What Has the Feminist Movement Done to Modesty -- And American Girls?

Human Events Online ^ | Feb. 16, 2005 | Linda Chavez

[MisterRepublican]

If you watch a lot of cable television, you've probably seen the ads, especially late at night or early in the morning. The "Girls Gone Wild" videos promise to show you coeds behaving badly on the beach during Spring Break or getting down and dirty at Mardi Gras. The formula is simple: find a group of nubile young things drunk out of their heads and induce them to pull up their T-shirts or pull down their shorts and expose themselves to anyone willing to fork over $19.95 for the privilege. The most recent incarnation features gangster rapper Snoop Dogg hawking fresh, young flesh.

Call me old-fashioned, but I just can't imagine what these girls were thinking when they agreed to "show off their assets," as one knock-off video boasts. These young women aren't pros -- they are not part of the pornographic underworld -- but ordinary teens and twenty-somethings who one day will be wives and mothers. One young girl, who was 17 at the time she allowed herself to be photographed topless, has already sued the producers of "The Guy Game," a video game featuring females in various stages of undress. Her suit claims she did not give a "valid or enforceable consent or release" for photos to be used by the video game makers. "Plaintiff is still a teenager and wishes to attend college, develop her career and be active in her community and church." Good luck.

What is most shocking about this phenomenon is that we're not all that shocked by it. Modesty used to be considered a natural female attribute. No more. Just take a look around next time you're at the mall.

[k2blader]

You must've missed the Kid Rock threads, but that's no real loss. :-)

[clearsight]

Don't be sorry.... You must not throw out the baby with the bath water. Read the article and get what truth you can get that applies to the subject at hand. That means focus on the issue here in this thread and put the rest aside with YOUR PREJUDICES even if you think he is a nut.

[k2blader]

I think times seem darker now because everything is so accessible. Salacious entertainment/news/whatever can be brought right into your living room or downloaded onto your computer. But basic human nature is what it has always been.

[cinives]

It was! Very traumatic, actually. When they finally made showers optional in high school, I don't think anyone ever again bothered to take a shower.

[Awestruck]

I kinda stayed away from those... didn't seem like something to get my knickers in a knot over...

[Mrs.Nooseman]

Yep,we could never figure out how the kid new that it would be a girl.I never had the sex determined by a doctor when I was pregnant.

You are right about being a united front,but one word of warning,they still try to play one against the other parent on occasion.

When that happens,usually when the other parent has left the house,I or my husband says :so what did mom or dad say when you ask her or him.That is followed by well we just have to wait until mom or dad gets home.LOL

You always have to be on guard.~sigh~

[Protagoras]

Says a lot, doesn't it? Is it a total coincidence that the more liberal posters are so often also the most irrational?

Poor lad has lost his mind since he gave himself away. I actually pity the "po foo", as Mr T used to say. :^}

[Clock King]

We all just grew up that way. I didn't feel it was forced. Nothing sexual or untoward ever happened. Boys showered together, as did girls, so swimming nude in the school pool was no different.

[pawdoggie]

Sexual assault was virtually unheard of because the victim, up until recently, would be too ashamed to report the assault and many police departments would not bother investigating the crime if they concluded that the victim was "asking for it."

This is your opinion based upon what evidence? An issue of "MS" magazine perhaps? By the way, even in the Victorian era, men in this country had more respect for, and an innate sense of protection toward women than men in Muslim countries (some of which I've lived in), so your last remark was needlessly offensive and gratuitous.

[Diva]

In fact, the past was more sordid, grubby and immodest than anything we can now imagine.

Oh really? How so?

[jpsb]

Affordable bathing suits have been around since mid 1800, so please explain why a public school would insist that it's students swim in the nude. I am beginning to detect a homosexual agenda at work on this this thread. Other then a shower after gym class, male (female) nudeness was never encouraged or condoned by any public/private school system I ever attended.

A number of posters have pointed out the falseness of revisionist historicans saying "It was always that way". Since I grew up long ago I am here to testify that it was NOT always that way. I am also here to testify that nudity male or female was NOT forced on anyone ever by the public school systems of 50 years ago.

Now maybe the homosexuals want you to believe otherwise, but it just ain't so.

[68skylark]

I tried to suggest that the past wasn't as rosy as many people assume. I sure got a lot of responses -- mostly polite but some were quite confrontational. I guess I touched a nerve. People like to idealize the past -- especially conservatives -- but I strongly prefer the present day. My feelings are summarized at post #23.

[Diva]

I read your post #23 and I understand that life has always been difficult, especially for the poor and no matter in what country. What most people remember is their childhood. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s remember that we were not innundated with the visual aspect of a wanton world at almost every turn in our lives. It doesn't mean these things were not going on somewhere, but certainly not in our faces on early television, and sex was not a subject in school. I could go on but I'm sure you have been given a litany of this sort of thing already.

But, I don't have to go back to my childhood in the 50s, I notice differences between what is broadcast on television, shown at movie theaters, advertisements on billboards (we still have billboards where I live), and of course the temptations on the Internet, etc. from what I used to see when my children were little.

Women are treated by those who would make use of their bodies in a disrespectful way. And yes, there have always been those willing to use women (nowadays some are even proud that they want to use children and animals), in such a way. Its just that in my life time, in my country, in the middle class I inhabit; I have witnessed a cultural change. It is now "expected" that girls will "misbehave" and so the excuse is used that it should of course be encouraged because it is a "right." Being the mother of two very fine young men I do not want to leave their struggle out of the picture either. Today teenage boys and even younger boys are subject to a world where visual sexual stimulation is thrown at them constantly and in places (like schools and just walking around in the shopping malls), where it didn't exist before.

Our society is suffering from a loss of faith in God and the inevitable loss of self respect. Those who are most vunerable are the ones who are always most vunerable, the poor, the weak, the young--you know the litany.

You are right sometimes we old "conservatives" paint a rosy picture of our past but I know more and more "liberals" who are painting that same picture.

[68skylark]

You make some very articulate comments. There's no doubt in my mind that there are more open displays of sexuality today than in the 1940's or 1950's. It's part of the zeitgeist, and I realize some folks aren't happy about this -- maybe with very good reasons.

[clearsight]

Of coarse a barbarian wouldn't understand a statement like that.

[Dashing Dasher]

Wow....
I'm a barbarian!?

Thanks.

[clearsight]

Oh........by the way....you like other men touching your future wife to be???? Even though you wouldn't have met her yet you would like her to keep herself for you. Wouldn't you????? I would.........

[clearsight]

Thought you would appreciate the complement and "REPROBATE" would also apply don't you think????

[Dashing Dasher]

PS... I'm female.

[clearsight]

Then you can read post 297 from the perspective of a woman...... who would want a man for a husband.....who hadn't been handled and "tried on" by numerous lusty women in his past.