Posted on 02/16/2004 10:17:33 PM PST by kattracks
You may have noticed that many young women wear less, and more sexually provocative, clothing in public than they did a generation, or even 10 years, ago.
It is easier to notice, however, than to explain.
But explaining it is crucial to understanding what has happened to men and women in the last 40 years and where male-female relations are headed. Women exposing their bodies in public is a big deal. Playing with the sex drive, the most powerful force in nature, is far more dangerous than playing with fire. Even if one welcomes this development -- and for the record, as a male I am turned on, while as a man I am turned off -- it begs for explanation.
I will offer at least five reasons that may be less obvious but more important than the valid ones usually given -- peer pressure, women buy what stores sell and the sexual revolution.
The first is "equality."
By equality, I do not mean the belief that men and women are equal human beings, a belief that all decent people hold. Rather, I mean the feminist and politically correct definition of equality: sameness. Men and women have come to be regarded as the same, not simply as equals.
Thanks to feminist doctrines that pervade education from kindergarten through graduate school, men and women increasingly believe that the sexes are largely identical. Therefore, the arenas wherein women can feel and demonstrate their feminine distinctiveness have narrowed appreciably.
By showing more of their bodies, women can announce that they are women. There are other ways young women can publicly demonstrate their distinct female identity -- for example, by wearing feminine clothing and other feminine behavior, being a wife, being pregnant and being a mother.
But those ways are increasingly ignored, deferred and discredited. Among egalitarians, being a wife is no different a role than that of husband, and motherhood is no longer regarded as distinctively female. Husbands and fathers are supposed to play identical roles, and because of the movement for gay equality, mothers have been declared unnecessary -- two fathers, most well educated people now contend, are every bit as good for a child as a mother and a father.
So, for the young woman for whom marriage, pregnancy and motherhood are remote or even undesirable given the anti-traditional education she has received, her primary vehicle of proclaiming she is a woman is literally to expose the fact.
A second, related, reason is the death of femininity.
In the past, expressing one's femaleness was done through expressing femininity. In addition to the female roles of wife and mother, there were numerous ways of doing so. One was, of course, dress. But in the name of equality and comfort, distinctive female dress -- such as dresses and skirts -- has been largely abandoned. A young woman who wore a dress or even a skirt and blouse to a college, let alone high school, class would probably be considered stranger by her peers than one who wore a see-through top.
Today, instead of women wearing feminine clothing, they either wear essentially male clothing (such as pants and pants suits) or flesh-baring sexually provocative clothing. Feminine attire -- i.e., clothing that is very female but not very revealing -- is rare.
Femininity was also expressed by sexual reticence. Again, such a notion is laughable in much of contemporary society. The idea that a man made great efforts to be allowed sexual contact with a woman rendered women feminine in men's eyes. They are different from us -- they are feminine. Women who act as sexually available as a man -- through their behavior or their dress -- are not perceived as feminine, since they are perceived as being male-like.
Likewise, the myriad ways in which men treated women as women -- such as opening doors for them -- all declared that women were feminine, i.e., different from masculine. That is why many feminists opposed men opening doors for women -- it reinforced notions of femininity, a value that feminism has sought to extinguish.
So, femininity is largely a dead concept. Ask most young women -- or men -- what it means, and you will get either a blank stare or a hostile reaction.
Thus, many women are now saying: "I am a woman. And I will declare it in one of the only ways left to me -- I will show you my female body."
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Public nudity is prohibited by law. The cops use discretion and tend cite the more obvious cases. They don't permit people to drop their pants. They also would stop the women who walked down the street without a shirt or bra; while it is true "what was she wearing" is not a defense against sexual assault, it still presents an open invitation when showing your primary sex traits bare in a crowd of drunken strangers.
I was dining alone at a buffet restaurant in Panama City Beach, FL. It was Spring break. A mixed group of twenty-or-so students arrived who, by their attire, attended Wisconsin/Platteville.
Slowly, I became aware they were behaving in a manner with which I was unfamiliar. I couldn't place it at first...and, then, it hit me.
The boys were not deferring to the girls. There was no pretense about letting the females be seated or go thru the buffet line first -- it was catch, as catch can.
I became intrigued with what I was seeing, so I paid a bit more attention -- noticing things I hadn't noticed before.
The boys didn't help the girls with their chairs, when they were seated or when they went back for dessert. When the boys went to get seconds or another glass of tea, nobody offered to take the girl's plates or glasses and refill them. The girls were on their own.
The boys were eating like a bunch of guys at a hunting camp, exhibiting no table manners at all. For the most part, they were totally ignoring the girls' presence.
In fact, the boys were acting like slobs. And, to my surprise, so were the girls! They were acting like guys. Sloppy clothing, no display of table manners, no sign of courtesy to the person next to or across from them.
And, then, I noticed something else. Even though it was a group of twenty, all apparently from the same school, they acted as if they were alone. Even lonely. Within the new conventions (or the absence of the old ones), they didn't seem to know how to socially interact.
The girls didn't sit in a group, they were distributed among the boys -- but it obviously wasn't a boyfriend/girlfriend matchup. It was random. The communication seemed stifled -- among everyone. A few end-to-end shouts between the boys...and there was some talking. But there were no conversations, if you know what I mean. Nobody seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to anybody but themselves.
Spring break. Out to have a good time. Seafood restaurant on the beach. In an identity group, but somehow isolated and all alone. And, while mildly unhappy about it, seemingly confused as to how to spark a human response.
"I have seen the future", I thought to myself, "and I don't like it one bit."
The vivid image of that evening has stayed with me for about 15 years now.
Well said. I wish all young girls could learn this.
It was pretty clear wasn't it? Not only do they dress like whores, their parents are the ones buying them the clothes.
These must've been pretty heavy chairs. Do girls really need help with them?
I drive past a local high school every evening on the way home and see many of the late leavers on their way home. It is disgusting to say the least. I see girls looking and acting like cheap whores and boys (yes BOYS - not young men yet) who act like pimps. I then start thanking God for directing us to home school our kids. Yes, they are exposed to it when shopping, but they know exactly what our standards are and do not cross the line.
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