OMGWTFLOL WHUT?!

Under the truly absurd headline "Keeping up with the girls," LA Times columnist Meghan Daum laments "the notion that girls are entering puberty at earlier ages than in the past," only to use it as a launching pad for one of the most hilarious "what about the menz?!" of all time.

Let's consider for a moment the effect on boys. It can't possibly be good. As if boys in elementary and middle school didn't already have enough ways to compare themselves unfavorably to girls — scholastic achievement, verbal skills and social prowess, not to mention handwriting and knowledge about horses — this trend toward precocious sexual development just may be the final nail in the coffin of male domination.

Or so it may seem to an ordinary 8-year-old boy, who may view these girls not only in the way boys traditionally have — as bossy, slightly alien carriers of cooties — but as something even more terrifying: women.

...[A]s we go about the essential business of dealing with this situation for girls, and how to stop it, perhaps it's worth extending some sympathy toward boys. In a world in which it's already so easy to feel diminished by the achievements of girls, this widening gulf in physical maturity just might have the effect of kicking them while they're down.

Yes, I absolutely agree. While addressing girls' precocious sexual development—and the inextricably linked sexualization and objectification that comes with the developing female body in this culture, not to mention the potential medical issues that are associated with early onset puberty and the psychological trauma of bullying to which many girls who develop early are subjected by siblings and peers—let us take a moment to centralize boys' self-esteem.

Call me zany, but I don't think eight-year-old boys are owed the right to feel secure about maintaining "male domination," anyway.

Bonus points to Ms. Daum for OH NOES OBESITY CRISIS! fearmongering, too.

[H/T to Shaker trishka.]