On March 19, the Wall Street Journal did it again: It ran yet another article focused on yet another neurotic element of modern mother-daughter relationships. This time, it wasn't about Tiger Mothers and their propensity for Sybil-esque piano drills but about teenage girls who wear sexy clothing and the mothers who buy it for them. The thesis of author Jennifer Moses seems to be that, "In recent years ... promiscuity has hit new heights (it always does!), with 'sexting' among preteens, 'hooking up' among teens and college students, and a constant stream of semi-pornography from just about every media outlet" and that it's all due to those Daisy Dukes and tank tops mothers let their little girls out of the house in. Moses seems convinced that mothers purchase their daughters sexy clothing not out of na'veté or fashion consciousness, but rather out of some noxious stew of regret over their own sexual choices, envy of their daughters' beauty and desperate will to be friends with their kids. She identifies mother-daughter manicures as a gateway drug to moms coughing up the cash for baby's first garter belt. Personally, I find this questionable at best; after all, when my mom and I go to get pedicures together, it's mainly so we can kick back and complain about my dad and brother where we definitely won't be heard, and the occasion has yet to be chased by a stroll through a lingerie joint.

What I feel Moses misses is that sexy clothes, makeup and high heels aren't the causes of teen promiscuity, but symptoms of a culture that promotes sex among increasingly younger people. Teenagers these days can't flip a channel without seeing a Hollywood starlet under the guise of a high school student engaging in some kind of sexual activity. Films like Mean Girls and Easy A and shows such as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and The Secret Life of the American Teenager all echo one another in their exhibition of nubile bedroom exploits. Whether life imitates art or art imitates life is, therefore, inconsequential. Whatever is being copied has been reproduced soundly, and it is now quite common for teenagers to have sex, or at least to imitate the cultural rituals surrounding sex depicted on TV.

Yet even the media can't claim sole responsibility for promiscuity among modern teenagers. The old moral principles that used to shame girls out of sexual activity-or rather, out of admitting to it-have begun to dissolve. Birth control is readily available and customizable to individual needs. Marriage rates are on the drop, and divorce rates on the rise. With these trends comes the understanding that sex isn't exclusively tied to a lifelong partnership.

All of this seems to terrify Moses. "If I could do it again," she writes, "I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?" Moses seems to believe that our mothers, in big hair and bell bottoms, single-handedly discovered both sex and regret. Her article smacks of projection and the bittersweet realization that many daughters come to: That their mothers see them as miniature clones of themselves.

But perhaps Moses should consider that our generation is somewhat different than hers. If she and her peers suffer from shame and regret over their sexual experiences, it is only because they are still bound up, in some way, by the regressive, shame-centric sexual mores with which they were raised. Moses seems to worry that girls who engage in sexual activity now will suffer the fate of their mothers, sinking later in life into deep mires of self-loathing. Yet whether or not that happens is really more up to the mothers than the daughters; if no one tells a young girl that it's shameful and nasty and naughty to have sex, she'll never think to hang her head over it.

Therefore, I propose that we let the girls who care to dress sexy do so to their hearts' content. The ones who don't care to shouldn't have to-I certainly never did. But what we do owe young girls is honesty; sex affects everyone differently in some ways but similarly in others. If we refuse to equip girls with birth control and the materials to have safe sex when we are perfectly aware that they're having it, any resultant destruction is our responsibility. Sexy clothing isn't going away, and even the longest skirts and sleeves won't prevent pregnancy. Condoms, however, have a much better success rate.