[For those of you unfamiliar with Millicent, her introductory post is here.]
For good or ill, the Critter is a big fan of “Dora the Explorer.” While I’m not entirely on board with the show’s propensity to encourage viewers to shout out at the television, and then shout louder, it’s age-appropriate and fun and gestures in the direction of being educational. It’s not my favorite Nick Jr show (that would be the charming “Little Bill”), but I’m happy enough to let him watch it in reasonable amounts.
Anyhow, between shows the network will play promos for programs that air on regular, big-kid Nickelodeon. And one caught my disapproving eye the other day.
Over to you, Millicent.
“I am not a fool. I know that society does not share many or most of my views. While I lament that common sense and courtesy seem to hold less sway with every passing day, I choose to keep my lamentations to myself. It is pointless to do otherwise.
However, really… some things are just too appalling for silence. The other day, in the company of a small person, I happened to see one such thing. It was an advertisement for an animated cartoon program. While the audience for this cartoon is obviously meant to be children older than my viewing companion, it is also obviously meant for children all the same. Particularly female children.
The program in question is called ‘Winx Club,’ with some strange additional ‘Believix’ designation. I do not pretend to understand anything about it. It seems to involve fairies.
What caught my horrified eyes was the way in which the titular pixies were depicted and attired. The impertinent young man in whose brain I reside would describe them as ‘stacked,’ with voluminous bosoms and implausibly tiny waists. All were wearing cropped tops and some wee garment to cover their lower halves of a mini-skirt or ‘hot pant’ variety. Many wore stockings or footwear that extended to the mid-thigh.
They did not look like respectable young women. They looked like streetwalkers. Or rather, what streetwalkers would look like if they had gossamer wings.
It is true that I speak in ignorance, having never seen the program. It may be that one of these fairies does her magic work while simultaneously completing her master’s in mathematics at Bryn Mawr. Perhaps one flits between assignments in elf-land and delivering a well-received presentation at Davos. Who am I to say?
What I do feel compelled to say is that the message these images convey is shameful. While today’s woman is free to dress however she may please, I hope it is not ridiculously prudish to let little girls know that the overwhelming majority of today’s women do not make a habit of dressing in a sexually provocative manner at all times. That dressing in minute, tight micro-garments is generally reserved for attracting a certain kind of attention, and that cultivating a knack for attracting that kind of attention is best done when one has aged out of a desire to watch animated cartoon programs about fairies. That in reality women usually opt to dress such that they can sit down without (in the words of a savvy fashion expert) making the world their gynecologist.
One hopes the small person of my acquaintance will not take a liking to this show. The very thought of spending half an hour silently imploring the winged young ladies on the screen to put some bloody clothes on has me reaching for the port.”
So that’s this week’s two-part Question — 1) Is Millicent right? Are her pursed lips and knitted brows properly directed at these cartoons, with their scantily “clad” protagonists? Or should be all just accept that dressing like one of those “Slutty [Noun]” Halloween costumes is meet and proper for children’s programming these days? 2) What else makes you lament the eroding mores and morals of our great nation? What do you find inappropriate for children that is actually marketed to them, for Lord’s sake? What makes you feel tired, tired, tired just thinking about it?
I debated whether to go ahead with my usual weekly foolishness today, and decided we could use something else to talk about other than the horrors in Boston. If anyone finds it disrespectful, I beg your pardon.
Well, Disney started it first.
Exhibit A: tinkerbell
Exhibit B:
Jasmine’s seduction of Jafaar
Exhibit 3: The little mermaid
The other disney females are not that egregious clothing wise, but social mores wise there is a lot of questionable stuff going on….
Cinderella: Where a 3 hr dance is sufficient time for two people to agree to get married?
Beauty and the Beast: Say it with me: Stockholm’s Syndrome
Snow White: Dude, she’s like unconscious and you don’t even know her.
And Mulan was a transvestite!
Damn, the pictures didn’t appear
here is tink: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpoo6yNZ2c1r19cbxo1_500.gif
Here is Ariel: http://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1989_the_little_mermaid_001.jpg
Russ my previous comment is awaiting moderation
Thanks
No problem
millicent is not entirely wrong, though millicent would have fun hanging out with my sister in law, who once described a friend of hers as being “fast” because she’d been casually dating two different men. she literally used the word “fast” to describe a woman going on dates in the year 2012 – and she’s not even 30.
but speaking of objectionable on a whole another level, have you seen the monarchical propaganda machine that is sophia the first?
Monarchal propaganda is why I’m really leary of Princess culture. Can we not create strong, female rolemodels for girls that fit better into the democratic ethos?
I can’t move these “Princess Pelosi” dolls to save my life…
Space awesome.
But Princess Palin sold out immediately.
Those dolls flew right off the racks.
Those dolls were, uh…manufactured to different specs…for, uh, a different demographic…
“Monarchal propaganda is why I’m really leary of Princess culture. Can we not create strong, female rolemodels for girls that fit better into the democratic ethos?”
i was kinda joking? my worries about monarchy propaganda are really low on the list of worries i have in general when it comes to the mediasphere and my child’s brainpan. i’m also not worried about the mechanical propaganda that leads him to pretend to be a robot, the big government/nasa propaganda that leads him to want to be an astronaut, etc.
if anything the sophia show has him very unconcerned about the color pink and the princess stuff in general, which i care less about. some of his pullups are princess pullups because when you go shopping with sleepy daddy, sometimes you buy princess pullups and have to deal with it. if he was a girl i’d be more grossed out but as it stands now pink is kinda hep and most toddlers have a genderqueer streak anyway so whatevs.
though i do dislike the general flat classist approach of sophia the worst (ha ha) quite a bit, i also dislike most of the “let’s hug everyone/you’re all cogs in a machine called ‘getting along at all costs'” approach of all the other childrens’ programming too. that said, there are worse lessons i suppose. i’d rather keep the overt political brainwashing out of kids programming as much as possible, or at least failing that, keep it more random and spread out.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you are kind of joking. Princess culture and other examples of pro-monarchal propaganda are something that I take seriously. I think its teaching an ethos that is anti-democratic.
all legends and fairy tales are anti-democratic to some degree, being stories of individuals and all that.
I’d probably have stronger words than ‘fast’ for dating two guys at the same time (assuming they weren’t both aware of it and okay with it). I appreciate the old-timey-ness of the terminology, though.
If “dating” doesn’t include “humping”, I don’t see why you can’t date multiple people. It’s fun to have fun, it’s fun to do stuff with people, it’s even fun to make out with them.
Keep it to second, everybody will walk away with good memories.
both were aware of it, iirc. which seems ethical enough for something that’s none of my (or her) beeswax.
i’d appreciate it more if she wasn’t serious, though. it’s just an absurd term.
“If “dating” doesn’t include “humping”, I don’t see why you can’t date multiple people.”
what’s the diff?
Humping has a lot of wires attached to it that connect to parts of culture and parts of biology in ways that folks aren’t good at measuring. You might find that pulling one of them pulls up a *LOT* more weird stuff than you thought you were getting into when you started.
Dating-sans-humping pulls on fewer of these wires.
The camel’s nose in the tent, as it were.
Millicent should be very pleased that she doesn’t live in Japan. If she thinks Winx club is inappropriate than she would positively flip at the depiction of girls in manga and anime. Its much worse than Winx Club for the most part.
American society is overall more sex positive than it was in the past. The Feminist movement has also raised important issues about how women are portrayed in media. Sometimes there is a rather big conflict between the two. We had a rather spirited debate about the damsel in distress role in media not so long ago. Is it a common and harmless fantasy or is it actively against women? A lot of people like fan service, this is filtering down a bit into children’s media. If we were Japan, there would be a lot more of it but Western society is still leary about overt sexuality in media aimed at children so its not as prominent. This can set off certain alarm bells in women because a lot of the fan service is sending a not so friendly feminist message to girls and boys. Others might argue that its positive because it teaches girls to flaunt rather than to hide their sexuality.
True. But card captor sakura was actively marketed to 50 year old men.
