Britney Spears burst onto the global music scene in 1998, a sexy teenager proudly wearing her faith and her virginity on her sleeve. The virginity was a predictable early casualty, and the faith is MIA at the time of writing. It’s fair to say that mega-stardom has not been kind to Britney. She has had a couple of very public meltdowns, and her privacy has been violated in every way imaginable.

Brit reflects on all of these subjects in her sixth album, Circus. It contains 12 tracks of above-average techno-pop, including the occasional piece of silver such as Out From Under. She sings about the paparazzi, about her children, and about just how crazy difficult it is to be Britney Spears.

She seems a long way removed from the young mousketeer, and she clearly laments the loss of innocence. But is she victim or perpetrator when it comes to the decline of her image? Listen to the smutty pun in If You Seek Amy, and it’s hard to see her as blameless.

Her moral decay really reflects what has happened to female sexuality in the wider culture over the last 30 years. Behaviour that was once considered tart-ish is now normal. Modern girls wear Hustler and Playboy clothing, consume porn, engage in girl-on-girl action, pole-dance and more. There was a time when female modesty was considered a special virtue. That has now been almost entirely reversed.

It’s not restricted to young women either. There is a new generation of sexually aggressive older women, who dress and act adolescent and spend time in bars looking to score. Slang for these women is “cougars”. We’ve all seen this, and we’ve all seen it go bad. There is only so much that can be achieved with peroxide, make-up and plastic surgery. At some point a line is crossed, and the hyper-sexuality stops being sexual at all, it becomes a sad and repulsive mockery.

Do women have a choice? Proverbs says,

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

I’ve noticed certain older women who have spent a lifetime covering themselves with gentleness, love, kindness, and selflessness, all in the fear of the Lord. It’s not sentimentality that makes me say that these women almost seem to glow, that their inner beauty has become visible and shines brightly.

I’m not advocating a return to the fashion styles of the Mayflower. But girls, it’s worth asking how you want to be seen when you’re 40 or 50. Do you want to be like the cougar, pathetically clinging to the shreds of your youth? Or like the God-fearing woman, clothed in a lifetime of dignity and righteous deeds? Every choice you make now is taking you down one path or the other.

Which way will you go?