TW For Slut Shaming, References To Rape

[teleens_journal]

Parents, Don't Dress Your Girls Like Tramps, writes columnist LZ Granderson at CNN.com.

HIghlights:

• LZ Granderson: Some parents dress their young girls in provocative outfits
• Retailers have encouraged this behavior by marketing inappropriate clothing
• He says it's OK to blame retailers, but it's parents who are ultimately responsible
• Children need

Comments

[teleens_journal]

All of this - thank you for expressing it better than I did.

[strong_delicate]

I cringed at the suggestion that this 8 year old was the sexiest person in the airport or whatever he said. *shudders*

[maynardsong]

Me too. I saw it coming and ughhhh she's EIGHT why was it relish and not being unnerved that I was getting in the first few sentence???? D:

[gretchystretchy]

The problem I have with "modesty", I guess, is that there are too many interpretations. And I don't agree with the notion that women need to be modest because men can't control themselves, which is something I've been taught my entire life.

This, definitely.

[varioussorrows]

I was definitely squicked out by his description of her.

It worries me that young girls seem to be fed the idea that there worth is in their appearance, but this reeks of slut shaming and the potential for victim blaming.

[maynardsong]

Me too. Like, seriously? That read like pedophilia.

[varioussorrows]

I suspect he did it for shock value and to make the reader think it was an adult he was talking about, but didn't it occur to him he was describing a *child*?

*Apologies for my horrendous there/their mistake.

[pinkminx]

Author sounds like a rape apologist. Eight-year-olds are not sexy by the sheer reason they're eight year old, ffs.

Plus modesty wtf, agreed. A certain degree of humbleness (openness to criticism, really) is fine as is learning that some things are considered inappropriate in public. But modesty, fuck no. What does it even mean, demureness in the eyes of god? In the eyes of society? Not making eye contact too readily? Covering naughty body parts and not looking too, what's the word, available? Or too adult? It's a problematic word and concept, and one I'd be happy to see completely abolished.

[dyingalittle]

Agreed 100%. The answer to one form of social pressure is not replacing it with another.

[pinkminx]

DING DING! YES.

I sincerely wish that more feminist/pro woman/whatever-identified people would get this.

[roseofjuly]

Not only that, but he seemed to describe things as sexual that are not anything sexual at all. How do earrings dangle playfully from her earlobes? What's wrong with earrings and cornrows and a halter top? Someone in another community commented that she grew up wearing halter tops in her conservative Christian family, but no one thought to question it because there isn't anything remotely sexy about an 8-year-old in a halter top. I tend to agree.

[teleens_journal]

This.