So it’s a little different.
Cardcapture Sakura is Shoujo i.e. for young girls. but then I read shounen manga and am pushing 28 and a lot of shounen does have fanservice.
What, you think Japanese can’t read the Nielsen ratings?
They figured out that a lot of older men were watching, and
started to tune the show to them. Hence all the costume changes…
Yes, the original pitch was for young girls.
But, hell, the Japanese pitch everything for porn these days.
It’s a key way of getting viewership — instead of word of mouth
it’s penmanship.
No, Murali is right. CCS’s intended audience was elementary school girls. Like a lot of media, it attracted fans beyond the intended audience. Some of these fans were quite creepy. However, CCS has all the trademarks and tropes of a comic and anime for elementary school girls in Japan.
Japan is its own beast in what they consider acceptable and unacceptable for children. Figuring out why Japan ended up to have a much higher threshold to cross for unacceptibility in children’s entertainment would make for a really fascinating academic project.
Lee,
I know people in the biz. I’m repeating ad verbatim what they said.
I can contrast this with what happened when the Simpsons creators
realized that there was Simpsons Porn — the character that caused it
was scrapped and never heard from again (I don’t think it was the
writers room who was troubled, fwiw).
I like Millicent find these characters objectionable – for my girls we avoided Bratz (similar in trollopness). Also I really have never cared much for most of the Disney princesses when we break down most of the stories the messages just plain suck for girls. Fortunately I have three nerdy/cute girls who love fashion but don’t dress like mini hookers or think that that type of dress is cool regardless of the majority of popular and wanna be popular girls at school wearing that type of thing.
Not to mention that the posture of the characters is horrible. To incline person to posture such as that is nothing short of insidious.
But seriously, I have a couple of really good friends that run a ballet studio; people of the Faith.
Some studios teach very suggestive moves to very young girls; things which the inappropriateness would never be questioned were not the moves described as “dance.”
But they don’t do such things, and I’m glad there are people like that.
I agree far more with Millicent than I normally do. I am a bit troubled that we draw conclusions about women’s sexual interest or proclivities by what they wear. That we do this almost exclusively with women is all the more troubling. More broadly, I’d like to see so many taboos about the human body and human sexuality lifted. But… This is not that. These aren’t just fairies in skirts… They are needlessly sexualized and deliberately so. This show and others like it (if you don’t know about the others… Be forewarned) cross too many lines for my taste and are potentially damaging to children, male and female alike. While I am normally a free speech absolutist, Rose has made some effective challenges on that w/r/t advertising for children due to their lack of agency and I’d consider throwing this into the same lot. But, regardless of what we might seek to do about it, I find this troubling. I’d ideally like to see us reach a point where we can see a girl or woman in a short skirt and think, “She is wearing what she feels is comfortable or what she thinks looks good,” rather than, “Whore!” But I don’t think this show gets us closer to the mountaintop and probably has us sliding back down.
To your second question, the apparent loss of cohesiveness within our communities might be the one thing I most look at and fret about societal decay. I was actually just laughing about it yesterday… We were buying Mayonnaise’s outfit for our Memorial Day party at Gymboree and the clerk had ear-stretching piercings and died, fiery red hair, and lots of dark eye liner… And I giggled about how Ol’ Russ would have felt buying an adorable seersucker overall set from this young lady.
But today? Millicent and I are seeing eye to eye.
I am entirely on Millicent’s side. It’s bad enough that adult women are over-sexualized in the media. Girls should have the chance to watch shows where women’s identity doesn’t revolve around their looks. (Also, sexualization on children’s shows, or of children’s clothing, is creepy.)
In all fairness, I believe the issue of identity being derived entirely from looks requires an unsubstantiated leap.
Were that the case, the show could do without scripting.
I entirely missed the second question. American social mores were based on a kind of secularized Protestant worldview. A good example of this ethos in their most ideal form are the films prodcued by MGM while the Hays Code was still enforce. You know, the films that show charming, quant towns with men and women dressed to the nines and romance being very inncoent. Everybody is well-behaved and very charming. This Anglo-Protestant way of life was based on a lot of suppression of people who were different and very rigid ideas about sexuality. The increased freedom and tolearance in American life made the elimination of the good parts of the Anglo-Protestant worldview a necessity. This was a case where you needed to throw a baby out with the bathwater.
This show is incredibly wtf, looking at the wikipedia page. (also, italian – which I mention only because I found myself thinking “Only in America!” and then being reminded that there are other countries with this problem.) there are actually so many hypersexualized children’s characters out there that i find myself more vaguely-intrigued that these ones appear to be the fairy equivalent of self-directed Pokemon, with multiple level-ups in form changing (and also, weirded out by bizarro story lines like the one that involves a main character turning evil after *being tortured*), than I am offended. I guess in a weird way, if we are going to have constant exposure for our kids to shows where women dress illogically, i would rather those women are main characters with agency and adventures than to see them constantly being minor sideplots like Tinkerbell? I really wish those weren’t the two options though.
My most honest reaction to this show, and most other shows for this age group, is MORE AVATAR, LESS (NEARLY) EVERYTHING ELSE.
+100 on more avatar!
I haven’t yet read this one, but holy crap I wish I’d been around for Millicent’s introduction. That sort of thing drives me nuts.
I will be writing a piece soon about female superheroes and how they dress. With some similar complaints.
And sex scenes on television. Look, I’m a fan of sex and all that. And sometimes it’s fun to watch. But when it’s thrown in there just because, it tends to rub both my liberal and conservative selves. My conservative self saying “Was this really necessary?” and my liberal self for how sexual freedom (whatever private disapproval I may have) is used like salt in popcorn: to keep us eating.
What really makes me sad for what is becoming of our society is the thing from the previous post about the lobules. Permanent body graffiti and ornamentation. I see it as a disrespect of the bodies that God gave us and, in a way, a disrespect of our natural selves. (It’s along a spectrum. I can’t say that I’m even a fan of earrings on men or women, but body the full-body tattooes represent a societal illness, to me.)
Somewhere on Deviant Art, there is drawing from an ex-Disney animator on Wonder Woman done as a Disney-style teenage girl. It makes the very sexualized Wonder Woman much more user-accesible for girls and in many ways, Wonder Woman would be an ideal superhero for elementary and tween girls.
I think that superheroines are much more sexualized in America because comics employment and fandom was heavily male for decades. Shoujo manga started in the mid to late 1960s and women participated in the manga industry since adolesence if not infantry. American comic books used to produce allegedly female friendly titles Millie the Model and the entire Archie Comics line but these were mainly written and drawn by men for teenage and yonger girls until very recently. Women simply didn’t get employed in comics or animation, making the female characters very fan-servicy in appeareance. If women got involved in American comics in large numbers at the same time Japanese women got involved in manga than the reality would be different.
That may actually be the subject of my post, if we’re talking about the same thing. Someone did some redesigns of the female superheroes with more modest, practical, and weather-appropriate attire. Sonny Bunch criticized this. I think Sonny is off-base here.
I’m not big on Wonder Woman, though. I think that they’ve sort of fallen into a trap to have her represent womanhood in totality. I think that sort of limits her character in the same way that Superman is limited. That’s a general problem with non-white-male characters. If the writers aren’t careful, they become plastic, and defeat the purpose of their being there.
I think you’re right about comics employment and fandom. I’d add to that, though, the extent to which guys are more sensitive towards the gender of lead characters (this has been studied). The drop-off for female leads is much higher for guys than the drop-off of girls when there are male leads. So if you have a female lead, and want to prevent a dropoff from the male audience, you give the guys something to look at.
I’ll post a link when I get home and have more time to look. Wonder Woman was created by the psychologist DC comics had on staff to consult them. He had some rather interesting views on gender relationships, bondage, and relationships in general. Lets say he was more than a little Bohemian and radical, which is weird because DC was always one of the more conservative comic book publishers. A lot of the weirdness in Wonder Woman traces back to the beliefs of her creator
My overall point is that in the post-WWII world, the American comic books industry and the Japanse manga industry had men drawing comics for girls as well as boys. By the late 1960s, the first generation of girl comic book readers grew up and entered the industry. As far as I can tell, fewer American girls read these girl comic books in the United States, which were published at least till the early 1970s, and none of them entered the industry in a creative capacity. This really hurt how women are depicted in American comics and animation.
