Cult of Youth, Infantilisation, Fashion
Sep. 8th, 2008 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheThoughts:
Little girls and young teenage girls wear clothes which adult women can't without "trying to look young."
Adult women dress in these for advertising purposes with an explicit sexual message.
Ew.
Things which come immediately to mind are very short skirts with white ankle socks, school uniforms, babydoll dresses, etc. There are more but I haven't thought properly about it yet. But I know I've seen other instances of women, mainly in sex-sells-products type adverts, dressing like little girls in order to appear more alluring, presumably through vulnerability, but ew. I think it's to do with the virgin-whore thing. Ew ew ew.
Also: do little boys wear things which adult men don't usually wear? Or do boys and men wear basically the same clothing, so there isn't the same message-sending ability? I can't think clearly about it, right now.
Little girls and young teenage girls wear clothes which adult women can't without "trying to look young."
Adult women dress in these for advertising purposes with an explicit sexual message.
Ew.
Things which come immediately to mind are very short skirts with white ankle socks, school uniforms, babydoll dresses, etc. There are more but I haven't thought properly about it yet. But I know I've seen other instances of women, mainly in sex-sells-products type adverts, dressing like little girls in order to appear more alluring, presumably through vulnerability, but ew. I think it's to do with the virgin-whore thing. Ew ew ew.
Also: do little boys wear things which adult men don't usually wear? Or do boys and men wear basically the same clothing, so there isn't the same message-sending ability? I can't think clearly about it, right now.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 03:14 pm (UTC)(I am willing to cheerfully accept that some people choose hairlessness for sensual reasons but find it very complicated as an aesthetic choice, in all honesty - very very complicated).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 07:53 pm (UTC)Yes, it's perverse, yes, it's deeply degrading to women, yes, it's part of making children vulnerable and sexualised in a totally inappropriate way, yes, it panders to and degrades male sexuality, I could go on forever. yes, ew.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 01:02 am (UTC)I'm not romanticly interested in women under about 25 (I'll be 30 in about two weeks); whatever would we talk about? Not that children inevitably confound attempts at conversation, but not so much the tone one wants in this context (I wouldn't want to sleep with a woman in or just past her late teens if the alternative is someone who knows what she's doing).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 08:39 am (UTC)Not much has changed!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 02:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 09:00 am (UTC)However in recent decades there's been a pronounced trend of making women look not just young but actively sexually immature - the obsession with thinness is part and parcel of the same trend, because very thin women exhibit fewer secondary sexual characteristics (full breasts, round hips etc.).
One theory about that is that it's a cultural trend that causes the visible disempowerment of women (little girls and thin, ill looking waifs are not immediately threatening objects) and that grows in direct proportion to how empowered women actually are in society. Superficially I have to say it makes sense; the sort of wide eyed, colt-legged, vulnerable look that Twiggy and Marianne Faithful embodied in the sixties coincided with the second wave in many respects.
From that to Britney Spears and her pigtails, or School Disco parties for the over forties, is just a cultural hop skip and jump.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 10:25 am (UTC)(2) Definitely the disappearing women thing is a backlash against women appearing more in Real Life(tm). Stupid cowardly men. I know plenty of men who LIKE sleeping with their equals; why aren't they running the patriarchy?!
The whole it's-sexy-to-wear-a-man's-too-big-clothing thing is grounded in that looking-small-and-vulnerable crap too.
Some days I wish I were nine feet tall and more than usually plain. Still, at least I'm hairy. Grr.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 11:03 am (UTC)If you look at representational art (art that is explicitly conveying a cultural ideal of beauty) from Egypt, Greece, China, Mezoamerica, India or Africa, there is a striking preponderance of narrow waists and firm, high breasts.
I'm not saying that that is any kind of proof of the evolutionary theory, because it's not; but we need to choose our evidence carefully.
The other thing is that I'm not sure how you get from "men 'really' prefer fat women" to "men want to not be held responsible for liking thin women". There's a link missing in the logical chaint here for me - am I overlooking something?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 11:09 am (UTC)(Also, no-one knows that the Venus figures were for worship, that's just a pet theory, like the Dun Aengus one that was so popular with the Victorians - for all we know they were for Chinese medicine type stuff where you point to the places that hurt and get diagnosed without physical examination. What *is* reasonable is that it was a body type considered worth sculpting for some reason, either because it was normal, idealised, or a terrible terrible warning).
I'm not saying that they prefer fat women "really" whatever that is - just that there's so much cultural influence on what men consider sexually attractive in any given place at any given time that evolution doesn't account for it.
Evolution has been used as an excuse for infidelity, harems, finding particular body types attractive (fat AND thin), the whole breasts=buttocks thing, and all sorts of other things. I don't buy it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 03:20 pm (UTC)Concomittantly, I don't think men needed to wait for evolutionary science to come along and give them an excuse to think with their penises. I absolutely agree with you - more than I can express in an LJ comment - that subverting science in order to justify the status quo is a frequent and, to my mind, capital offense. But I don't think that ignoring any kind of data that's out there (like: pretty much all men everywhere have always preferred to marry/sleep with young women) and just crying "patriarchy!" is the right debating tactic to combat that.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 08:02 pm (UTC)I haven't got as far as debating yet, I'm still busy being appalled and furious. Channelling the anger is the advanced lesson.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 11:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 02:33 pm (UTC)I blame the advent of leisurewear. Oh Lord, I hate it so.
Kindermord *who shaves and wears a shirt everyday*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 04:52 pm (UTC)