Adolescents have always embraced outrageous behavior and styles. But author Ariel Levy is especially alarmed by “the spread of the aesthetics and values of the red-light district into the mainstream.” Among girls, this can be dressing provocatively at ever-younger ages, group-grope dancing at parties and engaging in “girl-on-girl” make-out sessions for the titillation of male peers. We talked with Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, to find out what moms need to know to stem this tide.

Q: Why have teen girls embraced “raunch” culture?

Levy: This is a generation that has never known a time when “ho” wasn’t part of the pop-culture lexicon or when strippers weren’t part of the mainstream. What struck me when I was interviewing girls for my book—about 40 in all— is that before they’d even had an opportunity to think about their own desires, they were hard at work trying to be “hot.” It’s almost a game to see who’s best at “performing” sexiness.

Q: Performing sexiness, as opposed to actually having sex?

Levy: The emphasis is on the appearance of being sexually experienced. I saw a fair amount of put-on and posturing, but I don’t think moms should take any comfort in that and think, “Well, at least my daughter’s not actually having sex.” She may or may not be. The point is, girls are spending so much energy trying to impersonate strippers that they don’t investigate what’s important to them.

Q: I’ve heard young women say that taking a striptease class is “sexually empowering.”

Levy: Right, but why emulate a sex worker whose job it is to fake lust? I heard a lot of insecurity among the girls I interviewed. If you ask these girls at what times they feel comfortable with their bodies, they might mention playing sports or hanging out with their friends—not the time they gave a boy a lap dance.

Q: Does all this sexualization increase pressure on boys to hit on girls?

Levy: I think it promotes a mentality of “that’s what girls are here for.” So when a girl enters the picture, a boy is encouraged to relate to her solely in a sexual way.

Q: Is there also an anti-intellectual element, as in “it’s cool to be sexy but it’s not cool to be smart”?

Levy: I think so. It’s a very old story—a very retrograde kind of narrative—that the way to get guys is to seem wanton and dopey, and that being too smart will threaten them.

Q: So what can moms do?

Levy: Girls need a well-informed, healthy sexuality that emphasizes self-respect, not how much sexual attention they can get. Parents really do influence their kids’ behavior. It makes such a difference that they tell their daughters they’re funny or smart—not just cute or pretty. Besides, as one teen boy told me, boys will always like girls, so girls really don’t need to try that hard.