class/”the non-WASP female as over-sexed seductress” are involved, that zuzu mentions Mae West. IIRC, the whole “Mae West is an evil temptress” thing actually began as an anti-Semitic slur (“you can’t trust Jewesses not to be evil temptresses luring un-suspecting good Christian men into lives of debauchery”, or something like that): and Mae West, actually being quite smart, decided it was better to just make the whole “temptress” image part of her schtick than to fight it.

  33. Anyway, though — what’s with the sexism of only worrying about girls maturing earlier becoming promiscuous? What about boys who mature earlier? How comes no-one’s worrying about us being promiscuous?

    Because boys can’t be promiscuous, silly. It’s only girls, who develop breasts and become evil siren temptresses, who are sin-sin-sinful.

    Well maybe, as my examples above would indicate (if the plural of anecdote were data — in which case my boss wouldn’t be mad at me about my lack of publications as I’d be reeling them in 😉 ) boys who mature earlier don’t become so promiscuous. But in which case, do girls who mature early really become promiscuous?

    Well, if everyone’s already convinced you’re a slut because you had the temerity to develop breasts, actually going out and living up to the label is kind of a wash.

  34. a friend and I did an experiment in high school. she had huge boobs, I have none. we wore the exact same tank top to school one day. guess who got called into the principle’s office and made to change clothes for being immodest?

  35. it’s frustrating, too, because I think she actually has a real fear in here – that exhibiting these sex characteristics early will cause other people to think of her little girl sexually before the child should be thought of like that … where she goes wrong is blaming the 12-year old with the rack instead of the people who would be ogling that rack

  36. Washington Post article.

    “chemicals [bisphenol A, used in food & beverage containers, and tributyltin, found in plastics and in fungicides which runoff into water] … have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals’ sexual development, [and] can also trigger fat-cell activity — a process scientists call adipogenesis”

    The study that found associations between excessive infant weight gain and early puberty is being peddled all around the place as if there’s a causative link, (and hence we should put our 3 year old daughters on diets so they don’t turn into 9 year old hoochie mamas), but the study shows no such thing.

  37. Perhaps girls who have higher weights, are prone to early puberty.

    I worry too that this will drop the age of girls starting unhealthy diets. I have a six year old niece who is terrified of getting fat. Her mom started her on skim milk four years ago and the girl is a bean pole. When puberty comes, she will have to starve herself to keep twiggyish.

    It’s freaking disgusting. Let women be women already.

  38. Oh, shit: Another reason to feel bad about being a mom: It’s too late to starve my 3-year-old daughter! She’s 14 and wearing a C cup. I suppose NOW is the time to counsel her about this deadly EWF violation, and apologize for what I’ve done to her?

    (EWF = ExistingWhileFemale)

    By the way, tzs beat me to this observation but I’ve also read how prenatal vitamins may be the reason why so many BIG babies are arriving on the scene, AND how better nutrition means today’s kids are taller in general and blossoming earlier than they did in the “good” old days.

  39. “stuffed with tampons”? What, is she going to deal them like drugs to the other kids?

    Jesus christ. Somehow that gets to me more than anything else. It’s a TAMPON, not a goddamn sex toy. How dare some girl have the temerity not to stay at home bleeding silently and unobtrusively at maximum personal inconvenience? The idea that carrying tampons is some sort of sexualized declaration is so fucking misogynist it floors me.

  40. THAT DID IT. I had to speak my mind. I think this might have been my first letter-to-the-editor/writer in YEARS:

    ***********************************************

    Carol Lloyd’s Post Has it All

    Mommy anxieties, fat panic and hand-wringing classist misogyny, all wrapped in a frilly pink bow with a gift card to Hoochie Mama, whoeverthehell SHE is. Nice work. Since I’m a writer I’m wondering: Is this how one gets published in the Broadsheet? ‘Cause I’m taking notes.

    Tonight I plan to counsel my 14 year old daughter with the C-cups about this shameful EWF* Violation she commits every day by appearing in public. I’ll be sure to apologize for my part in it, as I failed to starve her when she was a naturally chubby toddler. I’m a bad mother.

  41. Well, LC, tampons are phallic. And not too long ago, only “bad girls” used them because it meant putting something into your hoohah (which we all know is dirty and wrong).

