Value.

I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was in 9th grade and I was getting ready to go to my first high school dance.

My mom bought me a knee-length, black dress with ruffles on the bottom. I teamed it up with a cashmere sweater (just in case I didn’t foxtrot enough to warm up) and some tall, chunky heels with a strap to hold them on my awkward feet.

Shirley Temple curls lined my face and I borrowed a tube of my mom’s Mary Kay lipstick.

I felt beautiful.

My best friend and I walked into the open gym entrance. We stood there like two deer staring down an oncoming Yukon XL.

My once beautiful dress now felt like one of those giant parkas they stuck on you at Disney World when it rained and my pearl necklace dulled in the muggy darkness.

Oh. Oh no. This is not a dance. They’re not even looking at each other. My feet went numb from the heels, the heat made a streamline for my face, and I suddenly pictured myself in a hot, sweaty, Axe body spray-infused jungle of sin.

Needless to say, I hobbled shoeless outside, called my mom in tears and exclaimed, “Come pick me up. There were disco lights!”

Here’s the point at which you ask: Why are you telling us this lame story about the time you were Amish? Where are you going with this?

When my mom picked me up that night, she didn’t spend all evening constructing letters to clothing companies about the message they were sending to me. She didn’t boycott Nelly and other rappers. She didn’t even sit me down and show me a Powerpoint on my value as a female and human being.

She hugged me. She told me she was sorry that I was embarrassed and felt left out. Looking back, she must have also inwardly pinky-promised God that night to emphatically and consistently tell me “No” for the next 5 plus years.

Many a skirt angrily hit the dressing room floor. I remember one time dramatically requesting that she “just order me a scuba diving suit” so I could just end this bathing suit trip nightmare.

Let me let you in on a sad truth about our society: There are always going to be stores like Victoria’s Secret targeting young girls with lines like, “Bright Young Things.” There are always going to be the Hollister’s of the world that think 8-year-olds need padded bikini tops.

But you know what there won’t always be? Parents who are willing to build value the hard way. The old-fashioned way. The crying, you-don’t-love-me way.

I don’t know many middle-school girls who have the fiscal means to buy lacy underwear with “Wild” written across it. I don’t know many middle-school girls who repeatedly complete loads of laundry enough to hide their innuendo-laden boy shorts.

This isn’t as much of a Victoria’s Secret problem as it is a societal problem. A grown-up problem. A parenting problem.

I am not a parent so I am trying to tread lightly here (otherwise, I will get payback in full and a stolen bag of “Pretty Young Things” in a few decades).

But I have been a teenager. I have been that girl in shoulder pads when everyone else had bellybutton rings. I have (for a limited time only) had a body that would have rocked every miniskirt and bikini in this town.

But my parents didn’t use my youth as an excuse. They didn’t use my cute physique as an excuse. They didn’t use me not fitting in as an excuse.

They didn’t preach to me about my value; they fought ferociously for it until I could see it myself.

And that beats a letter to some CEO in a tall building any day of the week.