Here is the link. The artist is Tom Bancroft, who used to work at Disney.
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-the-trouble-with-princesses-the-strange-case-of-wonder-woman/
Cool, thanks for sharing the link. It’s different from the art I was talking about. I hope to have a post on it next week.
BTW, dunno if you saw or not, but our old friend Captain Power got a namecheck in last week’s Linky Friday.
Also I have no idea who Sonny Bunch is or why he would criticize this. Link please?
My weigh-in may hold little weight, as I have only boys. That being said, I am of two minds. I kind of agree with Millicent, for all the reasons you and everyone else says.
But I also recognize that the real problem isn’t the clothes – it’s people’s reactions to them.
Obviously, whether a woman’s pant leg go to her ankle or her knee or her thigh (or come to think of it, whether she wears such a manly article of clothing as pants) is actually not a good indicator of either their worth as a person nor the kind of ethics they use when going forth into the world. In fact, as a guy who used to be single and date a lot throughout his 20s, I can tell you it’s not a remotely accurate indicator of a woman’s willingness to engage in pre-marital sexual activity. So when we talk about girls’ dress in this context, we’re not really talking about the textiles so much as what other people will think of the textiles. And therein lies the rub, for me anyway:
When you do not let a girl watch/listen to (looking at you, Ms. Spears)/interact with female characters/people because of the way they dress, it seems to me you’re telling those same girls that the way you judge a woman (as opposed to a man) is the way she dresses and looks to the men around her.
I’m not sure it’s the direction we want to be going.
Tod, this is a very good point and its something that I attempted to elude to in my post but less elegantly. Before the Sexual Revolution, women and girls were basically encouraged to hide their sexuality and women let alone girls who dressed in somewhat to very sexual manner had some not so nice things said about them. The Sexual Revolution started to change this. At the same time, shows like Winx Club are problematic because people assume that its teaching girls that they should dress and perhaps in a very sexual manner and do not thing that this is a message we should be sending to young girls in our more Feminist age. They have a good point to.
Its a very complicated problem to solve. How do we avoid the previous model of punishing women for their sexuality without sending them a Winx Club like message about sexuality? Many of the problems come from the historically heavy male employment in comics and animation and all the fanservice traditional in both mediums.
Well said. We should look at a woman in a short skirt and think, “She likes short skirts.”
We should not look at a woman in a short skirt and think, “She likes sex.”
And we sure as hell should not look at a woman in a short skirt and think, “She must want sex. I’ll go give her some.”
I would tweak that slightly.
I would say we don’t want people to look at her and say, “When she dresses like men probably assume she is X, and therefore we should judge her to be worth exactly X.”
Can you rephrase that? I’m not sure I understand.
Though it should be noted these shows often do more than just dress the characters sexily, but also makes their sexuality/sexiness a key component of their identity. They are sexualized beyond just their outfits.
+1
“That dressing in minute, tight micro-garments is generally reserved for attracting a certain kind of attention…”
I’m disappointed that you wrote this, Russell. It’s a little too close to slut shaming for my taste.
Also, ditto everything Tod wrote.
(And ditto, also, everyone’s hating on princess culture. I’ve started talking to my daughter about how being a princess is an inherently bad thing.)
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with attracting that kind of attention, if that’s the kind of attention you’re wanting to attract. I couldn’t possibly care less what women choose to wear to the beach or simply to go out dancing. Lord knows I’ve dressed to attract a particular kind of attention, back when I saw a point in doing so.
But are you saying you don’t think tight-fitting, skimpy garments are meant to magnify one’s sex appeal? Because I would have to disagree. And I don’t think that little girls need to get images broadcast to them about dressing in a sexually provocative manner. I’d much rather they get notions of feminine accomplishment based on intelligence, skill and courage than pulchritude.
Hell, look how those characters are even standing in the picture I chose. What woman stands around like that, except in a “come-hither” way? Again, there’s nothing wrong with a come-hither outfit or stance or attitude. But for women, not little girls.
I’m saying some women (like all people) wear what they wear because they like it, not because they’re trying to get any kind of attention. Yes, they may get certain kinds of attention, but that’s not necessarily on them.
Yes. Some women go out in yoga pants because it accentuates their derrière. Some women go out in yoga pants because they’re headed to yoga class. Some women go out in yoga pants because they’re comfortable. Some women go out in yoga pants for some combination of these. It wouldn’t be fair of me to assume the yogi is trying to draw attention to her ass.
Body language and clothing signal what they do in part or maybe even primarily because there is some reasonable correlation between perceived information and actual state of affairs. If there was no significant correlation then there would be no way that lots of people would systematically read that “information” in that signal. Signal-state of affairs mismatch would destroy the signal.
If we are to take people like Robin Hanson seriously, people signal all the time and at the same time practice self deception to tell themselves that their actions are not signalling. And this account of why people do the things they do seems to work in a lot of other cases. The implications for this particular case are such that I’m not willing to say it out loud. The feminist part of me would feel dirty.
So, who is it on if someone displays a signal without meaning to? In cases where the meaning of the signal is known by the signaller, can the signaller legitimately invoke the doctrine of double effect? Or do people have some duty to avoid performing actions which give false signals when they know that those actions are signals? We seem to correctly excoriate politicians for saying things that are signals to racists and the like even though it could have been said in innocence because not only is the politician not supposed to signal to racists, the politician should be sufficiently socially savvy to recognise that some things are signals. Given that we expect adults to be competent at navigating the social landscape, then shouldn’t we also be critical of those who fail to recognise that they are sending false signals especially in cases where they are expected to know?
I think that, to some extent, what we wear should be taken as sending signals. I don’t mean to reserve this for girls in scantily-clad outfits. I mean most people take into account how their dress will be received and make their decisions accordingly.
The question is what kinds of “certain kind of attention” we are talking about. I have faith that Millicent’s answer here is relatively bland. To be noticed, to have one’s attractiveness noticed. That is, of course, very different saying that it is an invitation to be hit on or even inappropriately gawked at. This is what a lot of people miss.
It also doesn’t get into what I think is an underdiscussed aspect of all of this, which is that someone wearing track shorts is less likely to be dressing for appearances than someone wearing a short skirt. One of the creepier phenomena from a few years ago was a fixation with a UCLA track athlete. She was very pleasing to the eyes, and you could see her legs and they were pleasant, but it was a track outfit and not an appearance outfit.
To be noticed, to have one’s attractiveness noticed.
Bingo.
Sure, our choice in clothing can be, in whole or in part, a form of signaling, but it’s not necessarily that. Women tend to get judged to greater degree for their clothing, and for some women the choice of clothing – even tight mini-garments – is really signaling little more than “I like this outfit”.
Seriously, some people like to look good for themselves, not for anyone else.
Well, sure.
Look, I work in an office with an almost entirely female staff, and despite being both: 1) all-but-legally married and 2) gay as a treeful of hummingbirds I like to look nice. I buy trousers that I think make my butt look good. Hell, I just bought bought my first bespoke suit and I sheepishly asked for certain tailoring because I wanted certain parts accented and certain parts downplayed. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Furthermore, I don’t dispute that the attention paid to appearance-based signaling falls disproportionately on women. Witness Jon Hamm’s discomfiture at all the attention paid to his package, when pretty much every actress ever has been thoroughly objectified into an inch of her life.
Which is why, if anything, I object so strenuously to depicting characters in a program for little girls as pneumatic nymphs in suggestive attire. (The thigh-high stockings were what really pushed me over the edge.) There is not one of the titular fairies who dresses in any manner other than that depicted above. What kind of message does that send to girls about how they are expected to present themselves? I’m not saying we need to slap a burka on the Winx pixies, but how on earth can we expect girls to stop being objectified if we promote imagery that’s designed to accomplish the opposite goal?
