Girls Just Wanna have Thongs?
A couple of days ago, an article by LZ Grandserson appeared on CNN: Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps. In it, he covered the trends of padded push ups for the kindergarten market, midriff baring halter tops, thongs, and other styles of clothing that many people find sexualized or sexualizing. In his commentary, he's coming down pretty hard on designers for making ho-wear for preteens but even harder on the parents who buy this stuff. He points out that there are mental health issues associated with early sexualization of girls-- depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem.
Then the Pigtail Pals blog came out with a rebuttal article: Did you Just Call my Daughter a Prostitute? In which the blogger gets all up in LZ Granderson's face for saying that a thong with "Juicy" stamped on the back are "whore-friendly panties". She asserts that saying such things comes off as slut-shaming, and that parents aren't, and shouldn't necessarily be in control of their daughter's clothing purchases. After all, how can a girl have fun and be properly socialized if she can't go to the mall to buy clothes that might indeed be completely and utterly inappropriate?
Of course we homeschoolers dress entirely in Little House on the Prairie chic, so this doesn't impact us. We just tie on our bonnets and aprons and go about our day clad in calico and Victorian lace-ups. All kidding aside, my homeschool kids don't enjoy the mall, don't want to hang out at the mall, usually decline invitations from friends to go to the mall. Partly this is because my kids are anime geeks and artistic freaks. My daughter wants to look attractive, but at thirteen she doesn't want to look sexy. For her there is a clear and definite difference between attractive and sexy, and it's not one that was defined by me. I don't tell her what to wear or how to dress. I wouldn't buy her "juicy" thongs, and all her clothing purchases go through me or her dad and are likely to continue to do so through most of her teens. Sometimes I suggest things that she vetoes, occasionally she tries something that I veto. Most of her choices don't need any vetoing. Even so, I'm not going to give up being involved in her clothing choices any time soon.
I don't approve of slut shaming, but I also don't live in some weird bubble where I believe that one can expect to elicit the same reaction out of the average public dressed in daisy dukes, a low cut halter top and hooker heels as in cool but not overly revealing top and shorts. How we dress sends a message of how we want to be perceived, and we ignore this at our peril. In case anyone decides to dog pile on that last as some sort of statement backing up the "she deserved to be raped because of her clothes" idea that floats around, don't go there. The idea itself is a conflation of issues and isn't what I'm talking about, and that quickly makes for so many layers of conflation as to be indecipherable. What I'm saying is that we construct our identity in part by how we dress, and it's one of the first and easiest languages for other people to read on us as they form their opinions about who and how we are.
My thirteen year old daughter is very busty for her age. She has a natural gravity to her personality that makes her seem older than she is. That's a combination that makes her creepy old guy bait (creepy old guy being anyone more than a year older than she is). I've done my best to make it perfectly clear to her that it's the guys being creepy, not her, when they leer down her shirt. So far she accepts that and ignores them with an aplomb that leaves me breathless with admiration. I hope that lasts. I know that one day she will want to be sexy, probably sooner than I wish. I hope she continues ignoring creepy old guys and creepy marketing and grows into her sexiness in her own way and not on anyone else's terms. And I still won't be buying her any "juicy" thongs or hooker heels.
This entry was originally posted at http://spaceoperadiva.dreamwidth.org/25970.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Then the Pigtail Pals blog came out with a rebuttal article: Did you Just Call my Daughter a Prostitute? In which the blogger gets all up in LZ Granderson's face for saying that a thong with "Juicy" stamped on the back are "whore-friendly panties". She asserts that saying such things comes off as slut-shaming, and that parents aren't, and shouldn't necessarily be in control of their daughter's clothing purchases. After all, how can a girl have fun and be properly socialized if she can't go to the mall to buy clothes that might indeed be completely and utterly inappropriate?
Of course we homeschoolers dress entirely in Little House on the Prairie chic, so this doesn't impact us. We just tie on our bonnets and aprons and go about our day clad in calico and Victorian lace-ups. All kidding aside, my homeschool kids don't enjoy the mall, don't want to hang out at the mall, usually decline invitations from friends to go to the mall. Partly this is because my kids are anime geeks and artistic freaks. My daughter wants to look attractive, but at thirteen she doesn't want to look sexy. For her there is a clear and definite difference between attractive and sexy, and it's not one that was defined by me. I don't tell her what to wear or how to dress. I wouldn't buy her "juicy" thongs, and all her clothing purchases go through me or her dad and are likely to continue to do so through most of her teens. Sometimes I suggest things that she vetoes, occasionally she tries something that I veto. Most of her choices don't need any vetoing. Even so, I'm not going to give up being involved in her clothing choices any time soon.
I don't approve of slut shaming, but I also don't live in some weird bubble where I believe that one can expect to elicit the same reaction out of the average public dressed in daisy dukes, a low cut halter top and hooker heels as in cool but not overly revealing top and shorts. How we dress sends a message of how we want to be perceived, and we ignore this at our peril. In case anyone decides to dog pile on that last as some sort of statement backing up the "she deserved to be raped because of her clothes" idea that floats around, don't go there. The idea itself is a conflation of issues and isn't what I'm talking about, and that quickly makes for so many layers of conflation as to be indecipherable. What I'm saying is that we construct our identity in part by how we dress, and it's one of the first and easiest languages for other people to read on us as they form their opinions about who and how we are.
My thirteen year old daughter is very busty for her age. She has a natural gravity to her personality that makes her seem older than she is. That's a combination that makes her creepy old guy bait (creepy old guy being anyone more than a year older than she is). I've done my best to make it perfectly clear to her that it's the guys being creepy, not her, when they leer down her shirt. So far she accepts that and ignores them with an aplomb that leaves me breathless with admiration. I hope that lasts. I know that one day she will want to be sexy, probably sooner than I wish. I hope she continues ignoring creepy old guys and creepy marketing and grows into her sexiness in her own way and not on anyone else's terms. And I still won't be buying her any "juicy" thongs or hooker heels.
This entry was originally posted at http://spaceoperadiva.dreamwidth.org/25970.html. Please comment there using OpenID.