What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

[Thom Little]

By Patricia Dalton
Washington Post
Sunday, November 20, 2005


I heard about it in my kitchen before I read about it in the newspaper: After visiting the expanded Tysons Corner Center this fall, my 23-year-old daughter said, "You won't believe how weird Victoria's Secret's gotten: It's all red and black with a bunch of mannequins that look like porn stars." Some shoppers were so outraged at the raunchy lingerie display that they threatened to boycott the store; others just yawned.

I've been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency in my office. Mothers voice distress over the suggestive clothing their teen and preteen daughters are wearing, inside and outside the house. In fact, conflict over clothing is what prompts them to come in for family therapy. The daughters themselves may be imperious or sullen, but almost all employ the everyone-is-doing-it excuse. And an awful lot of girls are doing it.

Women once complained about being reduced to sex objects. Now, their daughters are volunteering to be sex objects. And while parents register disapproval, they often fail to take action. In that failure, they unwittingly place their daughters at risk by allowing them to bypass girlhood. When a daughter moves straight from little girl to woman, she's playing a role rather than gradually learning to live her own life. These girls may seem whole, but they aren't. There is often a lost girl inside.

Many who endorse provocative styles of dress have picked up on the liberal message of the '60s and taken it a step further. They see those who express distaste over the sexually explicit as hung up, old-fashioned. One young woman pointed out to me, "It's almost politically incorrect to say that something is inappropriate."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111801778_pf.html

[NMMNG]

1. I just don't understand parents who let their teen and even pre-teen

girls leave the house looking like juvenile prostitutes. :scared:

[Luminous Animal]

2. Liberal message of the 60s????!!!!

And what would that message be? Perhaps, sensible business clothing, comfortable shoes, no restrictive undergarments, no complicated hair-sprayed hair-dos.

What we are seeing here is a backlash to 60s and 70s feminism which insisted that a woman needn't show her tits for validation.

I wonder why nearly every woman on TV has cleavage? From homemaker to lawyer to cop to political consultant. Why are women on these shows walking around half undressed? These make believe women are our daughters role models.

[undergroundpanther]

4. I like your name

Luminous animal.

Yes it bothers me too that girls are being taught being a serviceable sex object for men to use is all that counts when it comes to who they are. pro-porn people think this objection to being objectified is being prudish. Looks like our country is as patriarchal,in denial,shallow and child exploiting as it ever was .

[mitchum]

18. You are absolutely correct

[undergroundpanther]

3. Comment

This bugs me.

In the 60's 70's porn mags had in the centerfold,a picture in the corner of the page of the nude model as a little girl if you turned the page it had the woman's bio.

The brain acts differently in an orgasm. The visual stimulus gets routed a different way into the brain.

Secondly in the 70-s 80's milk was all there was to drink at school besides the water fountain. Milk has bovine growth hormones in it.Ebveryday a dose of growth hormones it takes a toll.
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/reproduction/Puberty/200012blancketal.htm
http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/21/chemicals_puberty.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_144_36/ai_84722700

And the age of girls getting breasts and periods and boys getting thier sexual characteristics had dropped it's gotten younger.
Girls in bodies that are half adult with the maturity of an 8 year old..is a scary thing,it makes girls so exploitable.Especially in a culture that still lets men believe if a woman wears a certain dress
or shows her body she asked for rape.
http://www.fradical.com/Too_young_too_sexy.htm
http://www.antonellagambotto.com/PornographyEffects.htm

Survivors have described prostitution as
'volunteer slavery' and as 'the choice that is
not a choice' while sex industry apologists on
the Left declare that prostitution is 'sex work,'
unpleasant labor but much like factory work. Do
women consent to prostitution? Do they say to
themselves, hmn, what job should I choose:
computer technician, lawyer, mechanic, restaurant
manager - no, I really want to be a prostitute?
Women who 'choose' prostitution are sexually
abused as kids at much higher rates than other
women. So they get defined as whores when they
are little. That's one way they end up
'choosing' prostitution. Other ways that they
'choose prostitution' include poor or no
education and no job that pays the rent.
Prostitution is a choice based on a lack of
survival options. Sex discrimination, poverty,
and racism are the forces that drive girls into
prostitution. A Left analysis doesn't often
address those structural issues in tandem where
prostitution and trafficking are concerned. All
they see is HIV.

http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/09/1764208.php

This trend of making little girls give up thier innocence too soon I fear may have been manufactured by the sociopaths that see people as things to exploit..

