If you’re on social media, you’ve likely seen photos of your friends’ daughters this week that left little to the imagination. You’ve probably thought, “I didn’t need to see that.” And yet, your friends have posted these photos of their daughters, their girls, for their entire social networks to see.
Over the last decade, homecoming dresses have transformed. They are no longer the gowns that prior generations wore, with a corsage on your wrist or pinned to the dress. They now resemble the swimsuits of the 1940s and 1950s: strapless or spaghetti-strapped, skin-tight, with the hem falling just below where the thigh meets the buttocks.
This generation of girls isn’t the first to wear revealing clothing or test the boundaries of acceptable attire. Girls have always worn their real outfits under the clothes they walked out of the house in, or stuffed their real dresses in their purses to change in a public bathroom before an event.
Their parents, however, are the first generation that hasn’t and won’t say, “You’re not leaving the house like that.” They aren’t just allowing the outfits to be worn, of course. They’re also the ones putting their credit cards down on the counter and buying ...