A month or so ago, Catherine and I were driving along in her car when a song came on the radio that gave us both pause.

Not because it was extraordinarily awesome, and not because it was extraordinarily bad, but because it was just so… typical.

So typical that it stood out, much like a man in a button-down and Dockers at a punk show.

I’ve long been of the opinion that girls today are being screwed over by the images and ideas in popular music, just like the girls in my generation were… except MUCH, MUCH MORE SO.

The lyrics aren’t getting any worse (per se), and the women aren’t any more tarty than they once were (though you could argue that… at which point I’d offer you the full Samantha Fox discography, plus a reel of Tawny Kitaen rolling across the hood of a car in a Whitesnake video and Loni Anderson on WKRP) but now the messages are being couched in self-empowerment.

Your sexuality is a carnival, a resume and a weapon all rolled up into one.

But.

The song in question:

There’s more to me than meets the eye
so come and look inside
Go deep…
‘Cause beauty’s more than skin deep

Okay, try and ignore for a second there that they rhymed “deep” with “deep” (though that would solve the “what rhymes with orange?” dilemma: orange!), and the auspicious presence of two full-blown cliches in the space of four lines.

No, when you read those lines, you think, “Well, that’s good! There is more to me than meets the eye! And beauty is more than skin deep! Yeah! Boys! Check me out — I have substance, even if I don’t own a thesaurus!”

Then you get a little more understanding of the kind of girl we’re talking here:

Don’t need to know the kind of guy
who’s quick to drop the fly
Wham bam!
That ain’t who I am…

Ah! So you’re not planning to date within the NBA? Good for you.

Then it falls apart like a cheap Victoria’s Secret “Angel” bra culled from the sale rack.

Don’t a-let my booty beauty
be the only reason you wanna ride
Don’t a-let my hottie body
jack the fact that I got a lot more in mind

It sounds good — I mean, you want people to look past your hotness to your internal awesomeness, right?

But was anyone really paying attention after you said “booty beauty”? And more to the point, can you say it six times fast?

This is the dilemma of late teens/early twenties/(oh, who am I kidding) early thirties women today.

We’ve turned into nudists screaming at people not to stare at our bits.

“I am proud of my body! I love my body! Look at my sexual empowerment! Do you see my ass? It rocks! HEY! STOP LOOKING AT MY ASS! BEAUTY IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP! BUT I DON’T BLAME YOU, THESE JEANS MAKE MY ASS LOOK AWESOME!”

It’s a little confusing.

Then we get to the chorus:

If it’s just the physical
It would be sensational
But if you really got into me
You know you’d be insatiable

I get the whole point: I’m pretty freakin’ hot and you’d be lucky to have me but DID YOU KNOW I ALSO CAN DISCUSS CAMUS AND HAVE A CERTIFICATE IN THAI COOKERY?

Why do we always need to make such a point of our sexual identity in the first place, though? Why do we have to be so bluntly, obviously, blatantly hot as hell and THEN, once we are SUPER SEXY WHOA, be something else, too?

I suppose it comes down to this:

The culture we’ve developed for young women has made blunt-force sexuality synonymous with empowerment, and THEN asked those same girls with the visible thong and two-foot cleavage to make sure that men notice their heart, too.

(Well, I guess it IS sticking right out there…)

How about we don’t dress them up like Paris Hilton, and then ask them to tuck a copy of the Iliad in their hobo bag?

How about we keep Joe Francis away from institutions of higher education, unless he’s taking a class in NOT BEING A COMPLETE ASSHOLE?

How about we tell them to ignore any man who needs reminding that they have a brain?

Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE a good wallop of chemistry to get things going, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying that chemistry and sexuality in general. Girls can like that physical spark as much (or more!) than guys. And perhaps I own one or two shirts that don’t come all the way to, say, my chin.

Sex is not a bad thing. (Unless Joe Francis is involved.)

But I’m tired of watching young girls try and be everything at once, and only succeeding at communicating one aspect of who they are because we’ve taught them nothing about subtlety or true self-respect (or how to put on clothing that covers their drafty parts).

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Or distracted by my own hotness.

It’s hard to say.

LOOK AT MY NAVEL! I KNOW DEAD LANGUAGES!