[NashVegas]

11. rGBH Wasn't Around in the 1970s and Most of the 1980s

What was around was McDonald's and all the fat from that. rGBH came in the early 1990s. The PBB stuff was quite interesting, though. I wasn't aware of that.

If mothers don't want modern industry (Victoria's, etc), TV and ad agencies teaching their daughters what it is to be women, they need to get off their asses and do it themselves.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hekate]

5. Twenty years ago it was already a royal pain to buy grade-school clothes

for my 10 year old. I didn't want her sexualized at 8-10-12 years old, and believe me, clothes designers and advertisers were no help at all.

And yes, it's gotten a LOT worse.

Last year I was in the children's department at Robinson's-May buying a baby gift, and saw a rack of little boy's T-shirts with sayings on them like: "Want to buy my sister?"

Okay, so the average boy in the primary grades thinks it refers to his sis being obnoxious and him being obnoxious right back.

But every adult knows (or should know) it is an absolutely obscene reference to war-zone practices of brothers pimping out sisters to conquering armies.

What are these people thinking?!

Hekate

[RC]

6. The view of sexuality in the United States is

totally screwed up. Psychotic, twisted, sick.
Our children are supposed to be sexless in thought, word, deed and even looks until they are far enough along in puberty to look grown up.
Then they are supposed to suppress their natural hormonal desires, enforced by misinformation and ignorance, until their wedding night.
After that they are suddenly supposed to switch and behave in ways (with just one person, of course) that they have been taught all their lives to be wrong. They are also suddenly expected to acquire the knowledge of all things sexual, in spite of a life time of enforced ignorance.
Then they start the cycle all over again.
Is it any wonder so many people have trouble making the transition?

[NashVegas]

12. Thank You Thank You Thank You

It's amazing what bullshit we subject kids to.

[retread]

7. "Mothers voice distress...." Where in hell are the fathers? n/t

[Skittles]

8. I've seen these weird attitudes here in the DU

there is a big segment of DUers who think that it is "empowering" for women to strip in clubs

[ErisFiveFingers]

10. Depends on the woman, and the club.

I've known quite a few different sex trade workers. Some are in the business of exploiting themselves, some are in the business of exploiting men, who fork over insane amounts of money just to see a woman naked. (Uhhh.... yeah.)

It's not something as cut and dry as assuming that *all* women in the sex trades are being exploited by others. Some are, some aren't.

Some women feel humiliated getting naked (but do it for the money), some women feel empowered that they can be paid large sums of money for something so simple as the removal of their clothing... It's a wide spectrum.

My personal view is that demonization of the human body (rooted in gender bigotry), is what fuels these industries. Monies made from the sex-trade is a sign that women, and to a *much* smaller extent, men, are still being rigidly suppressed in their sexuality. When a female stripper, and a male stripper, make the same money, at least some form of parity would be reached.

[Skittles]

19. uh huh

whatever

[ErisFiveFingers]

9. Burquas for all of them!

Why should young adults be allowed to express free will? If they want to look sexy, clearly, there's something wrong with them! Sexuality only happens at 18, before then, there's no such thing as sex, and after that, looking desirable is a clear sign of being a slut or a whore!

(Do I really need to add a sarcasm tag?)

[NashVegas]

13. We're Not Talking About 18 Year Olds

We're talking about 12 year olds.

It is possible for a 12 year old (or a woman of any age, for that matter) to dress well and look attractive without stepping out of the house in lingerie as a fashion statement.

[ErisFiveFingers]

14. Yup, 12 year olds have *no* sexuality!

None. At all. Sexuality starts at 18.

[mongo]

16. There's a simple answer to this

If you don't want your 12yo dressing this way, DON'T BUY THE CLOTHES!

[mitchum]

17. Actually this is a return to the mindset of the PRE- sexual revolution era

It has little to do with actually HAVING sex because it is pleasurable, but is all about using sexuality as a coy, come on. The commodification of desire. Dolling one's self up in order to attract the highest bidder. It's just old fashioned marketing. Give me promiscuity any day.

[Greyhound]

20. Just curious, have you seen the "stupid, spoiled, little sluts" episode

of Southpark? I know it's not popular show here (DU), but the whole episode is about this very subject.