Iheard about it in my kitchen before I read about it in the newspaper: After visiting an expanded Tysons Corner mall in Virginia this fall, my 23-year-old daughter said, ''You won't believe how weird Victoria's Secret's gotten: It's all red and black with a bunch of mannequins that look like porn stars.'' Some shoppers were so outraged at the raunchy lingerie display that they threatened to boycott the store; others just yawned.

I've been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency. Mothers voice distress over the suggestive clothing their teen and preteen daughters are wearing, inside and outside the house. In fact, conflict over clothing is what prompts them to come in for family therapy. The daughters themselves may be imperious or sullen, but almost all employ the everyone-is-doing-it excuse. And an awful lot of girls are doing it.

Women once complained about being reduced to sex objects. Now, their daughters are volunteering to be sex objects. And while parents register disapproval, they often fail to take action. In that failure, they unwittingly place their daughters at risk by allowing them to bypass girlhood. When a daughter moves straight from little girl to woman, she's playing a role rather than gradually learning to live her own life. These girls may seem whole, but they aren't. There is often a lost girl inside.

Have we come a long way, baby? The Lennon Sisters and Gidget of girlhoods gone by are light-years from today's Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. The bridge between these two generations of stars was Madonna -- before she had children and cleaned up her act. Sometime over the past couple of decades, while we adults weren't looking, class went out and trash came in.

For some reason, many adult women are failing to follow the instincts they've relied on for eons to protect themselves and their daughters. No longer are there common standards of dress and behavior -- which parents, schools and society used to work together to enforce.

Mothers who come into my office frequently express doubt about their own judgment, not knowing where to draw the line when their daughters dress provocatively. Girls, meanwhile, freely admit that they are only aping what they see in the media.

Some parents are just misguided when it comes to monitoring their daughters' dress. I will be the first to admit that mental health experts have contributed to the problem. A good example is the school of thought once prevalent among psychologists that even young kids need to have a voice in all decisions that affect them -- with the corollary that, if they marshal a particularly good argument, they can often get what they want.

Another even bigger problem I see is indecision: Parents lack confidence in their instincts and in their judgment. There are lots of parents who are uncomfortable with their grown-up role and want to be young again; their kids don't want to grow up, or wish to postpone it as long as possible.

I've polled a number of therapist colleagues, and virtually everyone agreed: We almost never see autocratic, dictatorial parents today; it is far more common to see parents who have relinquished power, and kids who have assumed it. Which makes for very unhappy young people. They are petulant and angry; they lack respect for their parents because their parents haven't inspired respect through real leadership.

Without that leadership, kids have trouble recognizing lines of propriety. Boys don't know where the line is and where to stop; and girls -- or gurrrrrrrrls, as the new terminology puts it -- who have become accustomed to their deliberately outre styles of dress, are displaying increasingly aggressive sexual behavior.

The girls who dress the most outrageously are often those most starved for adult male attention, first and foremost from their fathers. This happens most commonly with girls whose fathers have disappeared from their lives, perhaps following a divorce, or because their workaholic schedules leave them little time for their children. Children who are raised with attention and affection tend to identify with and admire their parents. This identification is the basis for both discipline and the transmission of values. Without it, parents can't do their job.

While talk and reality shows and tell-all memoirs thrive and a majority of teenagers today say that they would like to be famous, there are still girls and women who value privacy and modesty. They reveal a quiet confidence, a different kind of glamour. Even famous people can be modest. Take Audrey Hepburn, who has no counterpart today. Part of her allure lay in the way she embodied humility and modesty. Yet she also conveyed spirit and originality and a strong sense of self.

Even though she worked in an industry that often promotes commonness, she was an uncommon woman. Even though our daughters live in a culture that clearly promotes coarseness, they can be uncommon, too.

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