Today Oprah issues an urgent call to her viewers to take action against child predators in an all-new episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “What you are going to see is going to shock you to the core, but I'm asking you to please not turn away because this is happening in our country, to our children, in the United States every day,” says Winfrey.

During the episode, Oprah implores viewers to help put a stop to child predators by contacting their Senators in support of U.S. Senate Bill 1738. Called the PROTECT Our Children Act, U.S. Senate Bill 1738 has bipartisan support and is currently before the U.S. Senate. Oprah.com will feature information and links to connect viewers with their Senators.

Seriously, I don't want to watch this show. I know I will be beyond disturbed.

Reading a mommy blog one day I clicked a link that said, "Sex Stuff." As it was a mommy blog I figured it was an innocuous link to instructions on "the cat position" or ways to trick my husband into getting off the computer to do it more.

What I found was an extensive free pornography web that has disturbed me in a profound way ever since. It was all free. It all involved children and teenagers and it all tied sex to violence. A great deal of it was written in the first person of the victim professing how much they loved the heinous acts being done to them.

Porn ain't what it used to be.

Today's pornography is not innocuous photos of consenting adults having sex.

America we have a problem. It begins with our laws and making excuses for people who have no interest in controlling themselves. "He didn't mean it, he's a good guy except, but I've known him my whole life and the devil must have possessed him, she came onto him and he couldn't help himself." You've heard the lines, maybe you've said the lines, that excuse a 40-year-old man from preying on a 12-year-old child because she has budding breasts.

Well, now our children are budding breasts at 8, 9 and 10 and sometimes younger.

Are we, as a society, just going to keep reducing the age of "he couldn't help himself" to apply to elementary and primary school children who have no control over early puberty, which now affects half our girls? Or are we going to rear up like Mother Lionesses and protect our young?

Every year I see more families retreat inside their homes and create what is essentially their own self-made prisons.

They stop associating with their neighbors, they no longer meet new people, they quit going to school, they don't let their children play outside anymore, they don't let their kids ride bikes down the street, and slumber parties are out. I vacillate between thinking they are the only people with any damn sense to thinking they might have gone over the edge into crazy. My opinion of them is generally related to whether I have recent seen a show like Oprah's today or watched the news.

We're living in a society where every male is a suspect from fathers to brothers to grandparents to uncles to cousins to neighbors to friends' dads.

Why?

Because we don't have the integrity or the guts to put the people who are violating our young in prison and not let them out again.

In effect - we're creating our own prisons inside our houses because we don't feel its "fair" to put sexual predators in prison for life.

Not a good choice America. Change your mind. Watch the show and join me in sending letters to our representatives to pass Senate Bill 1738 - PROTECT Our Children Act.

PROTECT would:

* Authorize over $320 million over the next five years in desperately needed funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation.

* Mandate that child rescue be a top priority for law enforcement receiving federal funding.

* Allocate funds for high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators.

Oh and if you think it's not political - you're mistaken.

Grier Weeks, Executive Director of the National Association to Protect Children, testifies before Congress on Oct. 17, 2007. Weeks discusses the U.S. government's failure to act on information that could interdict hundreds of thousands of sexual predators and rescue hundreds of thousands of children.

"Now, the 110th Congress has the opportunity to do what the 109th, and this administration, did not: Fight back. Pay what it costs. Disrupt this market. Go get these children."

The Republican Congress and George W. Bush's administration failed to act. The FBI representative in the below video says their priorities were International Terrorism.

What it, the FBI and the Republican Administration who sets the FBI's agenda for the lat 8 years that this evil problem has grown exponentially, failed to recognize is the mass exploitation of children in violent pornography IS internal TERRORISM.

Some thing are just worth paying taxes for.

Read more on this issue:

I Agree With Bill O'Reilly (SCREAM!!!!)

Sexual Urban Legend

Photo Source: These are the Senators sponsoring the law to protect our kids: Sen. and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Joe Biden (D), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R),
Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D), Rep. Joe Barton (R)

There was a story on MSNBC.com Today Show, Too young? Preteen girls get leg, bikini waxes, about how 20% of bikini wax customers at one Hollywood salon are tweens - pre-teen children.

"Nearly 20 percent of the clients that Nance Mitchell sees for bikini waxes in her Beverly Hills, Calif., salon are tweens, she says. . . 12 is the new normal."

"But nothing prepared her for being asked by one client to book a bikini wax appointment for her 8-year-old daughter."

{{{{{GASP}}}}}

Did you share my first reaction?

But, then I thought - wait, why is it the waxing that is making me gasp in shock?

Isn't it more alarming that 8 year olds have enough pubic hair to wax?

The sub head of the story is inaccurate: Moms are bringing daughters to spas for hair removal before puberty

The fact is that 50% of girls are getting their periods by age 10 and doctors now consider it within the "range of normal" for girls to develop outward signs of puberty, including breasts and pubic hair, by age 8. It's not that even medically alarming for 6 or 7 year olds to begin puberty, and many do begin developing breast buds or pubic hair.

