Exactly right. I used to lke the Man Show on occasion, though I was never what you would call a fan, but when Kimmel and Corolla left, it was clear that the people who inherited it were Not In On The Joke, and it turned to garbage instantly.
I was going to ask the same question. Thinking about sex makes me happy. Messages about sex make me happy. Knowing that other people think about sex and that it makes them happy makes me happy.
So far, I feel like the posters in this thread have ben lumping all women together, regarless of age. The key thing that bothers me about the Slut shirts and Playboy keychains is that the ages of the girls buying them has gotten so young. To me, there’s a big difference between a 14-year-old girl in a Slut shirt and a 22-year-old woman in a Slut shirt. Though age does not correlate directly with maturity, I feel that the 22-year-old has a much higher probability of “getting it.” On the other hand, the 14-year-old is more likely to be wearing the shirt to emulate the 22-year-old.
I’m not saying that we should all “set a good example” for the teenyboppers, but we need to understand that while we can understand the many layers of meaning carried in the shirt, the kids are likely just thinking about one–looking cool, fitting in. That’s what disturbs me the most. I think kids should develop a healthy attitude about sex before joking around about it. Sadly, most highschoolers don’t come close to having a healthy sex attitude, and all the jokes, all the misconceptions, all the media influences and mixed messages get jumbled up. Dumb decisions get made, and hopefullly they sort out everything in a few years. Until then, some of them are trying desperately to pretend that their attitudes towards sex are healthy, so they wear Slut shirts and try to act like 22-year-olds (or the SaTC women, etc.).
Dammit, in my day we handled teenage sexual confusion by writing bad poetry and listening to Alanis Morissette! shakes walker
Oh come on, we’re not old enough to say things like “in my day” yet!
We’re not, are we?
You quoted my post and then immediately pretended it said something it didn’t. I said:
Read that carefully, please. I didn’t say it’s enlightened; I said “more enlightened.” I didn’t say it’s the final step toward enlightenment; in fact I went out of my way to make it clear that it’s only ONE step.
My point was emphatically not that the pinnacle of civilization involves 14-year-old girls wearing sexually suggestive baby tees. My point was simply a comparative one; I think this is better than the Victorian shame-fest that occupied most of the 20th century (the dates are arguable, of course) and continues to do so in most of the country, Christina Aguilera notwithstanding.
Well, I think you did say that it was a pornstar look that teenyboppers wear, and so the question would really be whether a teenage girl’s sexuality really is best expressed by striving to look like a person who has sex for money whether or not she’s in the mood and often if not mostly only pretends to enjoy it. Aside from wearing t-shirts with hot sayings on them, the style is also to wear a padded pushup bra (or get implants) and to be skinny and wear tight pants or short skirts and high heels. It’s not exactly about embracing who you are and what feels good. Looking like a pornstar is the opposite of being yourself and feeling pleasure. It’s all about needing to change every aspect of yourself to look like the thing that makes the most money because it pleases the most people, and it’s all about acting. Porn is certainly more open about sex than a Victorian shame-fest, but when it comes down to it, I think I’d have a sexier evening making skirts for the piano legs than waxing my privates. I think the pleasure girls get out of looking like a pornstar is the attention from guys who want them and it just begins and ends there.
It’s like, 20 years ago it was this new thing that a girl could dress like Madonna and not be scared to look sexy or be called a slut and it became cool to have experience like a guy and not be ashamed, and then, speaking of Alanis, in the 90s it became a thing where you didn’t need to look like anyone’s idea of sexy, you were just allowed to wear a dumb winter hat or get tattoos and go in the mosh pit and look like hell and then score with the cutest guy. But I don’t know if it’s the sex positive thing that made porn come out. I really really believe that it was a backlash to PC and a backlash to girls like Courtney Love being all over the media. Something happened where everyone collectively felt it went to far and things like Pam Anderson, Howard Stern, The Man Show, Maxim, came out as a reaction to too much womyn and riot grrl and co-ed mosh pits. It’s just a fashion but I do think it’s a backlash against all the progress of girls catching up with boys and everyone just finding it threatening and tiresome and wanting to go back to women being just there to jiggle their boobs around. Trends have no conscience, the pendulum just swings and everyone can sit around justifying it and saying it’s great and it’s progress but sometimes it’s just a nasty backlash. I don’t think it’s a step forward at all. I think there’s more to girls than their fashions, but when the pressure is on to fit an image that is really not positive for them, I think they are all less free for it.
