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

[3dog]

I honestly don't know how anyone can even get past the first paragraph, this guy is disgusting.

[madeline_may]

I find this article actually kinda disgusting, even more so knowing it was a guy who wrote it.

You know, I think my own parents handled the clothing issue well. They never actually told me, "You need to dress modestly" - a conscious decision on their parts. Their word of choice was "practically". I can't tell you how many times I heard "Can you play outside in that? Is it practical?" And I ended up not dressing in things that may not have been the best for someone my age, because hell, I can't play in a miniskirt!

[darkmanifest]

That seems like a really good method for a little kid.

[madeline_may]

It worked better than I think 'dress modestly' would have. I mean, I had no idea what that even really meant at that age, but I sure as hell knew what wearing impractical clothing did to my playing career.

[stormqueen280]

My mother used to say that if you don't 'have the manners' to wear a skirt (watch out how you seat and things like that) or doesn't want to bother, then you shouldn't be wearing a skirt.

So I preferred shorts and pants, wearing skirts only in rare occasions, such as weddings. Or, of course, when the school uniform included a skirt - even then, I wore biker shorts underneath.

[darkmanifest]

In 2007, the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls issued a report linking early sexualization with three of the most common mental-health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression.

The consequences of early sexualization don't come from how young girls dress, but how they are treated. And no matter what they wear, some people will see an eight-year-old at a terminal and think "sexiest girl in the terminal".

The fuck.

[basepair]

Young girls who go through puberty comparatively earlier than their peers are at a higher risk of eating disorders because of shit like this.

[lightningxsnow]

I was actually bullied terribly by my peers because I went through puberty early (I was a B cup by the time I was 11, and I'm an E cup now at 19). Maybe everyone needs to learn that girls'/women's bodies are not up for public scrutiny.

[pinkminx]

Yeah, well.

This article is already a goody bag full of the objectification of female children, misogyny, sexism and classism... but author mandude can continue to feel okay about having internalised all of this shit & spreading it because he found a convenient scapegoat in children's choice of dress, and in particular in parents who allow this.

It's pretty symptomatic of a society that tends to ignore the mass subjugation of classes of people and blame an individual for their own oppression.

[midoskeek]

Huh. Some guy says (albeit more disturbingly) what feminists have been saying for YEARS - being branded prudes - and suddenly people care about the sexualization of girls.

[lightningxsnow]

Does anyone else find it weird and borderline ableist that women's mental health problems are blamed on how they dress, but when men have mental illnesses it's just considered a fluke? I'm sure plenty of mental health issues are caused by society's badness (and therefore not really how young women dress/are dressed). I'm pretty sure my bipolar disorder was not caused by how my parents dressed me (conservatively, by the way. I wasn't allowed to wear miniskirts at all until I was about 16.) Hint: we're about 95% sure my grandfather had it to.

Kind of as an aside, but everything else I wanted to address seemed to be pointed out upthread.

[lightningxsnow]

Oh yeah, and any body issues I might have would probably trace back to being constantly made to feel fat/ugly for the shape my body was and the rate at which it developed. So how about we don't shame people either? It's two sides of the same coin, to be honest.

[crack_rabbit]

That is a really, really good point. As somebody with both bipolar and a decade+ struggle with an eating disorder, I can say definitively that neither was caused by how I was dressed as a child. Or how I dress as a woman. Yes, external factors can trigger mental illness, but reducing serious illnesses to something that happens because of the clothing a person wears is really offensive and diminishes the seriousness of the situation