NINE-YEAR-OLD PROSTITUTES?
Kevin McGehee has an important, disturbing post on teen prostitutes and the pimps who recruit them--at the mall, and other places parents consider "safe." Check it out, since it's not the kind of post that tends to make it up to the higher echelons of the blogosphere's linkage gene pool. It runs counter to the "if it feels good, do it" school of blogging because it suggests there may be negative consequences for just doing whatever feels good.
To Kevin's post I'll also add that Japan has seen a similar problem in recent years. School girls are increasingly likely to sell themselves for a few thousand yen so they can buy the latest cell phone gizmo or whatever. A couple of things seem to be feeding the problem over there. First, sex has been largely disconnected from marriage for a long time. Pornography is everywhere, "love hotels" (or what we'd call no-tell motels) dot the roadsides every few kilometers and advertise their "rest" and "stay" rates openly, and virginity just isn't something most of Japan's young seem to value. Second, materialism seems to be feeding the problem. As materialistic as Americans tend to be, the Japanese have us beat hands down. They may not have the space to own as much stuff as we do, but they do tend to fill every inch of space in their control with some kind of gadget. Those gadgets cost money; Japan's economy has been in the tank for 10 years, making money scarce. When you have a largely values-free culture lacking in any serious form of religiosity to define and strengthen values, coupled with a lousy economy and a strong materialistic drive, well, you get young girls selling themselves to buy a few trinkets. Add to the above a tendency to infantilize pop culture and entertainment, and you're just defining sexuality down (in terms of age).