I’m not sure what to think of this but I’m putting it here because it could easily wander off course and on to all manner of jagged rocks. Let me explain:
There is a huge party trend in these here parts for something generically known as ‘school discos’: Every weekend thousands of partying people (from, say, 18-35 years-old) dress in school uniforms and go to organised parties or school-themed clubs. The men in shorts, white shirts, caps and ties; the girls/women in short skirts, fishnet stockings, pony tails, white shirts, ties and, often, with overstated freckles – in fact, the women who runs the school uniform shop just down the road occasionally pops in to the pub and says she has never been busier. And certainly, if you’re driving around town in the early hours, you’ll see many drunken school-uniformed people tripping down the road.
No question; the women look sexy, they know they look sexy and they play up to it with lolly-pop sucking and the whole coyness thing. Just a lot of good old Saturday night fun and sport. Maybe.
Now, I’m not the most politically correct, grumpy old bachelor guy around but; isn’t there something wrong about young women and mothers celebrating and exploiting their own sexuality on the back of the apparent appeal of young school girls ?
Finally, I don’t know if this social fashion/trend encourages, for example, paedophiles, but surely it contributes (on different conscious and subconscious levels) to the sexual objectification of schoolgirls, indeed the daughters of some of these weekend party goers ?
I think I’m light years away from being a prude but something about all this makes me uncomfortable – does fashion and a craving for sexual appreciation blind women to all implications or should I just ignore it all and grab a piece of the action ?
I hope - though I may be wrong - that the allure is more down to memories of one’s sexual awakening during adolescence than down to paedophilia. But I don’t know.
I’m with jjimm on this one. It’s a combination of remembering adolescent longings with the ability to actually act on them (with other people thinking the same thing). The whole trend is getting a bit sad, but apparently the School Disco brand is now so successful they’re going to open clubs nationwide, and they’re the only club brand actually growing/turning a profit at the moment. I can’t remember where I read it, but I saw an article about the decline of the dance superclubs (Ministry of Sound etc) and the comparatively explosive rise of nostalgia clubs.
Since when has a fad, fashion, or mania ever made sense? At least it’s not immediately dangerous, like the whole “choking” thing kids were doing a few years ago, or “Roboing”…
Yeah, I guess it raises several backward questions and we’ve discussed the visual appeal that girls and very young women hold for many men before (albeit unsatisfactorily resolved, IIRC).
Here though, we also have young women and mothers seemingly contributing to the sexual objectification of schoolgirls – in some cases of their own daughters – in the name of their own sexual appeal and fashion.
A few years ago (just a few) a local fad in KC was for boys and girls aged 13-19 to get together at parties, then voluntarily choke each other until they passed out. One person would volunteer (actually, they begged to do it!), and two or three people would hold them down, and another would choke them until they passed out. With girls, the big thing was to be choked by a guy, and not another girl, because letting another girl choke you into unconsciousness meant you were a “lezbo”. ( :rolleyes: at why a person wanting to flirt with death cares about that…) However, with guys, it was OK - but a guy letting himself be choked by a girl meant he was a “fag”. And, depending on which ear he had his earring in whilst being choked…
“Roboing” was simply teens going to parties and binge-drinking Robitussin Cherry Cough Syrup. As you know, Robitussin has many varieties (DM, CX, ZZ, whatever) and there was always a mystical significance attached to the different types. “Dude! I drank 3 bottles of the DM, and it fucked me up!” The code sign for “goin’ Robo’in” was for a teen to move his arms as if he was rowing a boat - I saw it done several times with my own eyes.
They would drink from 1-3 (or more, I don’t know) bottles. Can you say “LD50”, boys and girls? It must be high for Robitussin. Anyhow, later on it moved into cocktails of Robitussin and vodka.
The kids insisted that it was “OK”, because “drinking alcohol was illegal, but drinking Robitussin isn’t. People should be proud of us; we’re not breaking the law.” (except for that old “this product shall only be used in accordance with the directions” thingy…)
Anyhow. The practice ended AFAIK a few years ago. Two very scary fads here in KC that surpised me by not ending up with a pile of dead (yet “cool”) teens.
I always thought that cough syrups generally contained paracetamol, binge drinking it has to lead to a risk of OD.
You really do not wnat to see or hear the effects of paracetamol poisoning, trust me, and if you want to rest easily I wouldn’t bother looking it up, its not very nice at all.
I don’t consider myself a prude either but I’m very distressed by what you’ve told here. Maybe it started with Britany’s like video but it’s an unwelcome trend in my book.
