When women say “But I like to be objectified! Doesn’t everybody, sometimes?” it used to annoy me, but now it just breaks my heart a little. Because she can’t disentangle being desired or loved from being treated like a thing. And she’s right. That’s the world we live in: We cannot conceptualize desiring a woman without dehumanizing her. That is sexuality under heteropatriarchy.
And what did Margaret Atwood say about women and girls internalizing the pornified, heterosexual male gaze and becoming their own voyeur. We are socialized to have a false conscious.
but to be very blunt and very serious - it really is disturbing how you can look at fashion magazine spreads, teen magazine spreads and other media depicting teen girl trends/fashion and see how girls dressed in the 90′s, early - mid 2000′s compared to now.
i mean 1998 - 1999
2002
2003
jump ahead to 2008
vs depictions of teenagers in media / teen fashion and teen trends of the last few years (2015-2018)
and people always say “if you look at teenage girls and see sexualization, then you’re the pervert” but .. i just don’t get that line of reasoning. how can you be so naive to look at how media, modeling companies, clothing companies, etc are treating teenage girls ( some of which aren’t even teenagers - but as young as 10,11, 12 years old ) and say “nope, nothing to see here :) but if you call out the problem then YOU’RE the creep” instead of acknowledging that aforementioned companies are blatantly and intentionally producing clothing that is more and more revealing, less and less age appropriate, portraying girls in more sexualized ways as years go on, peddling these themes through social media, televised media, advertising, etc. i mean, that’s the same line of reasoning of “if you look at this picture of barack and michelle obama depicted as monkeys as being racist -then you’re actually the racist one for thinking that black people are monkeys!” when the artist of the photo is the one who blatantly and obviously was being racist.
Lol have you seen Instagram?
15y/o
14 y/o
I’ve personally known girls (underage) who actually post what would considered child porn (partially or near fully nude/provocative poses) pictures of themselves while hoards of “feminists”, minor AND adult, cheered them on. I’ve watched the same girls continue to post sexually suggestive photos while their peers/fans encouraged them and adult men made sexually explicit comments under the pictures. I usually cant tell the difference between teen and adult women anymore, especially on Instagram. And it keeps getting worse. Attention, sex appeal, a huge following and validation is everything right now. That’s all that matters and if you dare call out what’s wrong with how teenage girls are being advertised as sex objects, you’re degrading and “slut shaming” them. I just want kids to be able to be kids and seeing my 13 year old cousin snap chatting her full face of makeup is disturbing enough
when i say pedophile culture this is exactly what im referring to, its sick and twisted. theyre children that look like adults and under no circumstance should that be okay. i have so much fear for this generation of girls and im scared sick of how its going to just keep getting worse.
What bothers me the most is young girls can no longer have an awkward phase. As soon as they become aware of fashion trends and the media, the immediately start copying these behaviors and become what they see. There isn’t a time to truly figure out who they are. Maybe it’s because of the internet culture, advertising, lack of patrental guidance or a combination of all three.
The fact is young girls (and boys to a certain extent) have a shorter childhood now.