Isn't it more emotionally alarming and worthy of a {{{{gasp}}}} that we're seeing a dramatic shift in girls' puberty development and no public health official is coming on the nightly news declaring,

"We're going to find an answer to this most disturbing development in girls, who hold the future reproductive burden for our entire species. In the meantime, don't let your daughters drink the water full of pharmaceuticals. Stop injecting milk and meat cows and other animals with hormones. Be wary that extra weight causes girls to make estrogen and develop pubic hair and boobs early. Avoid plastics. We're going to outlaw high fructose corn syrup in foods directly marketed to children. We understand the reproductive future of our entire nation depends on it!"

Instead, we hear about the early pubic hair trend in the fashion and beauty section of MSNBC's Today Show with a sexualization of girls slant.

Shouldn't those mothers be ashamed of themselves? the story basically asks.

Should they?

The story includes a quote by Philadelphia aesthetician Melanie Engle who says the 8 year old request for a bikini wax, "was about the mother's obsession with her daughter being a supermodel."

OK. I can buy that. I've seen mothers primp their daughters as a photographer and photographer's assistant. There is definite maternal beauty pressure.

Yet, if there was nothing to wax, if she were hairless, then her mother wouldn't be thinking her daughter needed to have anything removed to "look like a supermodel." Right?

Last year I did a story about Nair directly marketing to tween and teen girls with a "new" line of hair removal cream, Nair Pretty.

"It's profoundly disturbing," I wrote. It's also disturbing that Nair caught onto this early pubic hair trend and marketed to it, before I, as a parent, caught up with it.

I also went off on some radio DJ who was bashing Lordes, Madonna's young daughter, for having a unibrow and a slight mustache. I was appalled at the DJ's lack of class and placing all this beauty pressure on a young girl.

One brave mother, Athena of 1001 Petals, wrote in the comments section of that post, "I feel kind of bad now for telling my husband yesterday that if our daughter turned out to be as hairy as me, I'd start taking her to an esthetician for waxing as soon as it became evident -- unless she said she didn't care for it. This is because if you wax regularly at such a young age, you're saved a lifetime of regular waxing later on down the road. I had to take myself starting at 12 yrs of age, and now at 30 it is still practically a daily maintenance routine. . .I spend hundreds a year and a lot of time bothering with it."

Athena's right. The more I consider this hairy subject, the more I realize that I will likely assist my daughter, in some way, with her pubic hair and if she developed a mustache or side burns, for goodness sake, I'd help her eradicate it. Like I'm going to throw her to the Mean Girls and hope she survives?

Swim suits are not designed to cover the pubic area. They haven't been for about 40 years.

In "Clean" Bikini Line I wrote about my own struggle since my teen years with various methods of shaving, Nairing, one excruciating episode with Neet and a vicious chemical burn.

I'm amused by Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS), but I still keep my bush rather trimmed, as a courtesy to my husband. I wear swim shorts rather than show off my all my private hairs when we go swimming. The itching always gets to me mid-grow.

But, is my daughter really going to be into wearing one of these modest suits that would cover her bikini area? Am I going to make her be the only kid at the swim party or pool to do so?

I shave my pits and my legs. I pluck my eyebrows. I search for stray hairs on my chin and pluck them immediately.

It is only my budget that keeps me from getting all this hair waxed off. When I lived in NYC there was hair & waxing salon on every corner and it was a mere $30 to get my bikini and eyebrows done. I did it whenever I could afford it.

It's the least painful than other methods, it lasts longer and it was the ONLY thing that prevented razor or chemical burn - in other words waxing was the only solution that I didn't trade unwanted hair for an unwanted rash.

It seems to me a young daughter growing early pubic hair is an even bigger motivator for waxing.

Certainly, the minute girls develop breasts or pubic hair society treats her with less respect and she hears more negative and sexual comments about her body. The more she looks like a teenager or woman, the sooner she will be seen as an object for male entertainment, instead of the three-demensionable little girl, the young child, she really is.

What bigger incentive is there to hide pubic hair, keep it as private as possible, or have it removed?

Does the removal of hair further sexualize girls, because the latest fashion is for adult women to remove hair and get a Brazillian wax? Ironically (and a little disturbingly) making them look more like children.

Or does the removal of a symptom or sign of puberty buy a little girl some more time to be a child?

Please comment, I really am interested in exploring this issue further.

Empowering Girls: Hootchy Clothes

Second Generation Mean Girl

Empowering Girls: Ho'oponopono for Girl Fights

Empowering Girls: Breast Cancer Risks

Empowering Girls: Early Puberty

Precocious Puberty

Image Source: Ohana Swimwear

Parents should be aware that there are three things that increase a girl's risk for breast cancer:

* If she starts her period early.

* If she does not have one baby before age 30.

* If she does not breastfeed.

From an interview with Teresa Knight, a St. Louis, MO OB/GYN with a Masters in Neuro-anatomy, concerning the risks of precocious puberty or early puberty.

