The thought of wearing a dress made me nauseous. I spewed out disgusted “ewws” when I saw… The thought of wearing a dress made me nauseous. I spewed out disgusted “ewws” when I saw people kissing on television. I played kickball with the boys during recess. When my mom interrupted the neighborhood game of capture the flag to tell me to come in for the night, I begged for 10 more minutes outside.

Those were the good ol’ days. The days I like to call the “Umbro days”. For those unfamiliar with Umbro, it’s an athletic apparel company, and it dominated my wardrobe for the first decade of my life. For every occasion, besides those beyond my control — like holidays or family events — I would wear a pair of Umbro shorts and a T-shirt. Between my sister and me, we had just about every color.

The “Umbro days” do not simply represent my childhood habit to always look like a bum, but rather an entire era. It represents the priceless days when girls didn’t care about how they looked. They were too busy being kids and having fun to care about such mundane concerns.

Granted, I may have been more of a tomboy than most, but I think the majority of girls my age can remember the days when being a kid took precedence over growing up. I truly miss the times when boys had cooties, adults were boring, and 20 seemed old. We always managed to get our new clothes dirty and always had boo-boos on our knees.

As I entered middle school, my “Umbro days” began to fade. I started shaving my legs and wearing shorts that stopped above my knees. In eighth grade, I bought my first eye shadow.

I’m now a full-out girl — eyelash curler, stilettos and all. I’ve made the appropriate and gradual transition from a tomboy to a young woman.

Sadly, today’s girls seem to be making their “Umbro days” drastically shorter. They actually want to grow up faster, which is a terrible travesty.

Last October, I was in a costume store looking for something for Halloween. A little girl, who couldn’t have been more than 8 years old, walked out of the dressing room. Her costume looked like a cross between one of Britney Spears’ little numbers and a stripper outfit. Maybe it was a “Britney as a stripper” costume, I don’t know.

A caller on a radio show I listened to said his kids refer to such girls as “prostitots,” which is, sadly, a true — not to mention catchy — phrase to describe the look some of these girls are trying so desperately to pull off.

When the anger toward the mother who let her daughter wear such a costume passed, I felt a genuine sadness for the young girl. When I was 8, my mom made me a really sweet robot costume, and my friends were all dressed as witches, goblins and the like.

It’s not just sad that these girls are throwing away an essential part of their childhood, but it’s also dangerous. When they’re dressing much older than their age, people, particularly lurking older men, may think they actually are older.

It always bothers me when I’m in a public restroom and I see a very young girl staring at herself in the mirror, brushing her hair and touching up her makeup. It’s natural to become more concerned with your looks as you get older, and it’s healthy for teen-age girls to experiment with makeup and hair dye, but why are these youngins rushing it?

The first time I had ever heard of one of my peers going on a diet was in eighth grade. Girls were probably dieting earlier and I just didn’t know about it, but it generally wasn’t something that was discussed until high school. But now, a study found that out of 2,379 9-and 10-year-olds, 40 percent admitted to trying to lose weight.

At 9 years old, my friends and I were still comparing who had the coolest looking scab. I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but at those young ages, I only stepped on a scale about twice a year for physicals and visits to the doctor. The fact that almost half of young girls are actually monitoring and stressing over their weight marks the danger of this trend.

We can blame many sources: the media, parents, celebrities. But blaming won’t do any good. Year by year, girls are being robbed more and more of that precious childhood innocence of carefree and fun-filled days, an innocence that I’m so grateful wasn’t robbed from me.

As bystanders, there’s not much we can do. We can’t tell parents how to dress their kids or ask Britney Spears to cover up a little. What we can do is have a positive influence on the young girls in our lives, whether it be family members, neighbors, or our own daughters one day.

No daughter of mine will be a prostitot, and no daughter of mine will be robbed of her “Umbro days.”

E-mail Anjali at [email protected].