I think there might be a bit of speaking past each other here.
Objecting to the appearance of the characters because it sexualizes young girls and objectifies females in general is something most everyone here is agreeing with.
Objecting to the appearance of the characters because it is going to teach young girls to dress like whores… well, some of us are objecting to the very notion that one can “dress like a whore”, given that a whore is most charitably a profession and least charitably a commentary on someone’s sexual morals… neither of which has anything explicit to do with clothing choices.
I don’t think Russ is making that latter argument, but there is a hint of it to some of the comments here that some of us seem uncomfortable with.
To be fair, I did use the term “streetwalker” in the OP. In retrospect, I should probably have been more prudent in my language.
I should have made more clear that I really, really don’t have a problem with full-grown women dressing provocatively if they want. I do have a problem with pushing the image of provocatively dressed, statuesque nymphets on little girls, who are too young to have any idea what it is to dress provocatively or what is being provoked by doing so.
Heh… so you did.
Even “provocatively” is a troubling word for me there, because it still seems to assign motivation for their dress based on the response of others. But I think I’ve made my point and, even if we don’t agree entirely, agree enough and, more importantly, understand where one another is coming from.
The last little thing I’ll do before I, too, just sit back and concur that we pretty much agree is gesture downward to Patrick’s comment. It’s all very well to say “this is how I want to dress!” and I would never tell a woman to do otherwise. I think everyone has a right to dress how they want, speaking as an ideal.
But you gotta go into with eyes wide open.
Years ago I bought a very form-fitting Vivienne Westwood boat neck stretch t-shirt on a trip to London. (That, right there, may be the gayest sentence you read in a long, long time, Kazzy.) I thought it looked totally aces. And then I got back home and put it on again and thought it looked incredibly gay. Like, way way way gay. And there was nowhere I was going to be going where I felt inclined to look that gay. So I gave it away.
Was it my right to look like that? Sure. But it wasn’t quite the signal I cared to send.
Should a woman have the right to dress in a tiny skirt and stockings up to her thighs? You bet. But then peoples’ eyes will drift to her upper thighs! Which is also totally fine, but I think it’s impossibly naive to expect peoples’ eyes to do otherwise. And I don’t want little girls being none-too-subtly encouraged to dress similarly when they’re far too young to have any idea of what people might be thinking when their eyes are drifting toward their upper thighs.
I see nothing wrong with Pat’s reply, and I’m not arguing that deciding to dress how you want should give you some sort of forcefield that will prevent others from taking notice of you and judging you (though we’d all, myself included, probably do well to judge a little less).
That is a result of dressing as one wishes, not the purpose behind it.
As for Winx, I’ll reserve judgement until I am more familiar with it (which, hopefully, will be never), but from what I do see, I certainly won’t defend it. (Though I’m not surprised that Nickelodeon uses its “Jr.” shows/network to prep its consumers for older fare.)
“Years ago I bought a very form-fitting Vivienne Westwood boat neck stretch t-shirt on a trip to London.”
I don’t even know what half those words mean but, as someone who had two gay roommates sophomore year of college (Boston College, of all places!), both of whom were involved in the theater program, I can assure you that is most definitely not the gayest thing I’ve ever read.
I think it is fair to say, “Wearing those clothes comes with a cost, a cost you should be aware of and which you can’t wholly reject if you know them going in.” But I also think we should examine what those costs are and decide if they are appropriate. Having folks take a peak at your legs as you walk by in a mini and thigh-highs is probably a fair cost; cat calls, leering, and the perception that the woman is somehow less deserving of dignity might be real costs that the woman perhaps will need to consider… but that doesn’t mean they should be.
Of course, I don’t see you going off on Smurfette’s barely-there dress, which I’m pretty sure just means you are some sort of previously undiscovered racist.
Okay…
Now you’ve got me thinking, albeit in a different direction.
Sometimes I’ll pick out clothes that I think look great, just dashing. I’ll put them on and, damn, do they look gay. Like, not, “Oh, that guy is wearing a pink shirt… but I guess that is sorta mainstream now, right?” gay… “Ummmm, you know we’re not going to a gay bar tonight and, even if we are, you’re not gay, right” gay. And I’ll normally shrug that off because I don’t think there is anything wrong with being gay or being mistaken for gay and, probably more importantly, I’m not gay, meaning that I can largely avoid whatever costs might come with being perceived as gay because I can do a whole bunch of not-gay things to mitigate them.
So, I guess I’m asking… is being able to “dress gay” somehow a straight privilege?
I would consider the “having to do things to demonstrate non-gayness” to be a cost in and of itself.
It’s actually something of a tragedy that I actually look really good in pink. So does my daughter, who shares my skin tone (and eyes and seemingly hair). On the one hand, she can wear pink in a way that I can’t without sending unintended signals. On the other hand, there is a lot of baggage with the privilege to do so and Clancy and I have a bit of a gender-jamming streak that sort of keeps us wary of much pink.
I guess what I mean is that, if Russell and I were to go out wearing matching boat-neck shirts or whatever the fish he was talking about and we were confronted for doing so, I would have an easier out than he.
Hmmmm…. how to put this….
I have exactly zero problem with dressing “gay,” however one cares to define it, though obviously it varies by context. (I would probably opt out of wearing my white linen pants to a hoedown, for example. Even after Memorial Day.) I don’t care about signalling gayness with what I’m wearing, though much of what I wear is pretty standard stuff for guys.
But there are signals between communities (“That guy is probably gay” thinks a not-gay guy… you’re right!) and within communities. And, er… the signals that particular shirt sent were ones I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to send to my fellow ‘mos. And I think I’ll leave it at that.
“(I would probably opt out of wearing my white linen pants to a hoedown, for example. Even after Memorial Day.)”
So space awesome.
Got it.
Just as a “Kiss me, I’m Shitfaced” shirt doesn’t just identify me as an asshole, but a particular kind of asshole?
Of course, now I insist we go out together in boat-necked shirts for a beer. What is a boat-neck shirt anyway?
This.
And I would totally have that beer. We would have a blast.
Well, of course you looked gay! That’s a woman’s shirt!!!
We need to make that beer happen… and soon. I’ll have to figure out when I’m in Boston next. Or you’re in NY next.
I promise that the shirt I bought was meant for guys. But… um… men’s shirts rarely feature that neckline. And the person I gave it away to was a woman.
I’ll keep you posted on trips to New York.
It’s okay… once I wore my sister’s jeans to school because they got switched in the wash. They were tight… too tight… and this was in the era when too-tight jeans were rife for ridicule. When my family confronted me on the matter, I was too stubborn to admit the error of my ways, insisted they simply shrank in the wash, and wore them the rest of the day.
I lost a toe to those jeans but damnit if I was going to give in to those bloodsuckers I call “family”.
Objecting to the appearance of the characters because it sexualizes young girls and objectifies females in general is something most everyone here is agreeing with.
Objecting to the appearance of the characters because it is going to teach young girls to dress like whores… well, some of us are objecting to the very notion that one can “dress like a whore”, given that a whore is most charitably a profession and least charitably a commentary on someone’s sexual morals… neither of which has anything explicit to do with clothing choices.
I wonder whether we can logically separate the two. Let me try to tease out why the two may be logically intertwined. Before I proceed I would just like to give a general trigger warning.
It seems odd that you would deny that people can dress like whores. There are after all characteristic ways prostitutes dress when they are on the job: They dress in a hyper-sexualised manner. The reason for this is that doing so attracts more clients i.e sexual partners.
Let me make a second descriptive claim. This time its about sexual attitudes. What seems at stake is whether or not a more blase attitude towards the sex act is a desireable attitude to have. It seems also that a more blase attitude towards sex is required if one voluntarily works as a prostitute or if one is to be habitually open to sexual encounters outside of committed relationships. There are exceptions. Desperation may drive people to commit acts that are according to their own standards profane, but that ceases to be a euvoluntary situation.
