The Perils of Peekaboo America's teen peep show: Has 'slutware' gone too far?

SF Chronicle ^ | Sunday, July 27, 2003 | J.A. Getzlaff

[presidio9]

On a bustling Saturday afternoon a silent, generational war started at Abercrombie & Fitch, the teen retail clothing store in the San Francisco Shopping Centre, an urban mall at Market and Fifth streets.

A girl of maybe 15, wearing braces and hip-hugger jeans, fingered a shrunken, see-through T-shirt that coyly advertised "Hottie Brand Cocoa." Her mother, noting her daughter's interest, eyeballed the stack of shirts and grimaced. She moved purposefully on, but her daughter lingered, hope in her eyes. After a minute, she gave up.

[SauronOfMordor]

It must really suck to be a teenage boy in this sex-drenched culture nowadays. Especially if you're not a "cool" one. All around you there's girls who look like they're offering it up to anyone and everyone...except you! :)

Now there's just the thing for young male egos.

[maica]

Mothers who let their little girls dress like the Spice Girls when the children were 5 or 6, and let them dress like Brittney Spears when they were 10 and 11, and thought that having a dozen or so undressed Barbie dolls lying around in the playrooms of 4 and 5 year olds, are shocked when their teens see no problem in dressing like 'working' girls. How can the girls not want to dress like their 'peers.' They have been raised to do so.

I watched the ceremony at the Korean War memorial the other day and saw a beautiful dance done by girls in traditional Korean formal clothing. My thoughts strayed to how much more seductive Korean women must have appeared to Korean men when that elegant clothing actually hid their figure.

It is not to say that a burka is the answer, but a little bit of reserve is so much more (self)respectful, and that is a concept that the current generation of girls has not been taught.

[nmh]

"From a Darwinian perspective," she says, "the mating process is extremely important, and both sexes are advertising a great many things."

Why am I not shocked that a Darwinian, who thinks people are really animals would have such a basic animalistic view.

[nmh]

I have a four year old daughter also. I refer to her as being in taste training (in clothes). I REFUSE to let her look like a slut or act like one.

I stunned her summer camp teacher. I was told they were going to do face painting. That I've allowed but when she told them all she had planned I had to put my foot down. NO spray on purple or some other hair color (washes out). NO tattoos. NO nail polish. She looked at me like I was an alien so I told her, she might as well get used to it now ... since she will NOT be allowed to conform to the slut or shock look. She has a higher bar and I don't want her desensitized to things we disapprove of.

[nmh]

Land's End or L.L.Bean have more conservative attire. We are lucky where I live since there are still some conservative stores to buy from.

[nmh]

I saw a toddler, a little girl, topless in a THONG bottom on the beach. It was definitely a thong.

[nmh]

I saw a toddler, a little girl, topless in a THONG bottom on the beach. It was definitely a thong.

I should add she looked about three years old.

[John Robertson]

A teacher friend relates that most teachers are too cowardly to call students on dress-code violations. They just look right through the student, pretending not to see it. After all, it's a lot easier than writing someone up, sending him to the office, possibly defending your actions later when parents scream, etc.

But he takes those colleagues aside and chides them for not enforcing the rules that everyone knows about it. When they say, Oh, I didn't even notice it, he slams them with, Stop lying, there's no way you could miss a skirt that short! (Or a message shirt with profanity on it, or whatever). He then tells them, I have no respect for you, because you have no respect for our profession. Direct quote.

Most of his colleagues hate him, understandably. What do the kids in his dying-working-class town think of him? He of the take-no-crap, don't-do-anything-to-distract-anyone-from-what's-going-on-in-my-classroom old-school variety of teacher...he who teaches AP History and mentors his kids into top universities?

They LOVE him!!! Deep and abidingly. If he sees a 15-year-old fattie in the halls festooned with chains and black denim he'll take him aside and say, You're not tough, okay? You want everybody to think you are, but everybody really thinks you're a punk. But you can put on some clean clothes, stop acting like an asshole and try to learn something, so you can make something out of your life, or you can keep acting like a jerk that nobody likes and respects and who will end up miserable and broke.

What does he say when an outraged parent comes in and demands to know why a teacher would talk this way to little Johnny? He simply looks at the boy and says, Well, look at him: He IS a punk! I'm just trying to help him. And you should be, too. Sometimes, tenure works.

He is feared but respected, and knows his core subject like nobody else. And they love him. He was voted favorite teacher seven years in a row...till the other teachers decided the award "shouldn't really single anyone out, because we're all special teachers..." and they forced the administration to eliminate it.

If we had a few thousand teachers like him, this country could turn around in a short generation. Alas, he is a rarity, close to retirement, and the education programs at universities are turning out the go-along-to-getalong type by the drove...and they are also totally corroded by PC.

So it goes.

[Nowhere Man]

I would totally don that ensemble.

Cool, out of the mess of pics I have, that's my favorite. I guess I have my romantic side too as well, sometimes I long for the days when women and men dressed well and up to the hilt. B-)

Here are a few others.



