Youth and beauty

Yesterday when I sat down at the bus stop a pretty girl sat down next to me. I've always had radar when it comes to pretty girls, and this one was very pretty, indeed, as I noticed even while I was putting my newspaper in my pack and getting my fare ready. Those little chores completed I looked in her eyes and smiled, trying not to look too much like a dirty old man. She reminded me a lot of Natalie Wood- that kind of cool and elegant good looks always makes me go gaga. Tastefully dressed as she was in a light sleeveless wine red sweater and a pleated white skirt, the waiters at Maximes would treat her like a princess. Her lips, cheeks and eyes were only touched lightly by the makeup brush. There was only one problem: she was only about twelve years old.
Of course it's commonplace to see twelve year old girls dressed up like tarts these days, and I think it's sad they are in such a rush to stop being little girls. Who can blame them when all the cultural influences conspire to sexualize them as soon as possible. Even in elementary school they are taught about oral sex, or so I've heard. I remember I picked up four girls in my cab from their soccer game a few years ago and they started off the conversation by asking, "Do you get laid a lot?" I didn't have a comeback for that one. I was stricken dumb.
But in a way I found this Natalie Wood reincarnation even more disturbing. She was only twelve and she had already mastered the art of looking the elegant young woman. This implies much more careful study than is needed for the coarse, slutty MTV look preferred by her schoolmates. I can imagine her poring over tons of fashion magazines looking for the right 'look,' just like them. Only she has a more carefully cultivated and artful sense of taste. Personally, I wonder if their great grandmothers who spent their own freshly flowering years making cookies and darning socks weren't a lot happier than this crop. Of course young people have always yearned for the imagined independance and freedom of adulthood, not knowing about the burdens and duties that are inescapable concomitants of maturity. They don't know that the rules their parents impose on them so unfairly are nothing compared to the rules the world imposes once they are outside that protected space.
I remember reading a story a few years ago about stores like Gap selling thong underwear for preteens where it was claimed it was the girls' mothers who were buying them. This did not surprise me as I had long before come to the conclusion that mothers get a certain vicarious pleasure at seeing their daughters dressed up to look sexy. It's as if they get to relive their own ingenue days. They like their daughters to have boyfriends...boyfriends to whom they are attracted to themselves. Maybe it's analogous to fathers who like to see their sons win fights. On the other hand fathers tend to be jealous of their daughters' boyfriends, so in a family setting a balance is maintained.
When I was twelve girls of my age didn't dress like tarts. Girls dressed differently than women, with an emphasis on innocence rather than sexuality. They were rarely allowed to wear lipstick, paint their nails, wear high heels or anything like that. What was allowable started changing pretty rapidly in the late fifties but it was still assumed that every girl's goal was marriage, a home of her own and children, and it was every boy's assumed destiny to be a husband and provide for him and his wife's joint home and family.
You know, I do think Middle America was a much happier place under that system.
I hope my Natalie Wood lookalike has a lot of happiness to look forward to, with a husband and family
who still love her when her youthful bloom is a distant memory. Sometimes I wonder how my schoolboy sweetheart and her bratty little brother are doing these days, so many years later.