Family & Fatherhood

How to be sure your daughter doesn't turn out like Lindsay Lohan

By: Steve Almond
Feb 4, 2008 - 12:59:07 PM



Some weeks ago, I typed up a few rules for my daughter, Josephine, which I then posted on the refrigerator:
1. You are not to dress in revealing clothing or consort with girls who do.
2. You are not to have contact with young men who have not been introduced to—and/or frisked by—your mother or father.
3. You are not to use drugs other than Tylenol, and only then for approved medical purposes.
4. You are not to dance in a lewd manner, particularly in a nightclub with paparazzi present.

My friend Eve read over this list and pointed out that Josephine is not quite a year old. I’m well aware of my daughter’s age, of course. But I’m also well aware of Madison Avenue’s efforts to market the slut image to an ever younger demographic, and the mass media’s decision to cover young, troubled party girls as if they were heads of state, and perhaps most terrifying of all, I’m aware of my own weakness for precisely this sort of depraved coverage.

It’s a lot to consider.

And frankly, it’s not stuff I thought I’d ever have to consider. Just 18 months ago, I was your average bachelor dude, bumbling into my late thirties with a girlfriend stashed across the country. As such, I spent a lot of time strolling down less-than-wholesome cultural avenues. To be specific, I wasted approximately a week and a half (if you add up all the 20-minute segments) trolling the Internet for a free version of the Paris Hilton sex video. My friend Karl had told me it was hilarious, that she actually answers her cell phone in the midst of the action. Then there was the Britney saga. And the Lindsay saga. And whatever stray cleavage those might offer.

But in 2006, a number of things happened very quickly. I realized I was turning 40. My girlfriend announced that she would be staying across the country if I didn’t propose to her. I proposed to her. A week later, she called to say she was pregnant. In the space of six months, we eloped, bought a house, moved in together, and welcomed the arrival of Josephine.

What did this radical paradigm shift mean for me? It meant that I began visiting the mall. The mall is a terrifying place for a new dad, because it offers a concentrated dose of all the cultural messages aimed at your daughter. It was at the mall that I first encountered a pair of moppets playing with a Bratz doll. How cute, I thought. Until I saw the doll’s ensemble: a miniskirt and a tight T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase So Many Boys, So Little Time. Next, I passed by Club Libby Lu, where prepubescent clients get makeovers and learn a sexy dance while a soundtrack offers helpful tips such as “Wet your lips and smile to the camera.” Then the girls select miniature stuffed dogs to carry around in a faux-couture carrier, just like, well, you know who.

The adult stores were no better. Victoria’s Secret had a section for young women that featured bras and panties small enough to fit a sizable toddler. Yes, it’s Baby’s First Thong.

See, this is what happens when you have a daughter. You start looking at the world around her and you start realizing how much of that world seems determined to turn her into a world-famous media slut. Then you start looking at the world-famous media sluts themselves—at least I do—and for the first time in your life, it occurs to you: Hey, that’s someone’s daughter! I wonder how her dad feels about that picture in which her boobs are hanging out for the world to see? And I wonder if her dad’s behavior in some way contributed to this boob hanging?

Here’s where things become complicated. Because despite being a dad and having all these noble dad concerns about my daughter and all the daughters of the world, I still gaze at media sluts on occasion.

What I’ve come to realize is that there are really two people inside me: the Dude Self and the Dad Self. The Dude Self has an evolutionary mandate. Namely, to get his DNA into all available fertile females. This is how I explain the compulsion toward media sluts, who, after all, sow the fantasy that women exist only for the carnal pleasure of men.

But then there’s the Dad Self. The Dad Self has to worry about the survival of his wife and offspring. It might be said that his genetic material is heavily mortgaged. He regards women differently, especially if he has a daughter. Now he must think about the kind of world in which he’d like her to grow up, and especially how he’d like other males to treat her, which is to say not as a sexual chew toy, but with kindness and respect.

It’s here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I’m harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I’m sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don’t believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you’ve never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at.

But even if I ogled Paris in private, I would still be contributing to the Culture of Paris, helping to shape a world in which young women win adulation for making porn videos and getting arrested, rather than for, say, curing cancer or brokering peace in the Middle East or being a mom. If we all stopped consuming celebrity scandals, they would cease to exist. If a media slut goes to jail and no one’s there to film the perp walk, does it really matter?

So this is what I’ve been working on: not pretending I’m deaf to all those salacious sirens, but curbing my own prurience on behalf of my daughter. As much as I can, I’m sending her the message that happiness comes from inside. Will this work? My Dad Self certainly hopes so. But he knows that we live in the age of the Dude Self. My trip to the mall wasn’t an anomaly. It’s good business to make little girls believe they can buy love in material form. If that means pushing sex on 6-year-olds, so be it.

We newbie dads would be fools not to worry about the way this is trending. What is the cultural landscape going to look like in a dozen years, when my little girl is heading into adolescence? Will there be packs of roving slut enforcers? Triple-X slumber parties? Can you see why a concerned father—even a socially liberal fellow like myself—might be tempted to declare martial law on his 1-year-old?

I want Josephine to grow up in a world where her ambitions will be about what she wants, not what the panting men of the world want from her. My daughter is not a commodity. Her heart can be broken. Her spirit can be wounded. And there is no accessory that can rescue her from these dangers.

Which brings me to rule number five, the only one I plan to enforce: Josephine can do anything she likes with her life, so long as she asks herself first: Is this behavior worthy of the love I deserve? If she flouts this rule, the failure will have been her parents’, not hers.

Steve Almond’s new book, (Not That You Asked) , is an essay collection.

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