Girls now start their periods three years earlier than previous generations. Fifty percent now start their periods by 10 years of age, increasing their risk of breast cancer.

Empowering Girls: Early Puberty

Precocious Puberty

Please click on this link to see a CNN news story about Body of Knowledge: Puberty.

Girls today are reaching puberty around three years earlier than in previous generations. The average age of menstruation was 15 years, it is now 12. Many girls are menstruating at 9 years old, outward signs of puberty, such as pubic hair, as early as 6 years old.

The cause is unknown, so there is little parents can do to prevent it.

Some suspects include environmental toxicity, eating from estrogen-filled plastic products, medicinal hormones in the water supply, hormones in milk and estrogen-like chemicals in soy milk, inundating girls with sexualized images in the media, even rising obesity rates in today's children. Read more about these causes (with relevant source links) in my earlier article: Precocious Puberty.

Concerns of early and prolonged estrogen include higher risk of various cancers. So I wonder if the danger of estrogen-related birth control increases as well?

I have some concerns about fertility that I have yet to see addressed: If a girl's puberty process is on fast forward what does that mean for her future fertility? Will she reach menopause at the traditional time or will that also occur earlier? Can she still expect to be fertile in her late 20s and early 30s? Is there any way to answer that question before this generation of girls reach that milestone?

Here is an interview with Dr. Sherrill Sellman from iHealthTube.com where she calls it a public health disaster effecting one out of six people worldwide in this generation of children.

This news cast is saying they've identified a new factor - stress in the home.

Lest you think boys are in the clear and unaffected, think about who needs an overdose in estrogen, or phytoestrogens, even less than girls? Boys.

At this point, I have far more questions than I do answers for you. Bookmark and subscribe to Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me, as I research the issues, I'll keep you informed.

Did you know that it is now common for girls to start their menstrual cycles when they are nine years old? Pubic hair and breasts begin showing up one to two years prior to menstruation, which put many girls in precocious puberty or early puberty at around age seven.

I find this shocking.

My first reaction is to find out the cause of such early development and put an abrupt and definitive stop to it before it effects my daughter.

Yet, immediately, I realize that I do not have that kind of power as a parent.

It's not something I get to decide, like how much and what kind of television she's exposed to. It's pretty much up to God and some kind of backwards evolution.

Evolutionarily speaking females are having babies later in life, as opposed to earlier, right? Marrying and reproducing later rather than earlier. Why then, would the biological event of puberty be happening sooner rather than later?

Doing a Google search on the early maturation in girls was upsetting at best. There are lots of theories, some credible and some not, and it's kind of hard to tell the two apart.

The best article I found was Growing Up Too Fast published in the Denver Post, by Jackie Avner who took the time to research the various theories.

Now, as you know I already told my six-year-old daughter Ainsley that we, females, bleed every month to explain the tampons and pads. She sees me naked nearly every day, as I can't seem to train her to leave me alone in the bathroom. So, the pubic hair and breasts are things we've discussed frequently and openly.

I must be honest though, I previously told her she'd probably get breasts and hair when she was about 12 years old, because that's when I got them and I thought it was hereditary. I had to amend that information and inform her that these things might be happening several years earlier.

Logan Levkoff, Sexologist & Sexuality Educator and author of Third Base Ain't What It Used to Be: What Your Kids Are Learning About Sex Today- and How to Teach Them toBecome Sexually Healthy Adults had this to say on the topic of early maturation of girls, I think that there are two issues to consider: the implications of early menarche and how we teach our girls that an adult body does not mean that they are supposed to engage in adult behaviors and how to we teach our girls to love their bodies (and their menstrual status), when they get so many messages about how horrible having a period is, Levkoff said.

Also, Levkoff added, we need to teach fathers to remain present and affectionate with their daughters even as they physically transition through puberty.

As a mother, I can not control the onset of puberty, however I am her primary influence about the attitudes surrounding her femininity.

If I am curled up on the couch whining and moaning about how horrible my period is or muttering against God and his blasted curse, there is not much chance she will look forward to, embrace or accept her own period in a positive way regardless of when it happens for her.

Avoiding the issue that very young girls do have very adult bodies on today's elementary school playground would very likely backfire. But, for today I have to digest this information before I can begin that dialogue. In other words - she might be ready for further discussion but I, most certainly, am not.

And her Daddy, maybe we won't tell him about puberty till she's 13 and he's prepared for it - I'm only kidding! Jeez.

Further resources:
This is a fairly recent New York Times article about different cases.
This article blames early menstruation on childhood obesity.
This article describes gonadotropin-independent precocious puberty
This article insists it might be the absence of a father and the presence of a step-father.
This article hypothesises it's exposure to unknown contaminants.
These studies link early puberty to the mother's exposure to estrogen (in creams or medication) or similar hormones during pregnancy.
This article blames it on hormones present in cow's milk and a lack of attachment parenting.