Where is Tom Jones When You Need Him!

The Welsh crooner, Tom Jones, had a big hit back in the "ancient days" of the 1970's -- "She's a Lady" was its title. Well, a recent study has found that traditional lady-like behavior is on the wane in the case of teenage girls. Here's a bit of the article that reports it.

Professor Colin Pritchard, who led the research, said: 'Girls now significantly smoke and binge-drink more than boys. They truant, steal and fight at similar rates, and start under-age sex earlier than boys.'

He said binge-drinking, which was admitted by nearly a third of girls in their early teenage years, drove other anti-social behaviour such as stealing, fighting, taking drugs and engaging in risky sex.

'There is an element of following role models set by the media,' he said 'We can look back to the Spice Girls where girls were set an example in which aggressive behaviour was considered praiseworthy.

'It is also the case that girls are expected to behave differently today than they were in the past, and that has affected the of boys too.'

The study comparison found that the number of boys admitting to smoking has nearly halved to just over a quarter, while the number of girls who smoke has risen to nearly half. The number of girls who admit having smoked cannabis has gone up nearly fourfold, to one in five.

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Of course, there are those who will celebrate this as liberation for young women. But, it is a sad commentary about the values of those who see it as such. For anyone to argue that copying behavior that was (and still is by many feminists) considered to be the worst behavior of young men is liberating for young women is, to my mind, silly if it weren't so serious.

For the last 40 years certain segments of the American intelligencia have sought to make boys less "boyish. It seems as though the results are that girls have become more "boyish."

Anyone who thinks that a young woman who smokes and drinks to excess and makes herself available to a variety of young men (or womesn) sexually will be treated with respect is, in the long run, out of touch with reality.

When I was a kid there was a rhyme that went like this:

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice

What are little boys made of? Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.

Well, not anymore. More's the pity for the girls.