What happed to feminism?

Back in the '60s, a lot of us really believed that women would control their lives and their sexual power would work for the positive as feminism spread around the world.

Well, what happened? Women spend their lives, their youth and their family's fortunes on weddings, showers, proms, cruises and other fripperies that end up meaning nothing as everything falls apart a few years later. Nothing matters but the image and the dreams of a 'princess land' that's unobtainable. Many women have no control over their lives at all, and examples abound, from Britney to Paris to, now, Miley.

Doug Thompson has some choice words about parents who ask him to photograph their young daughters in sexual images for the chance for 'fame and fortune': What are these parents thinking?

Just in today's news from Florida, a school teacher loses her job because it was so easy to make money wearing a bikini on a sleazy fishing boat to titillate rich 'sportsmen'. (Via Daily Pulp.)

And the 'DC Madam' commits suicide after being convicted in a case that lets her rich, powerful patrons continue in their licentious ways.

Thompson quotes from a new book on this phenomenon, Girls Gone Skank:

Instead of advancing women's social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages.

So much for the Age of Aquarius and Women Power. Those of us who took control of our own lives seem like a dying breed right now.