Attack of the Tweens

While strolling around Target one day, taking in the plethera of items available to me, I came upon a group of ten or eleven year old girls. They were dressed quite scantily in clothing I would not deem appropriate for a middle school student, wandering up and down the aisles singing songs about their humps, their lovely lady lumps. Needless to say I was quite stricken by this. Not that I was shocked, no, today's society has become used to the idea of our youth attempting to seem older. I was, however, slightly disgusted. I don't see how a ten year old singing about their lady lumps makes any sense; not just because they don't have any, but because I would never want my ten year old daughter to be one of these 'tweens' (not still a child, not yet a teenager, but somewhere in beTWEEN). I understand that our society is changing to be more open about sexuality or what not, but I'm not comfortable with ten year olds strolling around Target with their bodies barely covered. I also find it quite disturbing that they find it appropriate to act as such. I would never let my ten year old daughter leave the house looking like these children did. It was something similar to Abercrombie Kids gone skanky, if possible.

The question I have is whether or not these so called Tweens comprehend what they're singing along to, and if they understand the message they're sending with the clothing they sport. Have our youth truely been warped to this monstrous state of growing up before they hit their teenage years? Or are they merely naive, believing they have developed mentally beyond their years and have surpassed the state of previous ten and eleven year olds? I do not favor either option. I yearn for the days when middle schoolers were still obsessed with boy bands and PG 13 movies were still intense. Now, with lyrics of innapropriate songs embedded in minds of our youth and what's left of sensible clothing in their closets are only church clothes, we can only reminisce about times when things were not so. I fear for the state of things ten years from now; how much worse can it get?