Oh yeah, this too.
http://www.daddies.com/

And you know what they say about Incest; it's a game the whole family can enjoy!!

Arranged marriage?

Now if you could only get rid of all the dads, you could take this from creepy to hot in two seconds...

Not that I don't think the event is creepy, but the word choice and way the photographs were taken reinforce that impression. A LOT.

The assumption is that only reason any girl ever wants to lose her virginity is to fill a Daddy-shaped hole in her heart.

'Cause, you know, good Christian girls only have sex for validation, never for enjoyment.

If most teenage girls would not be caught dead dancing with their dads, the girls at the ball twirled for hours with their game but stiff fathers.

oh yeah. Men are mundane and intelligent and women can't even manage knife and fork.

Yet the graying men in the shadow of their glittering daughters were the true focus of the night. To

and again.
those frail, teenaged white roses, won't have sex because they are trained not to decide, do, want anything. they are their men's trophy, nothing else.

I find the whole idea of a "purity ball" intellectually repugnant, but this bit about taking two "flushed, sleepy" young girls for a creepy walk around the creepy lake is bullshit. Because, see, the two young girls are his daughters, you ignorant twat. I know the whole idea of a man having an intimate and caring relationship with girls he doesn't want to fuck is utterly antithetical to your thinking about how men's minds work, but not only is it possible -- it's actually fairly common.

Your attitude says a lot more about your twisted preconceptions than it does about the father or his daughters -- their prior participation in a misogynistic fundamentalist cult ritual notwithstanding.

Wow.

Again, the purity balls are creepy for lots of reasons, but just because you (we) don't care for religious people and don't agree with their lifestyle doesn't make them fucking child rapists.

And EWWWW. Being escorted to the ball by your boyfriend's dad? Creepy McCreepersons.

Encouraging fathers to view their daughters sexuality as a commodity they must guard=bad.

I thought, absent the purity ball context, that the father taking his daughters for a walk around the lake was sweet. Those are the kind of memories that kids often cherish.

It's not?

Also, @ 23: being involved in your kids' lives and attending a father-teenage daughter dance centered around, ahem, viginity are two very different things.

Really? How so?

Be really specific.

Some of these gals will turn out okay. Yeah yeah, some will be uptight, but I'm sure some latte-sipping Volvo-driving parents at the Unitarian Church are finding some other way to tighten similar mental screws in their kids' noggins.

These gals just might hold off a little longer. Or do all SORTS of things except the ol' in-out. Or they might grow up to feel very NAUGHTY about the fun they're having, which might be a benefit.

I can only imagine. I grew up with no religion, one Scandinavianish parent, and just didn't receive a whole bunch of "NAUGHTY!" instruction in those years. I was pretty much left alone, and to this day, I suspect Madonna is having more fun. She feels NAUGHTY, breaking x,y, and z rules.

Okay, it's 11 pm, time for me to grab some baby oil and go fuck my plastic grocery bag collection.

Most of the fathers and daughters at this thing probably felt pretty awkward about this shit, but they go along, because their church expects them to.

And it's constantly reinforced in lowbrow movies and TV shows as well: The former "playboy" daddy who feels the need to be a pitbull to his little girl's boyfriends is a stock character. Same old crap, just with rented tuxes and formals from Sears.

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

Every child deserves a god-fearing mother and father.

This should be a regular feature! It's awesome the way Erica DEMOLISHES Christianity, man.

At best, some sort of father/daughter dinner-dance, with a bar so he could get a martini, would be much more his speed. Something that didn't cost much, and ended early enough so he could get home to watch Johnny Carson.

But beyond that, both he and my mom knew enough about life to know that it's not a good idea to try to get a kid to "pledge" to anything. It's much better to know your kid, and what he/she is thinking, and what scares and thrills them about how their body is changing. Going through puberty is tough enough without constant harping about the evils of sex.

The girls are "pure" because they haven't had sex. Sex, therefore, is bad, evil, horrible, dangerous, etc.; and the girls will be fucked up about it because sex is also the strongest human need, bar the desire to live or eat.

It's not just creepy, it's sick.

is this more than a bit neurotic and ritualistic about it? yes.

I am pretty sure if this was a father-daughter ball for a less creepy cause no one here would be trashing the cute father daughter moments. We don't need to imply that all zealous religious people are incestuous freaks.