After visiting 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.”

I’ve been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency in my office. 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.

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.

For some reason many adult women are failing to follow the instincts they’ve relied on for eons to protect themselves and their daughters. 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.

Parents lack confidence in their instincts and in their judgment. Previous generations had no trouble making hard and fast rules. Parents in those days looked like and conducted themselves as adults and role models; kids and teenagers wanted to grow up and get the perks of adult life as soon as possible. Therapists see the inverse today. 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.

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. They don’t have to be Britney Spears. 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.