I have a young daughter and for her to fall into a category that is being actively focused upon and exploited for it’s sexuality is more than a little discomforting.
The sexy school girl thing is much older than Britany.
Even if you could ban the ‘sexualizing of shcoolgirls by having adult women wear them for fun’ (or sosbhawwtff) there are tons more things that stimulate psycho-perves. So unless you want to live in a world like THX-1138 just live with ‘the danger’.
But still I can’t quite imagine the club you are talking about. Please go and take some photos and post them.
I think we need to seperate certain practices into categories. Category 1 is harmful activities by minors. These include choking and “roboing.”
Category 2 is non harmful activities by consenting adults. Dressing up as school children doesn’t mean you want to fuck school children. Having rape fantasies doesn’t mean you want to be raped. Playing violent video games doesn’t mean you want to shoot up your school and liking Pulp Fiction doesn’t mean you want to be tied up in leather and shoved into a basement crate.
Enjoying one thing doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll want to do another seemingly similar thing.
I can understand your concern, but I really don’t see how older women wearing something similar to a young girl’s clothing is going to stimulate a paedophile. It’s just clothing. Young girls look very different from women no matter what they’re wearing. (And right now the trend seems to be more of the preteenie-boppers trying to dress older than they actually are.) I would be inclined to agree more with jjimm’s take on the matter. If a paedophile wants a young girl or a child, he’s going to want a young girl, not a full-grown woman in a costume. He’s more interested in the girl’s age and development than what she’s wearing. (That’s the only reason I can think of that someone would want child and not another adult.) The older woman in the schoolgirl outfit bit is just a bunch of older people wanting to act out things they didn’t get to do when they were horny young teens, IMO. It’s just another form of roleplay. If I wore a sexy cat costume it doesn’t mean all the guys that would be aroused by it are into bestiality. Perhaps the recent “schoolgirl” fashion trends make a convenient excuse for the paedophile.
I do own one of these type of outfits. I don’t go to clubs, but I did wear it on a children’s playground while taking pictures. I certainly don’t believe I’m contributing to the abduction of small children. I’m very obviously not 10-12 years old.
I guess I’d date the trend back to, at least, the '50’s (with the wonderful St Trinian’s films) – good, clean fun, I guess, in those days…damn, I’m sounding more and more reactionary…
** jinwicked** - Maybe you’re right. I honestly don’t know. I’m not saying dressing as a schoolgirl = encouraging paedophilia but I do wonder at the sexual objectification of the ‘schoolgirl thing’ by parents.
I’m actually involved in organising one of these ‘school disco’ parties this September. The one I’m in with is from a lesbian form of the Classmates website, where you can look up / get in contact with other women from your old school who have also come out, and it’s going to be a pretty big event. Last week I took several stripy ties and white shirts up to one of our clubs and a few of us posed for photos for the flyers. I’ll be giving the flyers out this Saturday too, and God knows what else I’ll get roped into helping out with (not that I mind).
I’d never found school uniforms sexy before, but a couple of my friends last week really did look damn hot in them, especially with the adult accoutrements (the fishnets you mentioned). I didn’t feel bad about this, as I know they’re grown-ups - perhaps that’s why the fishnets help, as a reminder of this.
However, despite my personal endorsement of these events, I do see your point. Does making school uniforms on grown-ups sexy make it less taboo to find schoolchildren sexy? Does taking innocent attire and using it to look sexy make that attire intrinsically sexy, even when worn by children?
Or would nascent paedophiles take this safer outlet on, and go for women dressed like schoolgirls rather than the real thing? Perhaps this blurring of boundaries could actually help to define them, because the adults and children in these outfits look similar, but their treatment is different. Very young girls who look sorta sexy are still very young girls who are out of the bounds of acceptable sexuality.
I don’t know, I’m going to have to think about it. I’m still going to my ‘school disco’ though.
Oh, I know it quite well. It’s along the lines of “Dude! Where’s my liver?”
The worst are people that try to commit suicide by Tylenol (paracetamol) OD - my Ex had a patient that did this. She tried to kill herself, it destroyed her liver, she came to in the ER, and burst out in tears, so thankful that she didn’t succeed. She told her family, husband, children tearfully and movingly that she was now changed, she had hit rock-bottom, and she would enter counseling and be a better person.
Then she found out that she had no liver, and was going to die.
She died about 2 weeks later, and it was (I was told) excrutiatingly painful. But the worst thing was her thinking she had a second chance.