  42. If you read the books “How Young Ladies Became Girls” or “The Body Project”, you’ll realize that Victorians were just as aghast at “early puberty” as we are now, if not more so. Their ideal age for menarche was 16–14 or 13 was horrifying, but upper-class girls were starting earlier and earlier. Their causes? “Rich food, inactive lifestyles, spicy novels.” Many people started to realize that perhaps 16 or 17 was *not* the ideal age for menarche, but an artificially inflated age due to widespread malnutrition among lower-class girls.

    There’s all sorts of things that might be causing earlier puberty–weird food hormones, artificial light, all sorts of stuff that’s now a part of our modern environment. Early-puberty hysteria, however, is not at all new.

  43. There have been studies showing emotional risks to girls who develop early (having to deal with being sexualized young), and to boys who develop late (not being considered “manly” enough). I think some of those concerns are real, though, yes, the problem lies with the society that sees breasts as automatically sexual and that judges boys and men on physical strength alone.

  44. I wasn’t an early bloomer, and there’s no history of that in my family. I was overweight by a few pounds at puberty, my mom was underweight by a few, and I started at 12 while she started at 11.

    I want to know what parent is arming their menstruating 8-year-old with tampons. Maybe I’m Old School (I’ve never used one, but with my flow it would have been rather useless) about this, but when I got The Video in grade school, we were told that tampons were an option when you were a little bit older and more familiar with our “monthly visitor” unless you needed them for gymnastics or swimming or something. And certainly, when I was in grade school and even middle school, it was REALLY HARD to get any time at all to change your stuff.

    I have noticed a little bit of a trend of fatter girls having their periods earlier, but it could be that there’s a genetic predisposition to gaining weight and having early menarche. I don’t know. I do know there are more girls who hit puberty now than there were when I was in grade school, at least in my old school. There was ONE in my class. And she was very skinny. Go figure.

    As far as sexualization, well, it’s been covered. Girls who are teased or who are judged on their boobs are more likely to get insecure and seek affirmation and yadda yadda. Just actually parent your kid and let them know that x and y and z … and hopefully your kid will not get involved in sex too early. I had an overweight friend with huge boobs who hit puberty at age 9, and SOMEHOW she held out until marriage. (Which was at age 18, but still, she managed to not become the DREADED HOOCHIE MAMA at age 10).

  45. I want to know what parent is arming their menstruating 8-year-old with tampons. Maybe I’m Old School (I’ve never used one, but with my flow it would have been rather useless) about this, but when I got The Video in grade school, we were told that tampons were an option when you were a little bit older and more familiar with our “monthly visitor” unless you needed them for gymnastics or swimming or something.

    I was 12 when I started menstruating, but I used tampons from the very beginning (as in, starting with my first period). I played sports and swam, and my mom only used tampons, so it made sense. My mom bought me pads, but I hated them. I dunno, I never really thought twice about it…

  46. we were told that tampons were an option when you were a little bit older and more familiar with our “monthly visitor” unless you needed them for gymnastics or swimming or something

    That was code for “virgins shouldn’t use tampons”.

  47. The whole tampon-pad thing is heavily culturally determined. Let me quote myself:

    What I argue in my course is that tampon acceptance is linked to broader issues of acceptance of women’s bodies. The real threat of the tampon is not that it will take a girl’s virginity! Rather, it’s that a woman who learns how to use it must of necessity gain some knowledge of how she works “down there.” Denying young girls access to tampons is a small but tangible way of keeping them ignorant of their own bodies.

  48. Sounds like the story of my life, AlphaBitch. I got my period at eleven, was always taller than most of my peers, and I got pretty pudgy around 10-12. But I, too, was spared being called a slut because I was the nerdy kid. And the kid nobody liked because I was weird. And I never developed anything more than an “A” cup. It was hard in a lot of ways.

    “There have been studies showing emotional risks to girls who develop early (having to deal with being sexualized young), and to boys who develop late (not being considered “manly” enough). I think some of those concerns are real, though, yes, the problem lies with the society that sees breasts as automatically sexual and that judges boys and men on physical strength alone.”

    Exactly. I’ve noticed both of these problems in myself and my friends. Early-blooming girls get ogled, late-blooming boys get teased. It’s very sad.

    mythago and Hugo are right about tampons, too. I was too scared to use them at first because I thought they were nasty and dirty, and you should never touch or explore down there. People who say younger girls and women are concerned that it will lead to loss of the “all-precious hymen/vaginal freshness seal” not because of the penetration itself, but because they are afraid that it will teach them to explore and appreciate their own sexuality.

  49. “Hootchie-mama” is not a term commonly used by or regarding “white people” i.e. Euro-Americans; it describes a (perceived) immoral black woman coming from an impoverished neighborhood.

