Britney Spears Biological Superpower?
• Gender Studies
The classes of people who feel a need to blame the shifts in sexuality often attack the professional bimbos who become pop stars and adored movie actresses. Surely these wicked young women are to blame.
And their kith and kin were being damned long before movies, TV and recorded music existed.
I think it would be a bit much to accord Jessica Simpson or Christina Aguilera biological super-powers (at least over the physiology of young women, what they do to boys was programmed into the latter before we had civilization or speech).
Men grew taller as food supplies became more plentiful. Athletes become bigger as diet and biochemistry are better understood.
No reason changes in material culture couldn't make a young woman's pudenda and secondary sexual characteristics develop sooner. (Young boys, it is the nature of our sexist culture that boys don't matter as much as girls. Poor girls.)
Quite a headache for the conservatives who think repression - oh, I'm sorry, abstinence - will make all this go away. You can't beat biology.
Calgary pediatrician Dr. Peter Nieman sees it almost every day, girls as young as nine developing breast buds and growing pubic hair. But what really shocks him is how young these girls begin menstruating.
They are definitely menstruating at an earlier age, he said.
Some of it has to do with genes and when their mothers began menstruation. In girls, puberty can begin as early as age seven.
But 20 years ago, that statistic was closer to age 15, said Nieman.
It could have to do with better nutrition today, he said. Kids today have better access to a wide variety of good foods but compare that to times of the Depression when people were living off food stamps.
Nobody knows for certain why girls are entering puberty earlier, but there are plenty of theories.