BOYS AND BIKINIS

Aren’t modesty and sexuality the most ridiculous issues that parents have to wade through in this day and age? The challenge is to teach what is responsible without conveying some bizarre sense of body or sexuality shame. Bodies are beautiful. We want to see them. We were designed this way. I have learned that teaching our kids about their own glorious, intrinsic value and how they can reflect that in the way they do life is a solid approach. 

I attended a highly religious private Christian school at the time that these subjects were coming up in my my life and I know that some of my intense, legalistic tendencies in regards to sexuality were a result of stuff I was taught there. As a result, I may have overdone it on the modesty speech with my first born because by the time he was six, if a JC Penney spring dress commercial came on, he would duck his eyes and say, “Gosh, some modesty please!!”

All three of my boys love dinosaurs. Russell was the President of the Dino Fan Club at our house and he knew names of creatures I could barely pronounce. We had every plastic dinosaur of every size, every Dino book (pop-up and non pop-up). We watched hours of Chased by Dinosaurs every week and played Nat Geo’s Al the Allosaurus online game almost every single day. We even made up a song that gave Russell a chance to show off every dinosaur name he knew. When a legit dinosaur museum went up in our town, my boys were ecstatic! They couldn’t wait to get in there and spot their favorites so we planned a Dino Museum day as soon as it opened.

We were winding our way around the Edmontosaurus fossil with great relish when we came upon a dimly lit room and stepped in to check it out. It was full of Dinosaur movie memorabilia; Dino movie posters lit with Hollywood flair-Jurassic Park, The Land Before Time, Disney’s Dinosaur. We checked them all out and eventually came upon one with a stunning actress (Raquel Welch) in a fur bikini, looking greatly concerned at the forefront of a dino scene. This one stopped us all in our tracks because it was so out of place. We were here to appreciate giant, ancient reptilian beings, not scantily clad fur bikini boobies. I muttered something about how inappropriate it was and Russell chimed right in with his JC Penney rhetoric, “Oh yeah, that’s so immodest! Yuck!” (yeah, right). I suggested we complain about such an inappropriate poster in a place filled with children and he agreed. We filled out a complaint card and stuck it in the box on our way out. Come on Dino Museum, don’t you know your customers are small, nerdy kids?!

A couple of weeks later we were sitting at the dinner table and Russell brought up the inappropriate poster we had seen at the dinosaur museum. (Apparently, it had quite an impact on him.) “Mama, remember that immodest poster we saw at the dinosaur museum? The one with that girl in just a fur bikini, running around with dinosaurs? Good thing we complained about that!” Elliott, who was 4 years old at the time, was sitting right beside Russell at the table, sucking his favorite two fingers. He removed his fingers from his mouth, turned to Russell in all seriousness and said, “You should show me that sometime” and then re-inserted his fingers in his mouth. I spit my drink out and laughed until my face hurt.

And isn’t this the quandry? Should I have said to Elliott at that moment, “NO!! YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE FUR BOOBIES! FUR BOOBIES ARE BAD!” Nope. Of course we want to see fur boobies! If human beings weren’t designed with those desires, no new babies would ever be born. The bigger question is, can we teach the beautiful children in our care how to manage their own sexuality? How can we successfully navigate our innocent babes through the internet, movies, waterparks and high school without completely shielding them from the internet, movies, waterparks and high school? Can we resist shaming them for the way they were made? Can we instill in our children a deep sense of their own glory and value? Can we be a safe place for them in the middle of the assault launched on their identity every single day? Can we become who they turn to when they struggle? Can we fight for our connection with them, no matter what occurs? Can we talk about things with our children that our parents never talked to us about? Yes, we can. Even if we weren’t raised with those tools, we can do it. And if we fail, we can apologize and reorient.

I raise my glass to us, parents. Never before have parents faced such competition in the realm of voices vying for our kids’ hearts. We have no small job. We must be brave and make hard conversations into safe conversations. We must shed our weird, oppressive perspectives on sexuality and get healthy ourselves. We must master the art of telling our children how loved and valuable they are, even if we were never told. We must protect, teach, empower and release. We must not be afraid of the bikinis or the boobies.