    Here in Los Angeles, it’s more ethnically-neutral. I had Mexican friends of mine tell me I was wearing a “hoochie-mama” dress, and I’m as pale as they come.

    Plus, at least here in LA, the term usually refers to Latinas. I’ve never heard it used to refer to African-Americans (unless they’re implying that she’s dressing like a, well, hoochie-mama Latina).

  50. I developed fairly late and didn’t start getting breasts until college when I went on the pill. They didn’t really come in until after I had my kids (I went from a B-cup before children to a D-cup after–the hips came in with a vengeance once I started the bc and continued to grow with each child). I got all the standard teasing about being a little girl and flat chested when I was 16-17 and all the other girls had hips and breasts and I didn’t have that yet.

    My youngest sister, however, developed very early. She got her period in grade school and started developing breasts around 10-11. She had high school and college boys hitting on her in 7th grade, because she looked older, and by the time she graduated, she was already a DD with large hips. However, she did manage to avoid the slut characterization. Mostly, I think, because she was a lot taller than most every one else in the school (6’1″ at high school graduation) and cultivated a very mean attitude and reputation, so most of the bullies were just too afraid of her to say anything to her face. But she was made an outcast in a lot of other ways and had a horrible time in school.

    Also, I’ve noticed that girls seem to be hitting puberty earlier and earlier these days. I work as a sub in junior and high schools and some of those 12 year old girls could easily pass for late high school, at least. And the vast majority of the 8-9th grade girls are quite developed, way more than I remember the girls being when I was in school.

  51. I suppose I was one of those tweener hoochie mamas. I was “sauntering around” in a bra with tampons in my purse when I was 9. Oddly enought I did not grow up to be any more or less hoochie-mama-ish than most of my female peers. Funny, that.
    I also wasn’t fat, so there goes that theory. I was an average-weight kid who swam every single day. But hey, I did have the tampons. Oh, the horrors! Think of all those poor decent prissy-assed freaks like Carol, forced to watch my not-very-big 9 year old ass “sauntering” around as if I actually had a right to feel comfortable in my own skin. Clearly my mother failed to impress upon me the appropriate degree of self-loathing.

    The only traumatic thing about early puberty for me was the adult men who kept hitting on me. How is that the fault of the child? How about we focus on reminding men that big boobs do not necessarily equal ready and willing to fuck anyone who asks?

  52. Also, in response to Ellie’s question – I never used anything but tampons. When I first got my period (at school) I went running to my (older) friend and told her, and she gave me a tampon and showed me how to use it. When I got home I told Mom and she gave me some more. Not a big deal, really.
    The REALLY funny part is that I actually started right in the middle of sex ed class. I mean that literally – I was in class and excused myself to go pee and lo and behold, blood. I went back to class and sat there with wadded up toilet paper in my panties thinking “well this is ironic” until class ended and I could run off and find my friend.
    Proof that the universe has a sense of humor.

  53. How sad that Carol Lloyd is already catastrophizing her daughter’s normal growth. If the poor kid turns out anything like most of the early bloomers at my middle school she’ll end up wearing huge sweatshirts even in the summer and glaring at everyone who looks at her.

  54. Hmm, I drank skim milk and ate diet foods since about age 6, because that’s when my mom started her low-cholesterol diet and only bought/made one type of dinner and milk for all of us. I did get my period at 12, but I was stick-thin and had zero shape (32 A cups) until college, when I picked up dorm food and regular milk. I wonder if the skim milk and being on my mom’s strict diet was keeping me *too* thin to develop a shape?? Somehow I made it to a 34B by this age and the only explanation is more fat in my food.

    Anyway, I went through the “she’s flat, why would you date her” stuff in middle and high school. I actually cried on prom night because the dress made me look as flat as my date, who was 6’1″ and like 160 pounds (aka stick thin). My large-busted friends went through the “My daughter better not look like HER in eighth grade, that’s disgusting” gossip from the parents. Apparently there’s no satisfying some folks when it comes to the female body.

    That was code for “virgins shouldn’t use tampons”.

    This is interesting…and entirely possible, although I have a “birds and bees” book from the 60’s that says “A girl can use a tampon as soon as she menstruates, but many parents and doctors prefer that she be about 16 before she wears them.” I wonder if that had to do with physical size of the body, or if folks were marrying younger then, so therefore “ok not to be a virgin?” I thought physical size since 16 seems young to marry even for the 60’s, but who knows.

