1. Cindy-Lou is barely mentioned in the Dr. Seuss story.

2. She is hardly “beloved” or even particularly well-known. She was given special prominence in the over-blown film version of the story, “The Grinch,” which was distinctly inferior to the famous animated version narrated by Boris Karloff in the Sixties.

3. The character isn’t even human. She’s a Who, creatures so small their whole civilization is invisible to the naked eye. [See: “Horton Hears a Who.”]

4. In that mediocre Ron Howard Christmas movie, Cindy-Lou was played by Taylor Momson. Here is what the actress grew up into…

She turned Cindy Lou into a sex symbol if anyone did.

5. Portraying famous fictional girls as sexy teens and adults is a longtime tradition that hasn’t been deemed shocking except to the most puritanical of old fogies since the 1950s. Playboy had a regular feature starring “Little Annie Fanny,” a satire on “Little Orphan Annie.” Annie Fanny looked like this:

Little Orphan Annie was as innocent as one can get. Conservatives who clutched their metaphorical pearls over the Playboy spoof were, quite correctly, dismissed as censorious jerks. Then there is Pippi Longstocking: Tomi Lahren, who played her in the movies, is also all grown up, and there’s a sexy Pippi costume for Halloween that presumably won’t be called “disgusting”:

“Dora the Explorer” is mighty innocent, but her imagined grown-up version is apparently popular in cosplay according to TikTok….

Then there are the darling “Powerpuff Girls,” who have been portrayed live and in various forms as “Powerpuff Women”:

Jumping all over Sydney Sweeney for engaging in the mildest form of this trope is silly and unfair, especially when she is only being targeted for the imagined offense of not hewing to progressive cant, and and when her critics have simultaneous defended of all manner of sexual expression and–shall we say it?—perversion.

And besides, isn’t it grand that little girls get bigger every day? Sing it, Maurice!