Let us now examine the issue with sexualisation of children. Objections to the sexualisation of children involve a value judgment about the relative merits of being sexually active or otherwise. Suppose we said that the reason we don’t want children to be sexually active because they are too young to make sexual decisions. But if that is the case, why do we take sexual inactivity to be the default? The decision to not have sex is as much a decision as the decision to have sex. If one is too young in virtue of lacking the relevant life experience, then one is not in a position to evaluate the merits of both sexual reticence and sexual adventurousness. But all that justifies is the paternalism on our part to impose a default sexual mode on those too young to choose for themselves. What this means is that nothing would justify our favouring some notion of asexuality or sexual reticence as the default choice for minors if we did not think that that choice was better for them in some way. So, its not just that they are too young to choose, it is that they are too young to know which is better, but we are in a position to know what is good for them and that is why some notion of abstinence or reticence is seen as the default choice we make on behalf of minors because we think that something is wrong with minors engaging in sexual activity and this wrongness has nothing to do with them not knowing what they would be getting into. As I mentioned before, we could also say that they are too young to know what they are staying out of and we could just as equally say that the default be the other way around. That is unless staying out is for some reason better than getting in.
I’m not disputing the judgment. However, if we do think that being sexualised is bad for minors, then expressing sexual attitudes that it would be wrong for them to have is also bad. i.e. we cannot not think that being blase or adventurous about sex is an undesirable attitude in minors without at the same time thinking that minors should not be sexualised.
Murali,
of course people can dress like whores. But your classism is showing if you think you can identify a high-class whore on the street.
“It seems odd that you would deny that people can dress like whores. There are after all characteristic ways prostitutes dress when they are on the job: They dress in a hyper-sexualised manner. The reason for this is that doing so attracts more clients i.e sexual partners.”
A few scattered thoughts…
1.) “Whore” carries with it a ton of meaning other than a prostitute. We call women who have never and will never exchange sex for money “whores” all the time.
2.) We don’t do this with other ways of dress typically associated with lines of work and never with the venom.
2a.) We don’t make all the bizarre associations between jobs and outfits that we do with “whore”. If I see a guy in a sharp suit, I don’t think, “Ugh, he’s dressed like a lawyer. I bet he’s a smarmy liar.” But we do see a woman in revealing, provocative clothing and think, “Ugh, she’s dressed like a whore. I’m not going to respect her,” even though we know that the likelihood of him being a lawyer are higher than her being a prostitute.
These thoughts are sort of muddled but, ultimately, I think it has to do with a really fished up view of women and their expressions of and ownership over their sexuality.
“On the one hand, she can wear pink in a way that I can’t without sending unintended signals.”
is it an issue for a bro to wear pink where you are?
These thoughts are sort of muddled but, ultimately, I think it has to do with a really fished up view of women and their expressions of and ownership over their sexuality.
Kazzy, it boils down to the view about whether there is something wrong with having sex-outside-of-a-committed-relationship (SOOACR). Does thinking that there is something seriously wrong or un-virtuous about SOOACR count as a really fished up view of women and their expressions of and ownership over their sexuality? I don’t think so. It would be misogynistic if there was a double standard, but absent that, it just seems like a different valence is attached to sex in particular contexts. Also, if we didn’t think SOOACR was wrong, we would be hard pressed to come up with a reason as to why the sexualisation of minors is wrong.
For the sake of argument, let’s just grant that SOOACR is morally defective. Then a prostitute would be an archetypical instantiation of a morally defective sexual agent. From this, calling non-prostitutes whores is an instance of ascribing to them a defective sexual morality. The point about clothes is this: It is not just rational for prostitutes to wear skimpy clothes, it is rational for anyone with said “defective sexual morality” to wear skimpy clothes for the same reason. It increases the number of prospective sexual partners. And it is not just skimpy clothes, but a whole range of adornements and behaviour which are known to have the effect of attracting more sexual partners.
And, given that such clothes tend to be less comfortable, the apparent signalling value of such clothes seems greater because there seem to be fewer occassions when it would be rational to dress like that. So, once you believe that SOOACR is wrong, it is not unreasonable to believe that scantily clad women have a defective sexual morality.
Murali,
All due respect, but you need to get out more….
Some of the most sexually promiscuous orgies that occur in Pittsburgh are committed by those wearing substantially more clothes than the normal person (if… one might say… alternative clothing… is your style).
Me? I don’t mind ’em. They help the Pirates win (by scaring the other teams, who are convinced that howling and barking all night long probably means voodoo rituals).
Kimmi, Maybe I really do need to get out more. I really have no experience in any of this. But I did not posit a necessary relation, just a probabilistic one. One counter example does not refute the general trend that the sexually adventurous would tend to dress sexier. All you have posited are outliers. Unless you’ve got something more. How do you explain why we have the perception that sexual adventurousness is correlated with the way people dress? I doubt patriarchy works in such a simple way. The way I see patriarchy working is more insidious and does not affect the basic point. Basically, I see patriarchy (or socio-biology if you don’t think you can blame patriarchy here) as shaping what looking good means in such a way as to be cashed out in terms of sexual attractiveness towards heterosexual males.
Murali,
Even if we concede that SOOACR is equally wrong and morally deficient for both men and women, I’d object to calling women who dress in revealing clothing “whores” or anything similar and to treating them with less-than-full respect.
Are we going to label muscular men in tight shirts as whores? And treat them with less respect? If not, why not?
And I’m not so sure that your claim that revealing clothes are less comfortable holds water; it’d largely depend on the particular garment. And we’re still making a pretty big assumption that the only reason a woman would wear revealing clothing is to garner sexual attention from men. That might be some women’s motivation or a partial motivation for many of them, but it is not the only one. We all partake in courting and mating rituals.
Murali,
wearing certain revealing outfits plays off particular aspects of male psychology (primarily sexual arousal being activated by visual stimuli). It’s like dangling a particularly smelly treat in front of a beagle’s nose, just to watch the poor puppy drool. This is a business decision that has less to do with what you’re selling, and far far more to whom you’re selling to. Some people buy sportscars (which advertize exactly how fast they can go by how loud they sound). Others buy luxury cars (which are sleek and quiet as a whisper). Different markets, but same psychological principle
Wearing “victimware” plays off other aspects of male psychology (namely the “ooh, this one will be easy…”)
I repeat that it’s a pretty fundamental mistake to assume that most whores wear clothing that is at all out of the ordinary. High class hookers wear standard dating material. High-Price Real estate agents wear what’s considered appropriate garb for that. And, in the places where it’s most common for high school girls to be paid for sex, they tend to wear high school uniforms.
Also, if we didn’t think SOOACR was wrong, we would be hard pressed to come up with a reason as to why the sexualisation of minors is wrong.
Really? Maturity, consent and predation don’t count for anything anymore?
So, once you believe that SOOACR is wrong, it is not unreasonable to believe that scantily clad women have a defective sexual morality.
First off, Murali, even if you believe that SOOACR is wrong (which many – many – of us don’t), it doesn’t follow that you should be judging all these people. Some people think such judgementalism is morally defective.
Second, yes, it is completely unreasonable to believe that scantily clad women have a defective sexual morality just because you think SOOACR is wrong. Granted, some of this may be a cultural clash, but even though you have laid out an argument as to why those seeking lots of sex from lots of people will dress scantily, you have failed to demonstrate how dressing scantily necessarily means you’re looking for lots of sex from lots of people. It’s that second part that would make it “reasonable” to judge people based on their clothes.
@Kazzy
No, its not okay to call anyone a whore just for wearing revealing clothes. But it may be natural even if not entirely correct to think that she is participating in a norm that disrespects her and objectifies her. And when someone disrespects themselves it is hard not to think less of that person. But even if you think less of a person it is not okay to disrespect them expecially when they are not blameworthy for the feature that causes you to think less of them.
And we’re still making a pretty big assumption that the only reason a woman would wear revealing clothing is to garner sexual attention from men. That might be some women’s motivation or a partial motivation for many of them, but it is not the only one. We all partake in courting and mating rituals.