  55. Also, I’ve noticed that girls seem to be hitting puberty earlier and earlier these days.

    Yeah, that appears to actually be happening, and no one is actually too sure why.

    The thing is that a few of the scientists examining it are thinking about whether it’s not so much hitting it earlier, but whether there was some sort of retardant effect that had been delaying it for the past century or two – largely based on the recorded really early doing & marrying ages of children back in Ye Olden Days.

    I love how Lloyd gets in that bit about early contraceptive pill use though, because of course those girls are using it stop themselves getting pregnant (what other possible uses are there for The Pill OF DEATH after all? Aside from valid medical reasons related to heavy periods and related problems) because once you start using those whore-pons, watch out world! your crotch becomes an unguided cruise missile of underage sex.

  56. Mnemonsyne (49) and Zofia (23) –

    Thank you both. In Maryland where I live and to a large extent throughout the mid-Atlantic, low-income trailer parks and high-density low income urban neighborhoods are racially segregated de facto. I understand it’s different in places like Portland, which has a substantial urban white underclass, or in the South, where many black residents do live in trailer parks as do their white neighbors, or as Mnemonsyne noted. I mentioned the trailer park because the Urban Dictionary I linked to did so.

    Hootchie-mama is undeniably classist and, for much of the country, racially loaded in a way that “slut” is not.

  57. It’s definitely a racially-loaded term — it’s interesting that it’s a different race/ethnicity in different parts of the country, though. Like I said, out here in Southern California, it has a very definite Latina cast to it.

  58. I mentioned this story to my SO and he had an interesting theory: the writer’s problem isn’t that she thinks that her child is fat. It’s that she’s starting to realize that her child is a separate person who will have her own likes/dislikes and has a mind of her own. In a few years, she won’t be able to control every moment of her daughter’s life the way she could when her daughter was an infant. She’s projecting all of her anxiety about this realization onto her daughter’s weight.

    I think I’m starting to feel sorry for the poor kid stuck with a crazy mother.

  59. I agree the Mum has a lot of unexamined assumptions, but I feel for some of her anxiety. I thought my stepdaughter was an early bloomer until I went to parent teacher night. Half the 10 year olds in her class appeared to have started puberty. There *is * a problem here, and it’s this: those girls have to go to school with 10 year old boys, who have received (from what I can tell) no information that sexual harrassment is not ok. (Not to mention the attitudes of older guys, but I’m talking about their peers, whom they have to work with and see every single day.)
    This just means we need to start the education way earlier, which may not be a bad idea anyway, but if teachers can’t deal with “scrotum”in a book, then I despair.

  60. Penny, aren’t the parents of those 10-year-old boys going to parent-teacher night?

    Earlier puberty probably has more to do with food availability than anything.

  61. Thanks for the tip. I posted a response at Broadsheet. I was one of those early bloomers (seven, like many other girls in my community) and it really wasn’t the end of the world. The key was that my mom didn’t sexualize me or see me as a sperm-seeking missile just because I possessed a menstruating body with breasts.

  62. Penny, aren’t the parents of those 10-year-old boys going to parent-teacher night?

    I’m sure they are, but if the teachers aren’t telling the parents, “Your little Johnny is calling Madison ‘Jugs’ out on the playground,” the parents are probably totally ignorant of what’s going on.

    Not to mention that the girls probably aren’t telling their own parents about the daily harassment they’re getting from the boys. I know I never told my parents word one about what was going on at my school, even though it was affecting my grades.

  63. I doubt the teachers are totally ignorant of what’s going on. It just strikes me as odd that there are PTA meetings where the parents of daughters all talk to each other about bullying, but the teachers say nothing and the boys’ parents never consider whether their sons might be involved.

  64. Hi Mythago! Yes, I agree with you, odd that the only ones concerned about harrasment are the girls families- but odd in the “that’s very wrong” sense, not odd in the “I’m surprised and shocked” sense.

    If memory serves, the teachers were actively trying to be oblivious to the girls sexuality. Not helpful in terms of setting up a climate of acceptance and safety. And even a lot of the parents were just approaching it as this rather terrible thing that their daughters were doing on purpose (!)

    Once a group of boys called our house to announce to me that so-and so had felt SD’s tits….as if, of course, SD would be getting in big trouble for that! (Rather like that auto admit guy trying to get that girl expelled by writing to the Dean).

    I need to add that my stepdaughter is now 20 -I should ask her what would have helped.

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