Those two and the one I posted before were done by one of my favorite famous fashion illustrators of the time, Emma Musselman. The Victorian/Edwardian era is one of my favs to study although I like the fashions of the 1950's too. It's a shame though that a lot of today's fashions out there swing too much to the skanky side. B-( Even the kid's fashions are that way, sometimes when I see 13 year old girls dressed that way, I do a double-take, sometimes they look so grown up. I'm 37 so I've seen my fair share revealing fashions even in the 1980's but a lot of today's stuff would put that to shame.

[maxwell]

Needless to say, I am a bit of a pariah among my local artist 'peers'. Only a handful of them actually thhnk it's cool and refreshing to have a Republican 'in house' so to speak.)

Huh... Try academe...

Which is why I be gettin' out. Well, that, and gov't pays more...

Comes a point, though, where one gets weary of those "holier-than-thou" attitudes that so many libs sport. I can't talk to these people; they're as set in their ways as I am in mine. Folks have gotten used to me but sometimes I can't figure out whether it's grudging respect or patronization.

[savagesusie]

The desire to dress like a cheap and easy zipless sex promise comes partly from the attitudes of NOW and Planned Parenthood...

Read the last chapter in Ann Coulter's book, Treason where she outlines the agenda of the liberals--to make sex meaningless. We are losing the "culture wars" because of the influx of "agendas" into the classroom (social indoctrination of our children)....destruction of the traditional family, promotion of deviant lifestyles, disrespect for parental controls, "gay" agenda, etc., that will lead to the support of sex as a "right of the child"....just like Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the UN would love for our little darlings--a complete destruction of the family as we know it.

[PatrioticAmerican]

She could be my date anytime!>

A tat'd, gutterslut gono infested out-of-control teenager was never my style.

[ccmay]

How do you convince a little girl that her daddy is not a nerd?

I'm quite happy to assume the role of a nerd with my daughter-- a strict and overbearing nerd.

My wife and I decided long ago that while we would always shower our kids with love and attention, we would make sure they understood that we were their parents and NOT their friends, until the time they became independent adults.

Our 10-year-old has had to come home from sleep-overs where the other girls are watching PG-13 movies. The other parents (especially the slutty skanky moms) look at us like we're escapees from Dogpatch, but my daughter's true friends know she can't watch inappropriate movies movie and don't embarrass her by asking her to.

It is liberating for a kid-- whatever temptation is being offered, they can always say, "I'm sorry-- I'd love to but my dad is SO strict and SO mean if I don't do what he says!" I don't mind being the ogre if it means my kids are protected.

-ccm

[Nowhere Man]

She could be my date anytime!>

A tat'd, gutterslut gono infested out-of-control teenager was never my style.

You got to get through me first. B-)

Yeah, you and me both, when I see women dressed like in many of those ads we see and are talking about, it really turns me off too. Maybe related but what turns me off more is women (and men) with body piercings. When I see a lady with enough metal in her head to pick up Radio Free Europe, it's my cue to run away as fast as I can. B-)

[viaveritasvita]

>>"...till the other teachers decided the award 'shouldn't really single anyone out, because we're all special teachers...' and they forced the administration to eliminate it."<<


What a load of crap!!!!!!

[viaveritasvita]

I rec'd an unsolicited magazine (I refuse to call them catalogs) from American Eagle Outfitters recently. It was soft porn. I cut out a pic of a young boy and girl kissing -- she with boobs hanging out and her hand/fingers enticingly close to his crotch. I pasted a blue dot (seriesly!) on the girl's face and wrote a note:

Please remove me from your mailing. I do not wish to receive pornography in my home. If I receive another slutty magazine from you ever again, I will file a complaint with the post office. [Regarding the blue dot]: Paste your child's picture here and then tell me it ain't smutty.

<><

[MHGinTN]

Businessmen, she said, are no different than young girls. They display "with fancy suits and expensive cars." According to Fisher, "Everyone displays themselves on the love market." How many suits and cars end up trashing an alive individual human being in his/her earliest age of lifetime because of 'going too far' for the level of responsibility one has reached in life? Abortion isn't a result of suits or cars, but it can be connected to the sexual temptation game and immature 'displayers'. Fisher's ignorant affirmation of the slutty behavior is nearly as disgusting as the clothing described in the article.

[MHGinTN]

I wonder, if boys and men were encouraged to walk around with erections distending their clothing (and with Viagra so easily obtained, it could be accomplished), as a fashion statement, would the gurus of modern slutism praise it as enlightened and progressive?

[Calpernia]

>>>>On a bustling Saturday afternoon a silent, generational war started at Abercrombie & Fitch, the teen retail clothing store in the San Francisco Shopping Centre, an urban mall at Market and Fifth streets.

A girl of maybe 15, wearing braces and hip-hugger jeans, fingered a shrunken, see-through T-shirt that coyly advertised "Hottie Brand Cocoa." Her mother, noting her daughter's interest, eyeballed the stack of shirts and grimaced. She moved purposefully on, but her daughter lingered, hope in her eyes. After a minute, she gave up.

---

Oh yeah. I am very satisfied with Catholic School uniforms!

I still am shocked at seeing kids going to public school dressed in this sort of smut.

[splach78]

I used body art as a general term to encompass tattoos, and piercings. Tattoos are still tattoos.

You may feel differently about your "body art" at fifty

Or I might not.