Reply to I absolutely hate the way my 13yoDD dresses

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I disagree with the premise the society pressures women and girls to cover up.  In my experience over almost 50 years, society pressures young women and teen girls to display their bodies.  Boys never walk around with their bellies on display or their ass cheeks hanging out.  Why?   Because it’s generally not comfortable and they don’t feel the need to display their bodies in order to garner positive attention.  Putting aside things like girls going run a run or out on a very hot day, I think it’s indisputable that most girls are doing this either to attract the male gaze or to satisfy some societal expectation of what is feminine or in.  (Note all the threads on this site about women looking dowdy or like an old lady if they wear bathing suits that cover their ass or their stomach.)
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It's both.

The age-old dilemma that you're a slut if you have sex, and you're a prude if you don't. You're not cool if you don't wear revealing clothes, but if you do, you're trashy and skanky.

Males absolutely walk around displaying their bodies. I worked at a gym, and it was always the guys who would take their shirts off long before they even started sweating, then walk around flexing for the attention. And they wear short shorts. Ever hear of Ranger panties?

If the problem is the male gaze, then we need to fix the male gaze, not put the onus on females. Teach your boys not to objectify females. Men need to understand it's not okay to sexualize teenagers.e

My European friends don't get what the big deal is. They see bodies as just bodies. Stomachs are just a body part, legs are just a body part, no need to keep them covered up. Even breasts are no big deal. Not everything has to be sexualized.

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I have never heard of Ranger panties and the only guys I know that ever wore short shorts were gay guys (looking to attract male gaze) or runner looking for functionality.  And I hear the European thing all the time and I think it’s BS—I lived in Spain for a while and never had my ass grabbed as much or was catcalled as much as when I lived there.  (Same for my friend that lived in Italy.). If you’re saying that European men somehow don’t see breasts as sexual, I think the entire oevre of European film contradicts you.  European women tend to be comfortable with the idea of attracting the male gaze and being seen as a sexual object (see also the historical popularity of high heels in Europe which serve no purpose other than sexualization of the female leg).   Maybe that’s fine….but acting like the purpose is not, at least in part, to attract male attention seems to me utterly naive.  
Look, I wore crop tops and mini skirts throughout the 80s as a teen.  But I knew at the time and I know now that was to  flaunt my bona fides as a female and hopefully attract attention as such.  It may be an inevitable part of the maturation process.  But I’m not buying the pitch that it does not have a sexualized element.  I think it holds a problematic place in maintaining the patriarchy.  [/quote]

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