The extent to which people participate in mating rituals is also part of it. It relates to what is an acceptable level of participation. If a culture as a whole participates in mating rituals fairly often, then on a purely descriptive level, it just does not hold very strongly to the anti-SOOACR norm.
About motivations, I don’t think it is so direct, and I certainly don’t have any special insight to the female mind here, and it may just be a failure of imagination on my part. IIRC the claim is that women don’t always wear skimpy clothes for heterosexual men, but for approval from other women or for their own self image etc. Its not that I don’t take women at their word, but that these things are in themselves can also be tightly bound up with sexual dynamics and patriarchy. I don’t want to root out the paper, but I remember reading somewhere that social status among female primates is linked to subsequent reproductive success. Whether the social status is indicative or causative vis-a-vis reproductive success, it still colours this motivation with mate search. In addition, it is well known sociologically that women themselves participate in the subjugation of other women in societies oppressive to women. Female circumcision where it is most stringently adhered to is arranged for and enforced by the elder women in the household and clan. That women would participate and enforce norms and hierarchies that perpetuate sexual objectification should not come as a surprise to us. When it comes to self image, we may want to ask why self image seems bound up in ways that have to do with sexy. I doubt that it is a coincidence that the way women dress to feel good about themselves also happens to be very attractive to heterosexual men.
@Kimmi
I think there is a strong cultural/societal component to what counts as victimwear in the first place. It is not purely a brute biological factor which causes a particular attire to elicit a predatory response from a man. in different cultures, different outfits do the job. There must be something else going on.
Murali,
Allow me to elaborate on what I define as victimware:
1) Victimware is defined by ease of access. a long skirt is easier to access a woman’s genitals quickly than some tight jeans. (same deal if wearing sweatpants).
2) Victimware is also defined by how unaware of how easy access is obtainable, the woman is.
3) Victimware tends to be conforming, if not overconforming, to “conservative fashions”
I’d be curious to hear what would constitute victimware in Singapore, and why you think it varies from American standards.
And I want to emphasize that not all men find this alluring or interesting!!
(for example: a swimsuit doesn’t count as victimware, both because women tend to be aware of how easy it is to get access, and also because it’s mildly to moderately transgressive in terms of amount of skin shown).
…………………..
Murali,
In america, swiming an bathing are both times when we tend to wear less clothing than usual. I don’t think anyone would say that a girl walking around in her co-ed dorm wearing a towel is dressing “sluttily”. Or someone wearing a swimsuit.
…. maybe I’m missing something in waht you’re saying.
Really? Maturity, consent and predation don’t count for anything anymore
Lack of maturity and ability to have informed consent only entails that we are entitled to set the default for them. It only counts as predatory if we think it harms the minor. Consider something else which they children are too young to know is good for them and which they lack the maturity and ability to consent: vaccines. We send children for vaccines because we believe it is good for them even though they lack the maturity. If sex is otherwise good or neutral but was bad only because of a lack of maturity and inability to consent, then vaccines which are otherwise good could also be transformed into a bad thing because children lack the maturity and the ability to consent to vaccination. In order for sex with minors to count as predatory but vaccines not to, there must be something apart from consent and maturity that is doing the work. Else, we would be sending our young teenagers off for positive sexual experiences whether or not they consented.
scantily necessarily means you’re looking for lots of sex from lots of people. It’s that second part that would make it “reasonable” to judge people based on their clothes.
is a necessary relations necessary? or is it sufficient to posit a weaker probabilistic one. Also depends on the standard of reasonable in use. Let me put it another way. Its at the least a very understandable error that people can make. In addition, if people didn’t have relatively higher success with seducing scantily clad women would such a perception have taken hold in the broad cultural consciousness?
Murali, regarding vaccines, you’re absolutely right. If we had no reasonable grounds to believe that vaccines did any good, it’d be wrong to jab kids with needles for no apparent reason. People may think there’s nothing wrong with SOOACR, but that doesn’t mean they think it is necessarily a good thing for everyone.
is a necessary relations necessary? or is it sufficient to posit a weaker probabilistic one. Also depends on the standard of reasonable in use. Let me put it another way. Its at the least a very understandable error that people can make. In addition, if people didn’t have relatively higher success with seducing scantily clad women would such a perception have taken hold in the broad cultural consciousness?
Well, I’m not going to answer for you, but for me such a probabilitic judgement of a person based on their clothing is pretty crappy, for lack of a more refined term. Some people may think they derive some utility out of such judgementalism, but I doubt, on balance, they do. And regardless, that’s not how I want to interact with the people in my community.
I guess we’re just at an impasse here. We’re dealing with personal morals, so it’s not surprising that we can’t come around to an agreement.
Allow me to elaborate on what I define as victimware:
1) Victimware is defined by ease of access. a long skirt is easier to access a woman’s genitals quickly than some tight jeans. (same deal if wearing sweatpants).
2) Victimware is also defined by how unaware of how easy access is obtainable, the woman is.
3) Victimware tends to be conforming, if not overconforming, to “conservative fashions”
Oh, then just ignore what I said. I thought victimwear referred to microskirts etc. i.e. things which would to a sexual predator seem to exuse or justify their sexual assault. Given that sexual predators tend to be close to the victim, it seems that which of the potential victims surrounding the predator ends up as the victim would depend on some kind of criteria of target selection which did not have to do with ease of access.
Also, regarding women in dorms or at the beach. It is precisely the context that makes me think that something more than merely biological is going on.
Murali,
an ordinary woman wearing a miniskirt, yadda yadda, is probably less likely to “put out” than one wearing more normal clothing.
Wearing stuff like that denotes both confidence, and the feeling that one can choose one’s sexual partners.
Also relative freedom from social memes.
As to predators: the general view of a predator is “find a victim that won’t report me” — victimware becomes one signal of many.
(This is probably going to be the last thing I say on the matter, only because my mind is preoccupied with other things, but thank you for the exchange, Murali.)
“No, its not okay to call anyone a whore just for wearing revealing clothes. But it may be natural even if not entirely correct to think that she is participating in a norm that disrespects her and objectifies her. And when someone disrespects themselves it is hard not to think less of that person. But even if you think less of a person it is not okay to disrespect them expecially when they are not blameworthy for the feature that causes you to think less of them.”
This is largely what I’m trying to get across. People are going to think lots of things based on how people dress. We can argue about what they should or should not think and what is fair, but that’s not going to change anything. What matters is how we treat one another… no matter how someone is dressed, they deserve to be treated with a certain level of respect until their actions prove otherwise.
Part of the problem is about who decides what signals what. Especially if the signal changes in a relatively short period of time. And while it isn’t entirely unfair to say, “You might not mean to draw attention to yourself when you wear a low cut blouse but that is the signal sent and once you know that, you can’t necessarily pretend otherwise and deny the consequences of that signaling,” But given the selective nature with which we apply that signaling and the fact that it is inherently based upon prejudice and stereotyping, I’m pretty uncomfortable with it.
I’ll see if I can write a post on it, because I have a lot to say. But, the signal is a part of the sender (not an individual sender, but the aggregate of senders) and a part of the reception.
This applies to oh-so-much-more than merely revealing or non-revealing clothing. But… I don’t think we can exempt this from the dynamic. Not as long as people wear clothes to be noticed.
You make a good point elsewhere about what an appropriate level of response is, comparing an extra glance to a whistling/gawking/etc. Well, I would argue that the latter is inappropriate regardless of what one is wearing and our norms should be adjusted on that level rather than anything to do with dress.
You also mention yoga clothing elsewhere. I’d put that with shorts. There is no reasonable way to try to discern a signal. It has a utilitarian purpose. It is an odd sort of fortunate thing that a lot of the stuff that is meant to be conspicuous is, well, conspicuously conspicuous. A young woman wearing tight-fitting pants that wants the attention is likely to be wearing tight-fitting pants with a slogan written across the bum. Not sure how I feel about the aesthetic of that, but I guess it can be helpful…
Different things also signal different things in different communities.
