While the mean girls are ruling the playground, some of their mamas seem to have a potty-mouth problem.

Browsing through MomLogic the other day, my eye caught this gem of a headline: “Are You Raising A Future D-Bag?”

That can’t, I thought, mean what I think it means. Sadly, it did. MomLogic ran an article encouraging us to ponder whether or not our kids were growing up be douchebags. Really.

The post is riffing off an old Details article, and is mainly about whether or not affluent hipsters hooking their tots up with designer duds and high tech toys are ruining them for life. The author’s main point is that:

if your kid can order up a half-caff macchiato sans foam by 3, and decides clowns and balloon animals are so last year, it’s kind of your fault.

I’m inclined to agree. I let my kids be kids, in all their mismatched stripey, balloon animal lovin’, whole milk drinkin’ glory. It makes me nervous when I see three-year-olds who are already savvy, hip shoppers.

But.

Douchebag? Really, MomLogic? I sadly expect that kind of juvenile sexism from Details, a magazine that prides itself on lowering the collective maturity of its primarily male readers to that of a high school locker room.

But you’re a usually smart, sophisticated publication for women. Couldn’t you have written this article without the needless dig at women?

Using “douchebag” as an insult isn’t cute or edgy, its just tedious. It’s a word that gets used as an insult only because it refers to an object that has to do with lady parts. I personally like my lady parts just fine, and think anything lucky enough to be near (or in!) them is pretty special too.

This might seem like petty linguistic nitpicking, but I don’t want my kids growing up in a world where gendered insults that attack a person simply for being feminine are so normal they make the headlines of mainstream women’s publications. Refusing to use that kind of language is an important step in transforming rape culture.

I’m hardly an ambassador for the anti-raunch movement, and I’m not saying you have to play nice. Go ahead an insult the baby hipsters to your heart’s content. Just please, do it in a clever, creative way instead of relying on some juvenile insult that puts down girls for being girls, or boys for being like girls. It’s at best boring, and at worst harmful to the kids we’re all trying to raise.

Photos: Senor Codo

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