Quote:
Originally posted by Fugee
I think there are two differences. The first is the age of the girls. I don't remember my parents being shocked by what the pre-teens and young teens were wearing -- pretty much high school and up. And when I was 11-14, my parents weren't shocked at what I was wearing because they decided what I could wear and that was that. If for no other reason than stricter parenting, the past generational clothing shifts weren't so quickly copied by young girls. It was young women being scandalous, not girls.
The second is the overt slutty sexuality -- not only are really young girls dressing as provocatively in style as older girls and women, but in case you missed the message, their strappy little tops have glitter sayings that make it perfectly clear.
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1) you remember your pre-teen years rather differently than I remember mine. I got called out for wanting to dress "slutty" when I was 10 (I believe it was ear-piercing at issue, which my mother still maintains is practiced only by slutty women.) Heel height may have come up before even that. Makeup certainly did.
2) This also is not new, it is entirely normal. I see your grandmother never told you about the early '20s. One of my great aunts was locked in the attic for quite a long time when she got her hair bobbed at 13 (my grandmother held out cutting her hair until she got married, like a nice girl), with my great-grandfather reportedly having fits the whole time that one of his daughters had become a prostitute. Bobbed hair, bare arms, no corsets, short skirts, sheer stockings, bare legs - if that isn't overt slutty sexuality obviously advertised, I don't know what is. Nevermind the examples in living memory of 1970s bralessness, and late '50s early'60s minis, etc, etc, etc. All far more shocking and overt in their context than spaghetti strap tops with Playboy branding on the front are in ours.
BR(Did you know there was a brief fashion among the young in Napoleonic France to wear a dress of the sheerest possible lawn, with no undergarments at all, and to have a servant trailing you at all times to keep you wet down so it clung see-through to your body? It wasn't the horror of the elders that stopped that, it was enough women dying of pneumonia. Just a curious bit of trivia for you.)C