Baggy, sagging pants signal one thing to young people and another thing to old people. Unfortunately for young people, that latter group tends to make the rules.
-OR-
A short sleeve t-shirt on a hot day signals to most secular folks that someone is dressed for comfort. In a certain part of my town, it signals something very different.
While I’m not entirely on board with the show’s propensity to encourage viewers to shout out at the television, and then shout louder
IT MUST BE DESTROYED. Sorry. Moving on!
Dressing in minute, tight micro-garments is generally reserved for attracting a certain kind of attention, and that cultivating a knack for attracting that kind of attention is best done when one has aged out of a desire to watch animated cartoon programs about fairies.
By/with:
It seems to me you’re telling those same girls that the way you judge a woman (as opposed to a man) is the way she dresses and looks to the men around her.
A couple of things to tease out between these two points.
One, I’m not generally aware of “come-hither boys in hot pants” cartoons, so the “(as opposed to men)” part of Tod’s comment is germane, but it’s… a separate part of the conversation. If we’re sending the wrong message to girls, not sending that wrong message to boys is indicative of something else, not “whether or not we should be sending the wrong message to girls”.
Two, I’m pretty sure that no matter where we go, “how I choose to express myself” is always going to come in tension with “how society views people who choose to express themselves in the way in which you are currently expressing yourself”.
I really don’t think it matters too much where we plant our yardstick in the ground, because part of “choosing to express yourself”, particularly for the youth, is kinda linked to the current position of the yardstick. Also (and I hate to rain on anybody’s parade, here)… society is going to reserve the right to pass judgement on you for the manner in which you choose to express yourself, whether we think it’s a good idea for it to do that, or not.
In the grand scheme of things, I’d like to hope that I encourage people (specifically, the sproglings) in their choices to express themselves authentically to their actual being… as opposed to choosing to express themselves for the purposes of either messaging to society or rejecting the implicit judgment that society is going to place upon them for their choices. But that needs to be done eyes wide open.
You stick that stuff in your face, and you’re not going to get hired to work at a bank unless/until enough of society changes to accept “people with stuff stuck in their face” as “acceptable people to take my money at the bank”. You need to be aware of that when you decide to stick stuff in your face. You need to know what your expressing of yourself signals to the outside world, especially when it does not align with what your expression means to you, yourself.
If you don’t want some people to think you’re a sexually active, available, and adventurous sort who likes certain types of sexual activity, you ought not to get an elaborate tattoo on your lower back. If you don’t want to spend some time explaining that, no, jerk, you just like butterflies, that tattoo probably is not the best idea. If you don’t want some people to think you’re gay in 1986, you ought not to get a single earring in a particular ear.
Hey, maybe you don’t want the implications of those things, but you still think that’s an authentic expression of yourself you feel compelled to do. Good on you… go ahead, but… eyes wide open.
The one thing nobody gets to do tomorrow is make everyone see you as you really are. To the extent that you want this to be part of your interaction with society, you need to be aware of how your signals are interpreted in ways that actually work at cross purposes to making people see you as you really are.
Heck, in a meta sense, maybe that’s your point. Again, good on you, go ahead… but… eyes wide open.
L’enfer, c’est les autres.
It’s also where heaven is. Solitude, taken in doses, is good for the intellect but it doesn’t do much for the heart.
You probably have read it, but for those who haven’t read the play that quote’s from, the idea isn’t to avoid others (well, I suppose it is in part if the others are the characters in that play). The point is to understand that one never gets to define oneself. One is always defined by others, and that fact is a kind of hell.
Shames me to admit it, but no…. I haven’t read it. Unlike Blaise, I’ve only read most things, not everything.
(Read The Flies instead. It’s better. If you already know the big lines from No Exit, you aren’t going to get much more from reading it, if’n you ask me.)
This is a very good comment.
The only thing I would add is that there seems to me to be a significant difference between “how a person chooses to express themselves” and “how commercial artists draw cartoons”. I think the latter has a longitudinal effect on the former, but I also think it’s easy to blend the two things – so that we react to opinions about the latter as if they are opinions about the former, and vice versa.
I have a strong opinion that it’s obnoxious to offer our little girls mostly aspirational images that look like the winx images, and more obnoxious to offer those images as sidekicks-only than as protagonists.
Actual little girls – or actual grown people of whatever genders – can dress however the hell they want, and I assume just about nothing other than a) they have some reason for dressing that way, b) it’s none of my business unless they want it to be, c) I am nonetheless entitled to my aesthetic reaction (which I tend to keep to myself, unless, again, I have the sense that they want me not to, as with a close friend who looks damn good, for example), and d) the vast majority of people any given individual encounters will conflate a and c, and ditch b.
I wish we lived in a world where that wasn’t the case. Until it isn’t, I will continue to not give a rip what people wear, but care pretty strongly about what we *tell* people to wear.
This is likewise a good comment. I like the last line in particular.
A side note, but:
Wow. This is amazing.
God dammit, Cahalan! (I was ready to misspell your last name out of spite.) I was totally fine until that fishin’ tagline at the end.
Now I have to go splash water on my face and make excuses for my allergies!
Hee hee hee.
I recall reading a thing a while back that talked about men, women, appearance, and self-perception.
It basically demonstrated that men think they are skinnier than they are, think women want more muscle than women want, and are perceived by women to be heavier than they are. Women, on the other hand, think they are heavier than they are, think men want them to be skinnier than men actually want them, and are perceived by men to be skinnier than they are.
I wish I could find it. It was fascinating.
I believe we will have conquered our petty, trivial obsession with looks when we all agree that the pinnacle of “good looking” that everyone is to be judged against will be me, regardless of my age, shape or what I’m wearing at that particular moment.
When I was in college, my name, being not particularly-uncommon, was shared by several other guys in my social circle. And one day I pointed out to the girls that while they always referred to me as simply “Glyph”, they would always add an additional clarifying descriptor for the others: “Big Glyph”, “Black Glyph”, “Little Glyph”.
I said that this obviously meant that *I* was the standard by which all other Glyphs should be measured; but that if they ever needed to clarify, they could just call me “Glyph the Greater”.
It stuck.
You gave yourself a nickname? Do you know how hard that is?
Well, I AM the Greater.
Greater than what, you ask?
Well, whatever you come up with, just a little greater than that.
From now on, I’m calling you Ko-Ko.
Let’s see how well this sticks: Hi Ko-Ko
Pat,
nom de plummes are easy.
You’re Esmeralda, Kimmie.
Anybody else want to pipe up and earn themselves a new moniker?
Too late! I already left on a high note!
I gave myself a nickname with one crew of friends. Try me, Callahan.
The Cut Man notwithstanding, You can’t give yourself a nickname.
I just realized we posted the same link, Pat.
I know you’ve got a great mind. . . and on this one occasion we thought alike. . . maybe I’m not so mundane after all.
Maybe, I’m really beautiful!
Well, of course. Of that, I have never had any doubt. Nor do I think I presume much to suggest this has almost certainly been the opinion of the others hanging round these parts as well.
I’d much rather think with a great mind then be a great beauty. I’m over 50; I know how it fades. It’s both disconcerting and comforting to go from being gawked at to being invisible.
And very rewarding when someone who didn’t really see you discovers that you’re a person with substance and depth, someone worthy of respect.
One of these days, I’m going to write a post about menopause; because either you’re a woman and or you may love a woman; and if we women live long enough, we take that walk, our loved ones take it with us. Sometimes it’s easy an easy gentle path, but mostly it’s not. And it’s veiled, wrongly so. I hate secrets.
As somone who just passed th3 36-year marker, and has no reason to expect based on genetics that the path will be gentle, I would really appreciate it if you wrote that post.
And it’s veiled, wrongly so. I hate secrets.
The two women-centered topics that strike me, the most, as suffering from this are miscarriage and menopause.
The only male-centered topics that I can think that’s close is erectile dysfunction.
Might help everybody if anybody who dealt with them talked about them more often.
zic, if you’d like to write that post for this space, I’d be delighted to post it. Lemme know.
