The disappearing tween years

Page 2 of 3 -- Parents report walking in on their children watching videos on MTV where the dancing and language are explicitly sexual. One mother told of hearing the popular song ''Candy Shop" by rapper 50 Cent -- the No. 1 song in the nation this week -- and quickly realizing it was about oral sex.

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''My girls love MTV, but I hate it," says Laurie Maiden, 47, of Weymouth. ''When I see it on, I tell them to shut it off." Maiden has three girls, ages 9, 13, and 15. Though she hasn't had any major problems with them, Maiden doesn't like the way the older two -- and their friends -- dress. ''If a girl back when I was in high school wore the clothes these girls are wearing today. . . . But these girls see it all the time -- they think it's normal, the shirts with the belly showing, the low-cut neck." Maiden said she recently threw out a drawer full of thong underwear belonging to her 15-year-old.

Her 13-year-old, Corey, was shopping with her friends the other day at South Shore Plaza in Braintree. The five girls -- four of them seventh-graders, the other an eighth-grader -- said everyone they know wears thong underwear. (The trick, they said, is sneaking it by parents, who do the laundry.) They say they've been wearing makeup since sixth grade. The girls were in Abercrombie looking at skirts but didn't buy them. ''They're expensive, and it would be a waste if you can't wear them to school," said Shayna Albanese, 12.

The girls attend Chapman Middle School in Weymouth, where the dress code prohibits skirts or dresses shorter than fingertip length from the knee and tank tops with straps skimpier than three fingers wide. No words can be emblazoned on the seats of pants. Belly shirts, spandex shorts, low-cut necklines, and clothing with obscene or suggestive comments are banned.

''Our goal was to create an environment that would encourage and allow children to be successful middle-school kids," says principal Sheila Fisher. ''If you look especially at girls in this age group, they have the physical maturity of someone who is older, and the social awareness of what people who are older do, through videos, movies, and older siblings. But they really don't have the intellectual maturity to handle situations they might find themselves in, and that's a tough thing for these kids. They're growing up faster."

Asked what sort of sexual commercials they've seen on television, the middle-school girls mention Victoria's Secret bras and underwear, Viagra, and Trojan condoms. They don't believe what girls their age wear -- the belly shirts, the tight tank tops, the low-rider jeans -- is provocative. Still, Karin Nachtrab, 12, reports that ''old guys" sometimes beep the horn at her and her friends. ''It's gross. I'm like, 'Dude, I'm young.' "   Continued...