Girls

"Sugar, spice and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girls."

"The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth."

"The eroticization of innocence and the fascination with the erotic child are deeply gendered. From depictions of sexualized images of prepubescent girls in the Victorian era to the Lolita-like commodification of little girls as sexual consumers and performers in contemporary society, it is the girl-child, not the boy-child, whose innocence is eroticized. And it is the eroticization of little girls that provokes our (adult) concern for their protection. Indeed, societal anxieties around girls as we enter the first decade of the twenty-first century continue to circle around what Walkerdine has termed the "protosexual" girl. It is the sexual girl that represents the "Other" to normal childhood, where "normal girls as well behaved, hard working and asexual"."

"The blessed damozel lean’d out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters still'd at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven."

"Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain— I cannot weave, as once I wove— So wildered is my heart and brain With thinking of that youth I love!"

"Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot, somehow,— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now."

"You speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance."

"The full sum of me Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed As from her lord, her governor, her king."

"What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice And all things nice. That's what little girls are made of."

"Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."

"'Tis a credit to any good girl to be neat, But quite a disgrace to be fine."

"And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair."

"Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella, Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri."

"Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine. Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the temple’s inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not."