A great mind is some of the best beauty there is.
Letitia is disappointed that Millicent finds it necessary to disparage The Pallisers.
Perish the thought.
The picture reminded me of something that circulated on the internet recently, something like “20 superheroes and superheroines with impossible spines”
It’s not just the message such representations are sending to little girls.
It bothers me more that there’s a cartoon (loads of cartoons) that might normalize this version of ‘female’ for the boys. Despite the plethora of marketing using hyper-sexualized women, selling to women to hyper-sexualize themselves, and the dearth of real womanly characteristics in public entertainment, women are doing okay.
But men? They’ve got something screwy going on; they think a thread discussing the messages girls might get are a concern, and (perhaps because men often enjoy looking at women) have barely a passing thought to the messages and manipulation they receive. It’s like, “Hey little boy, want some candy?” and you flash him an image of some boob curves and his reason totally abandons him.
That’s the problem. That’s the root of ‘unwanted attention.’ We train little boys to think this is how women should be (they are wired to be susceptible to such training,) and then we go around and blame the girls for triggering the little boys training; and telling the girls to dress so that they don’t attract unwanted attention, instead of teaching the boys not to dole out unwanted attention.
Not only is this classic slut shaming, but it’s failing to deal with the other half of the problem: boys/men are constantly being manipulated by hyper-sexualized images of women, they’re barraged by an overload of these images without any thought to helping them process that manipulation in a healthy sort of way, and we accept this as the norm.
This
zic, you are absolutely right, and thank you for bringing it up. It doesn’t excuse the giant gap in my perception, but as far as I can tell, the reason I didn’t think about this is that I assumed little boys won’t be watching a show full of actualized female characters acting as protagonists, and almost no male characters…. which, insofar as that generalization is probably statistically accurate, it carries its own rant with it – but insofar as it’s still just a generalization, I should’ve thought in a more nuanced way about the issue in the first place.
Boys may not watch Winx club, but have you seen the way female marvel superheroes are drawn? Boys read marvel and that is also not an appropriate diet of conceptions of the female to raise boys on.
While I’ll not be so downright stupid as to outright defend the stylized drawings of the comic universes, do keep in mind that the versions of the men in those books usually bear no resemblance whatsoever to the male half of the population, either.
(It’s pretty non-controversial, I’d hope, that the total aggregate body of media you consume alters your perceptions. I won’t dispute that, at all.)
Yeah, but it’s a question of degree. And consistency. I mean you have the Jim Lee male superhero, which is an extreme, which is right about on par with the female superhero norm.
I just came back from the grocery store. At the checkout, there was a rack of magazines. How to loose weight. How to look younger. What to wear. What to put on your face. How to do your hair.
Now I pay pretty close attention to the folk in the store; it’s typically an equal mix of men and women shopping; certainly there’s no trend toward paying customers being mostly women.
But there was not one single magazine at the checkout suggesting how men should look. Yes; the men in comics are hyper-stylized. But that’s fiction, and I’m pretty sure every man knows that he’s not going to look like the incredible hulk unless there’s steroids involved.
There’s been a lot of talk about what marketing messages do to women. I stumbled on this fascinating piece where they had a forensic artist draw women based on the woman’s description of herself to the artist and then the artist drew the same woman based on a random stranger’s description. Women flounder in a world of being constantly told they’re not pretty enough, and the internalize that. We’ve known this for a long time.
What rarely gets considered is the message men take away from the marketing, both the constant, “this is how a woman should look,”in the check-out and the use of sexy women to sell men everything from beer to sports cars. Flash a little T&A and the all his sense drifts away.
Personally, I think both sexes are being pawned. We talk about it with women; the Millicent-reaction is a common theme and has been for centuries. But the notion that men are also being manipulated?
Who’d a thunk?
I recently bought an issue of Cosmo for some light inspiration for the Israel/Palestine post for April Fool’s Day and, lemme tell ya, if I were hoping to make the world worse and all I had was a glossy press, I would probably have to settle for second place.
Zic, if you haven’t seen the movie Beautiful Girls, I recommend it. It touches on some of the things you’re talking about here. That’s actually been one of my issues, though I supposed I talked about it more before I was a Leaguer than now. The media skew really does have a detrimental effect on guys. (To be honest, this is one of the reasons why I am not so sanguine on the notion that pornography doesn’t have some ill-effects. Maybe outweighed by the pros than the cons, but I think there are some serious issues here on the male side.)
JB, did I tell you how much I loved that piece?
I’m pleased that you did. After reading the magazine, I was tempted to write a post about Cosmo, actually.
I found the prospect to be much more depressing than writing about Israel/Palestine.
I can’t stand those girlie mags; the perfume inserts trigger an acid reflux reaction even before the content makes me want to hurl.
Zic, in response to your comment “there was not one single magazine at the checkout suggesting how men should look,” there certainly are magazines that tell men how they should look and dress. Men’s Health, Esquire, GQ, and the like. The models therein are seemingly impossibly good-looking and in astonishing physical condition, so men can and do get a taste of what it’s like to be told “This is how you ought to look and dress — and dude, you don’t really measure up, do you?”
I’m not saying it’s as intense or as pervasive as what women endure — I realize this is only a fraction of what gets fed to women, and for a lot of reasons.
One dynamic that I don’t know why it is bugging me as something relevant is how GQ is mostly written by guys and how Cosmo is mostly written by gals… and about the differences in the messages being sent.
Look, I GREW up (as apposed to most of you) watching this show as a child, and believe me I watched it periodically. I was about 9-10 years old when I started watching Winx Club on 4Kids, and I loved the show (what girl wouldn’t love a show about magical fairies kicking the butts of enemies/awesome plot/great morals about friendship, loyalty, and justice?). Look, now I’m ranting.
Yes I agree that the girls are dressed a little skimpy, but not in the way you loonatics proclaim it to be. When I watched the show as a child I never viewed the girls as sexualized objects, and I did not grow up watching it saying “Oh gosh, I want to dress how they do!” I was more concerned about watching my favourite fairies kick monster butt. Just because adults see the show as “sexualized”, does not mean children do too (in fact most of them don’t).
Frankly, who would watch a show about fairies dressed in full outfits from the 1800’s? I would not blame children’s shows for telling girls how to dress; blame your female pop sensations such as Nicki Minaj, Brittany Spears, Katy Perry, etc etc. they are much more influential on kids than these shows. Kids don’t pay attention to the outfits in a way that makes them want to dress like them.
Please, you all need to give your heads a shake. I was a child growing up watching the show, and I would just like to point out that the outfits the girls wore did not influence what I wore as a kid. Children are not being affected by what the Winx Girls wear, only the nazi-parents that shadow their children from these shows because they view it as too “sexualized”, and they constantly tell their kids “don’t dress in this sexualized manner”. Seriously, I grew up watching Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Winx Club, Bratz, etc etc, and these shows in no way dictated to me how I should dress. Plus, I never turned out like a “streetwalker” that you claim the girls are dressed as.
Shame on whoever(s) wrote this. You aren’t children, so sure you may automatically see the girls as sexual objects, but kids think differently. I was one of these kids, and I will emphasize it again that I WAS NOT influenced to dress like the Winx Club girls.
Look, I GREW up (as apposed to most of you)
True enough.
Thanks for your perspective, TT.
I think there’s a lot of daylight between dressing cartoon characters in tiny, skin-tight garments and wanting them to be wearing petticoats. And I’m not planning on prohibiting my kids from watching this show, though I’m still trying to keep them away from television with commercials for as long as possible. Finally, I agree that, were I inclined to pin blame for little girls wanting to dress like Rihanna, I would pin it on Rihanna.
That said, I don’t know if I think it’s entirely sound to generalize from your experience to everyone. Just because you don’t perceive yourself to have been influenced by the attire of the characters on this show doesn’t mean that nobody would be. How concerned anyone should be about that potential is obviously up for debate, but I don’t think you can dismiss that potential out of hand.