And the woman’s movement stuff and the feminism thing, I try to look at it as a big social change that is subject to all the rules about cycles and pendulums and backlashes and periods of overdoing it and periods of under-doing it. I know some time soon some girl is going to look at her liquid wire magical cleavage bra and say “fuck this thing I’m sick of it” and it’s going to seem really like a cool and shocking thing and there’s going to be another trend for young girls to do really cool interesting things that they can build real lives on. The thing about this trend now is that I don’t think it takes women out of school or out of good jobs, it is two steps forward and one step back all the time but it still moves forward in the long run. At least that’s my optimistic view of things. I think it’s a natural part of progress to regress. I don’t scramble for ways to see it as feminist when girls want to look like pornstars. I don’t really buy that. But I’m not exactly in a panic about it either.
My mistake - I better understand the point you were making.
I guess my point would be to question whether or not it was a step in the right direction, even if it does share attributes with where we want to be.
Agreed! I’m just weary, like many posters here, of where this is heading and if the participants realize where it could go.
Then again, things change so quickly that this may not gain traction. The trend for the next generation may be turtle necks and suit pants, for all I know.
… hmm.
I thought about it, and I couldn’t give an enlightened answer; all my justifications boil down to “I don’t want to hear it.”
So I’ll concede my point, but with a condition: It’s fine to make such proclamations in public, but if someone assumes a big “slut” written on your t-shirt implies you’re willing to have sex with anyone, don’t be surprised if you get callously propositioned for sex.
Leisure suits, dude. Buy polyester stock now and get in on the ground floor.
Speaking as someone who is technically still a female teenager, and was a 14-year-old girl apparently much more recently than most everyone else in this thread, I feel somewhat qualified to say that several previous post got it right: It doesn’t “mean” anything.
Dressing that way might ‘mean’ something to a girl in the context of, say, getting that cute guy’s attention, or pissing off your parents, teachers, etcetera. It’s something that we (meaning this generation in question) get, and previous generations don’t get. I’m sure parents in the 60’s worried that the popularity of “rock” music was leading to some massive social shift, parents and others are worrying about a clothing trend now. But to the vast majority of the girls dressing that way, it simply doesn’t mean anything. There’s no deep sociological message behind how the average 13-year-old gets dressed in the morning. Someone - a magazine, an actress, someone - decided that this was the next big trend, and - voila! - it was. It’s not representative of any drastic social shift, no more so than any other fashion trend.
In other words: My opinion is that it’s yet another case of an older generation freaking out about “kids these days”, while said kids are mostly doing it simply to make the older generation freak out.
Well said.
Who – irony abounds – was doing some guy twice her age at 14. :rolleyes: What a world, huh?
Well, Brand New has some explanation - it’s the name of a band, so it was probably just a fan of the band.
You can buy shirts that have what appears to be the Coke logo on them that say “Enjoy Cock” instead. I think they’re kind of amusing to see, but I wouldn’t want to wear one. I can’t imagine ever getting a reaction I’d like from wearing a shirt like that. (Clarification: I’d be fine with “no reaction”, but I don’t want to hear things like “HEY BAYBEE ENJOY MY COCK!” No thanks. Therefore, I do not wear the shirt.)
Of course it means something. You may not be aware of its meaning, and you may dress that way without much thought as a tool for whatever Madison Avenue wants you to wear, but it means something. People make a choice in what they buy; it’s not like people have to choose “Porn Star” babydolls because there are not plain T-shirts left to buy in the world. There is a meaning behind the choice, even if you view it as insubstantial.
Not just that, but people don’t need to understand social trends to be a part of them. Some people choose to conform, and some people conform mindlessly, but that doesn’t mean trends are random. Just because someone is ignorant of what influences their decisions doesn’t mean they aren’t being influenced.