Posted on 03/22/2011 3:50:08 PM PDT by iowamark
Women of a liberated generation wrestle with their eager-to-grow-up daughters—and their own pasts
...In a few years, their attention will turn to the annual ritual of shopping for a prom dress, and by then their fashion tastes will have advanced still more. Having done this now for two years with my own daughter, I continue to be amazed by the plunging necklines, built-in push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos. And try finding a pair of sufficiently "prommish" shoes designed with less than a 2-inch heel...
A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?"
We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that's certainly the norm among my peers.
So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God forbid, hypocrites...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?”
Exactly right
I don't.
I’ll wager that this woman voted for Bill Clinton twice. Isn’t there some Bible verse about reaping and sowing?
I was going to make a pun about raping and blowing, but, I thought better of it...
You can usually find decent (ie, modest) clothing on ebay and bonanza.com. Especially the retro swimsuits, they’re very attractive. Wider choice of styles than you’ll find in most stores, and often better construction too.
The author seems not to understand that the corset was personal torture in the service of generating male lust. Think of it as a Victorian equivalent of 4-inch heels.
That would be impossible. He wouldn't have been your husband before marriage.
“If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage”
Me Neither!
Oooh, thanks! I was able to find some decent clothes for my 11-year-old at Walmart, but my 13-year-old needs adult sizes. Maybe I can find something secondhand for less than new items in the Land’s End catalog.
skanks raising sluts,
who saw that coming?
Oh wait
I see women who are old enough to be grandmothers and dressed like teen age trollops.
Am Vets baby, or Goodwill. I am a convert to the thrift store. Don’t knock it. (Actually, I just got a pair of Land’s End jeans, perfect condition, $5.00)
Never trust anyone over thirty. That was the mantra of the 60’s generation. Now that they are all pushing 60 they find out how really stupid they were.........
I often find clothes at The Salvation Army, but it’s harder to find girls’ items in this area. And you have to keep going back until something right is in stock, unlike ordering from a catalog.
Yes, persistence is the key if want to be a thrift store diva.
My wife and I were shopping in Pennys this weekend. They had hotpants on the rack, apparently back in fashion....
P.S. I have four daughters. Next January 13th, I will have four TEENAGE daughters. They are truly great kids. But good luck with getting them into thrift store threads.
Yep.
Boobs are everywhere! What used to be reserved for the occasional cocktail dress is now everyday wear, even on TV anchors, day and night. What these women don't seem to get is that by making cleavage omnipresent, it becomes . . . well omnipresent. I.e., part of the background. Ho Hum.
Feminists and liberals completely missed the fact that by making sex ubiquitous, to the point of literally shoving it in kids' faces from an early age and 24/7, they would completely empty it, not only of any emotional meaning, but even of any ability to titilate. That is why the constant exposure to pornography, at whatever level, eventually leads to the requirement for more and more perversion to achieve the initial response. It used to be a wondrous thing to -- finally! -- see your loved one's naked body. Now . . . so what. A few decades ago I was travelling in Denmark and amazed at the nude magazine covers that were everywhere, say at newstands at the train station. I asked a Danish friend if people weren't at all concerned about how such constant exposure to sex and nudity (which, essentially, is what we are exposed to in our culture today---women really do often wear very little clothes) might affect the children. My friend's response was something along the lines of "by letting kids see nudity from an early age, they'll be less curious about it and less turned on by it later." Like . . . that's a good thing? Emotionally dulling is a good thing? But that's where we are. It's quaint to think of our mothers saying "leave something to the imagination" -- but how right they were.
For grins I googled "prom dress pictures 2011" and almost all I saw looked pretty classy. A few fell into the slutware category, but a girl would have to be looking for it.
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