"If only you people had voted for Mike Dukakis, we wouldn't be in this mess right now."
Posted on 06/04/2004 11:47:42 AM PDT by wagglebee
What do seven men average age 66 know about the kind of clothes that teenage and preteen girls wear these days? After all, not only have they never worn such things, they don't shop for them or pay for them, much less have fights with their daughters about whether they'll be allowed out of the house in them.
But that doesn't stop them from thinking they know enough to run the show. Just ask the all-male board of directors of Wet Seal, who sat on a stage last week in Orange County, Calif., as a music video showed young girls dancing suggestively and mannequins wore short skirts and low hung jeans.
The occasion was the debut of the new line. Even the shareholders realized that there was something very wrong with the picture of seven old white men and all those hot, hip clothes for teenage girls.
Chairman Irv Teitelbaum assured everyone that Wet Seal is searching for women directors. Right. Looking under every rock, no doubt. CEO Peter Whitford pronounced the new line, unlike his board, very hip and young. Victor Alfaro, the creative director, explaining his design approach, described himself as a believer in sexy clothes.
Do 13-year-olds really need sexy clothes?
In my house, where the former preteen just turned 14, we call it slutwear. It's not just Wet Seal - the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues featured naked models in a layout labeled Group Sex - there's now a billboard on my corner that I would drive miles to avoid. Girls wear wifebeater T-shirts with Pornstar logos that my daughter tells me cost a fortune. Their mothers let them out of the house dressed that way? I ask in shock. Presumably, someone buys them these clothes.
The seven men at the Wet Seal board meeting were not the only ones in Orange County addressing the limits of teenage sexuality last week. In a courthouse just a short hop away, defense lawyers were arguing that a teenage girl, who might have been a Wet Seal customer, pretended to be an actress in a kinky sex scene and willingly had sex with three boys (one of them the deputy sheriff's son), who are charged with raping and assaulting the then-16-year-old with a pool cue, a Snapple bottle and a lighted cigarette. According to the defense lawyers, this wasn't an isolated incident - we feel the jury will understand this behavior didn't just exist on this particular night, but exists among teenagers across the country.
In Los Angeles, on the same day, another jury deadlocked in favor of acquitting three boys, teenagers at the time they were charged, with raping a UCLA student while on a tour of the campus. The three broke away from their high school group, knocked on the coed's door and claimed to be college football players considering transferring. One juror, explaining the result, said: It's not so far-fetched to me that today a female would go and have consensual sex with three men after 10 minutes of meeting them.
If you talk to the experts, there's no reason to think that group sex is more common than it had been 10 or 20 years ago, according to Lynn Ponton, author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers." In 1991, 54 percent of high school students responded to a national Centers for Disease Control study saying they had had sex; 10 years later, the percentage had actually dropped slightly. It's not exactly a picture of abstinence, but it could be worse. If you shop at the mall, you'd assume it is.
If you don't want to be treated like a slut, don't dress like one, I tell my daughter and her friends. If you don't want to send a message about sex, don't dress your daughter in sexually provocative clothes, I tell other mothers. Boys clothes are a piece of cake by comparison.
Do you think someone could tell Irv Teitelbaum and the old guys? Also, give him my number. I know a lot about teenagers' clothes. If I'm not home, I'm just at the mall, looking for something decent and age-appropriate for my daughter to wear (not to mention her mother). Believe me, it's not easy, and he and Victor, as far as I can tell, aren't making it any easier.
Capitalism can't be beat.
Did you see who the author is?
I went to my neice's graduation yesterday...some of the clothes the girls at the ceremony (those in the audience, not the graduates) were wearing was just insane. I'm only 30, for god's sake, and it made me feel like an old prude.
Anyway, we're a salacious nation. Check out Drudge's main photo right now if you don't believe me.
Yup, nothing cuter than a Dora the Explorer Thong, sticking out of some 2T jeans.
The shorts, midrifts and slink
are not just found in the teen departments...
I see 7 year olds dressed like Jon Benet Ramsey.
Does anyone have that godawful pic of Ostrich? Where she looks like she's just been sodomized by a blender?
Ohhhhhh, zuzzzie. The Irony
hey , wasnt there a star trek monster from the original series that looks like this?
I think you are thinking of the ones with the two little antennae sticking out of their heads. Or maybe the Gorn.
Why? Irv Teitelbaum and the old guys have no problem with peddling your daughter's *ss (and maybe their own granddaughters too).
Huh? If their sex lives are nobody else's business, why do they wear sexually suggestive clothing for the WHOLE WORLD to see?
could be the gorn
Hey - it's all just a 'difference in perspective' according to Michael Shermer, don't you know. Only unsophisticated Neanderthals could possibly object to such trendy and fashionable wear.
Yeah, that one that needed salt to survive. It could change shapes and only one was left in the universe.
I dunno, what do gay designers know about the kind of clothing heterosexual women want to wear? Or for that matter, what men wnat to wear?
The fake alien in "The Corbomite Maneuver." There, I have publically revealed my geekiness.
Sure, blame it on crusty old men! Thats it.
But wait zzzuuzzie, its all about sex! Thats right!
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