Yes, these days boys are taught to be just as ashamed about their bodies as girls are. :rolleyes: Progress indeed.
My grandparents had a cottage on the lake. They spent alot of time there during the summers. My uncles could skinnydip or take “rain showers” as much as they went; of course her parents would never allow my mother to wear a 2-piece bathing suit. It just wasn’t proper. Both of my uncles were older than her too. There are family photos and home movies to prove this. The cottage isn’t isolated either; there
s other cottages along the lakefront.
Speaking of home movies a few years ago one of my uncles went through alot of their old films and transferred them on DVD and gave them out as Christmas presents. One clip would be unthinkable today. I was sitting watching with my mother and all of the sudden it cut from a Thanksgiving dinner to It was one of my uncle’s birthday parties at the lake (his’s in Aug or July). A flock of naked teenage boys coming out of the lake for lunch. :eek: Mom was nowhere to be seen, but there was grandma in big poofy Mad-Men dress bringing food out while the boys were sitting at the picnic table or on lawn funiture without a stitch of clothing as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Nobody was trying to coverup or seemed to care much about the camera. Now just try to imagine parents today throwing their son a birthday party that involved gatting naked with his classmates and filming it.
This is a slight deviation from the topic, but I am constantly surprised by the level of prudery in the US. I had no idea that this was so until we went to Hawaii and my nearly two year old boy stripped off on the beach. We were approached by several security guards telling us to cover him up right away. Really weird. He wasn’t even two yet.
In our house (in Japan, but I’m English and my husband’s Japanese) the kids and I are regularly naked. In the summer it’s too hot to be anything else. Usually I manage to get a pair of underwear and a camisole on but not always immediately and the younger one (nine years old now) is normally starkers unless there’s a chance of guests, in which case he’ll put on a pair of underpants. My husband doesn’t care one way or the other though bare skin makes him sneeze so he’s always got an undershirt and boxers on at the minimum.
I don’t think this is particularly Japanese but maybe it’s English/European. (I was brought up in Germany till I was 12.) There is just no big deal about skin showing and I really think this is the way it should be… (In and around your own house, or camping, or at the beach. NOT in the middle of town!!)
Which reminds me of a story about a couple of tourists in Japan who happen upon a group of people bathing naked in a mountain stream. They gaze in astonishment for a minute or so before asking their Japanese guide if it is not considered improper in Japan for people to bathe naked in public. “No,” replies the guide politely, “but it is considered improper to watch them.”
What I find amusing is that people DO bathe naked in mountain streams - I had a delightful experience climbing up the streambed of a HOT river, up to a rocky pool at the bottom of a waterfall and we were all pantsless as we climbed up because the ankle deep water would splash up high as we walked upstream, then at the top we all got naked and got in. It was brilliant and nobody batted an eyelash.
On the other hand, if you go to a swimming pool, all the women, in the women’s changing rooms with no men in sight all wriggle into and out of their bathing suits under a towel, going to great pains not to show a spot of skin. And most bathing suits here are the type that have legs and wide high straps!!
That’s blatantly sexist? I guess I can kind of see it… I just don’t agree with it. Boys generally eat more than girls. Boys are generally larger than girls, thus necessitating the desire for more food. Boy burn more calories. Whatever.
Well, yeah, but I think that doesn’t really allow for exceptions. People who are bigger or smaller and hungrier should be allowed to have an extra breadstick. Or if everyone really wants one, why not split a few in two or something. A blanket rule of “Men get two; women get one” seems like a bad idea.
It kind of reminds me of how someone mentioned that in a Narnia book, Lucy says something like, “It’s okay, girls don’t get AS thirsty as boys” when she offers Eustace some of her water and he’s like, “I didn’t think so,” not realizing that she’s trying to let him save face.
We’re not looking at a bell curve here: we’re looking at specific people. “The bigger kids get two” would be fine. But straight-up, “the boys”? Please. Totally sexist because it assumes that the kids who are XY are going to want and need more than the kids who are XX. Growing up, I (older, female) was the one with a hollow leg, while my brother (younger, male) ate like a bird.
Really? According to this set of charts, the sizes aren’t that different through age 11 or so. And even so, do you really think the gradually increasing difference justifies a 100% increase in the most sought-after food item (to many kids, at least)?
My mother grew up in a household where her brother got the first and best of everything while they were growing up. It’s also likely that he’ll inherit more, “because he needs it,” or her parents will make up some other excuse. Now, they can bequeath their things to whomever they want, but this kind of thing is kind of a “death by a thousand cuts” for a daughter’s self esteem and (later, if she goes away long enough) her respect for her parents. This kind of thing matters more than people think, in my opinion.
Im all for it; I’m male, and considering how often I get yelled at from moving cars (probably every other time I go out walking at night), I can only imagine how bad it is for those who would actually stand out to your average car-o-jackasses.
A weird thing about this is, on more than one occasion, I’ve fliped the bird at random yellers, only to have them FURIOUSLY try to whip the car around and confront me. Come on, I’m not allowed to give you the finger if you yell at me from a moving car? Its a tiny little thing!
You know, when I read the initial post (on the backpacks and stuff), I was thinking about how this issue came up when i was in school – and the same vague “oh, women need to carry THINGS” reason was given.
Meh, last I checked a tampon can fit in a pocket. Let the backpacks free!
You must have skipped the rest of the discussion on this. A, single, tampon can fit in a pocket, assuming you have one. Many girls cannot get by on a, single, tampon for seven or eight hours. Nor is it convenient to carry a bunch of tampons and pads in your pockets at all times because you’re 14 and your menstrual cycle hasn’t settled into a predictable pattern yet (and might never do so).
I didn’t wear tampons until I was 19 or so - strictly pads. Not exactly conducive to carrying in female clothes. Women’s clothing is pretty much exclusively designed with the understanding that said woman will be carrying a purse. Either the pockets are tiny or non-existant.
I wore pads almost exclusively until the summer I turned 17, barring the occasional tampon when swimming. (Then I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle after my aunt broke her leg, forgot to bring anything, and all she had on hand was tampons… and I discovered how much more awesome they were and never went back.) So that’s two years of grade school and three years of high school having to cart around pads.
My grandmother believes that women are unable to be effective leaders because of their genetic makeup. She is a staunch Republican and an evangelical Christian.
I asked her who she would vote for if Palin somehow managed to snag the nomination in 2012. She couldn’t answer.
In addition to wearing away a daughter’s self esteem and her respect for her parents, I think that it would also wear away any love she might have had for her brother.
I still think it would have been much fairer to hand out one breadstick to each child, and then hand out half-breadsticks to anyone who had finished eating, but wanted a bit more.
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So I read that page, and it linked to this page, and I was snorting at the stupidity of ad execs gone by, and them I got to the third ad down and had an enormous WTF?!:eek::eek: moment. I don’t believe that’s actually a real ad. What magazine would accept that? What agency would approve that? How would Puma not get blacklisted into bankruptcy? Please tell me it’s a fake.
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Okay, I was scrolling down and chuckling, and then I got to an Evony ad with the big-boobed blonde with the low cut black dress… and the only reason I knew it wasn’t supposed to be part of the article was the image size.
