I know. We're all upset that Jenny's marrying a bohunk.

So Mr. Gleemonex was skimming the Rolling Stone cover story on the Jonas Bros., who, in case you have the good fortune not to have heard, are a boy band made up of a trio of Bible-thumping godbaggers, who are currently setting preteen hearts aflame all over the world. Sorta like Hanson, only dark-haired instead of blonde and minus MmmBop (one of my all time favorite songs, and I'm not kidding). (Shut up, it's a really good song.)

So among these douchetards' offenses against music, taste and decency, reported Mr. Gleemonex, are that they wear purity rings, and apparently a lot of their wee fans are following suit. Purity rings, in case you have the good fortune not to have heard, are these Special Christian Rings the kids wear on the third finger of the left hand, signifying their pledge to stay virgins until they're married. Some kids buy their own -- icky and weird enough -- and some kids' parents buy them FOR the kids and make a big creepy deal over it.

And that's where I draw the line. You hear the most about these things in terms of way-wrong shit like Purity Balls (a father-daughter dance type deal where there's all this talk about, and emphasis on, the preteen or young teen girl's virginity) ... ugh. There's something so skeevy and embarrassing about that -- reminds me of Joe Simpson and his obsession with his daughters' boobs, you know? Like, dude -- why are you thinking so much about that? It's none of your goddamn business. And it riles every feminist cell in my body, the repugnant notion that a father has some sort of ownership of, or material interest in, his daughter's vagina and the disposition thereof.

The nutjobs who are into this stuff like to cast it as a partnership, or the father protecting and aiding the daughter against all the dirty dirty menfolk in the world, but it's the biggest load of overbearing sexualized patriarchal horseshit ever voided by the bowels of the patriarchy.

Here is what a father needs to do to protect and aid his daughter:

1) Have her back. I don't mean act like she's always right, even when she's wrong -- I mean make sure she knows she can trust you. Trust you to believe in her, to help her navigate the world, to give her a hand when she scrambles over various obstacles. You've got to be her corner man, her rock -- and don't act like you're the ONLY man she can trust, either. Just show her what that looks like so she can recognize it in others. Be her biggest fan. Fucking BE AROUND.

2) Be kind to women in general and her mother in particular. You can't think that if you're a bigot or a misogynist or just have a bunch of unexamined "women are lesser/worse at X thing" opinions, that you can make her the exception and she'll never notice. She will. If you mutter about "women drivers" or talk shit about your exes or team up with her against her mom, if you reflexively tag combative or less-pliant women as "bitches," if you tell her how slutty her friends look, or repeatedly disrespect your mom, your daughter's teachers, the waitress, the barista, the VP of your division -- she's going to internalize that, and it goes double if the object of your low opinion and bad treatment is her mother. She'll realize she is of a species that you think is less than your own, and if her own father thinks she's not as good as boys and men, well, why should other males respect her? And why should she respect herself, either? She'll settle, she'll take what she can get. It's your job to make sure she knows her worth.

That's it. Everything else will flow from those two things. Nobody gets through life without some angst and pain and drama, and your girl will make bad choices sometimes -- but if you give her those two things, she'll always be able to pick herself up, dust herself off, and go forward, made stronger by experience.