I'm watching my own daughter grow up. I see this overt sexual culture coming at her like a Mack truck. She's in seventh grade.

Marketing to girls constantly presents a hypersexualized idea of girls; they're expected to appear sexy but be cut off from their sexuality.

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

There is a way hook ups are serving young women. And it was important for me to always talk about how behaviours were serving girls, not just making them the victims.

I asked a high school girl about unreciprocated oral sex and said, "What if guys were asking you to get them a glass of water and never offered to you a glass of water? Would you put up with that?" She burst out laughing. It never occurred to her.

One of the challenges is to create an equally positive, satisfying sense of femininity and feminine identity in a different way so that there are things you're saying yes to and satisfying that urge that your daughter has to be assert her girlness. The surface level of the culture, and really several inches into it, makes that very hard to do. I hate to put another thing on parents' plates. But the culture is very intentional in what it's telling your daughter and what it's telling you about the message of femininity. And if you're not intentional and conscious back, you lose.

For years we've used the bases analogy - with intercourse being the "ultimate sex" even though that's probably not going to feel good to girls. That model doesn't let you say "I like it at second base, maybe I'll stay here."