This is an area that I often have a bit of an internal debate about, in regards to my own teenage daughter. At what point does her need for self expression and autonomy cancel out my need to impose my moral or cultural sensitivities onto her? Is it an age based thing? Does it depend on her maturity - and what is maturity anyway? I suspect a lot of what happens during the decade between 10 and 20 is about removing "parent" as the main frame of reference and substituting "society/peers/social mores" as that reference point. Hence the need to adopt the "uniform" of one's peers (learning about social acceptability) or your own "unique" dress sense (learning about individuation away from the group) rather than what your mum thinks you should be wearing.
I also think we do girls a disservice when we see skimpy clothing and straight away assume it's about "flaunting" or sexuality. It may be about dressing in a way that is acceptable to her group of friends, or it may even be an asexual act of power ("I'll dress however I ****ing want to, thanks"). Really, it's not fair (and has never been fair) that boys/men can strip to the waist when the weather is hot but as girls/women we are supposed to keep our lust-inducing flesh carefully behind a screen of clothing. WTF is that about?
BUT by the same token, girls/young women wearing skimpy clothing *has* been sexualised in recent times to a much greater degree than in the past - in advertising, in music videos, online, on the telly, etc. To a certain degree this inculturates or invites boys/young men to adopt a more objectified (and even predatory) view of women, and in some social circles more so than others (I'm thinking now of some of the choicer conversations overheard in a military setting). It's specifically those individuals (rather than every male on the planet) whose gaze I'm interested in shielding my teenaged daughter from. Not because she's not entitled to flaunt her emerging sexuality in ways that she feels comfortable with (because she is), but because she's not yet armed to deal with the reality of sexual objectification.
AND finally, let's not forget that young women are still subject to a whole load of pressure to meet various cultural ideals, whether it's a certain degree of hairlessness, or a certain degree of not-arguing-back-ness, or a certain level of attractiveness, and mashed up in there still, all these years down the track, is the one about "nice girls" being the ones you want to take home to mum and dad. And "nice" girls don't dress a certain way, do they?? I can't blame any young woman for wanting to bust out of that, but I also don't want anyone judging my daughter badly over an extra inch of flesh.
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