Pushing it a bit...or just the norm?

Damn kids! Get off my lawn!

In parts of latin america its not uncommon for sixteen year old girls to have a couple kids already

Personally i dont care as long as they arent my kids/family

 

Yeah pretty much.

Where do you draw the line with that type of mentality? In Victorian times it was taboo to show your ankles. Are women who wear capris asking to be raped? What if one's burqua catches the wind and reveals their ankles? I guess they're asking for it too.

 

latin america? sounds like the US.

 

Maybe a kid at sixteen here. Im talking a kid pops out at twelve and no one bats an eye there

 

There's a bit of a difference between the wind catching your clothing and wearing shorts with your ass cheeks hanging out. Still I think if it's scientifically proven that anyone's state of mind, persona and physical being can change at the simplest site of attraction then it's possible (because it happens) that the negative attention may come back to bite you. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying keep it in mind. Just be careful, you never know what loopy head might just act on those irrational emotions going on in them when they see the lips hanging out of your skirt.

I know I keep it in mind. There's a time and place to doll up or down.

 

Well if you want to take them at face value sex crimes should be nil then because all the women are covered up....which hasn't happened.

Therefore covering up or not, is irrelevant to sex crime statistics and it's causation in my conclusion. (Tons of sex crimes happening in the Middle East right now and they are all supposed to be good examples of their faith).
And it seems mankind (regardless of faith) is just a savage brute that self-rationalizes their actions.

 

I take a lot of precautions to avoid putting myself in potentially dangerous situations but I don't think what one wears really has much to do with it. The reason being, someone with a rapist mentality would be just as likely to rape someone for dressing slutty as they would rape someone for being too prissy and prim.

With that being said I dont really like clothing that obnoxiously pushes one's sexuality in everyone's face, but I also think women can wear skimpy clothing and come across as comfortable and free rather than overtly sexual

 

Well, it is sad.....young girls being more sexual and things than they ought to be.....but what does anyone expect with a society that just pushes sex all over the place......You cannot blind fold kids or make them deaf either.....

Kudos to parents who keep their kids innocent in this world.

 

Okay so maybe "turned off" was the wrong terminology to use here, because I can understand how that makes it seem like a 3rd party (myself in this case) is like implying the opposite as well.

The context in this case, was meant to communicate that the style of dress looked bad or trashy, not necessarily sexual or lack thereof.

Also keep in mind this was in an air-conditioned mall, so logically where's the need to not cover up?


Also the premise of "Maybe she just likes the style of that dress?" begs the question: "What is the underlying reason or logic behind WHY she likes that style of dress? Are those reasons media/society influenced or not? If so does that imply insecurity on her part for fear of judgement/peer pressure/ rebellion? Or is it skew entirely?

^Nobody really knows the answer to that question for everyone, only individuals can give insight if they've gone through that phase themselves but even then they could only give insight themselves not to others.

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Myself and a handful of my male friends, link that type of style of dress to insecurity and thus do not see such visual ques, as indicators as someone they'd be interested, and this extends to older women as well, because that style of dress seems to start in the young teen age bracket nowadays, and just sticks around for a decade or so.

You take this conversation into the corporate business world, and the human resources department usually tell employees to cover up piercings and tats.

So in many contexts, sexual or otherwise just generally speaking, my original post was discussing that issue of appropriateness VS inappropriateness. I don't think that's a disturbing topic to discuss, because it's a reality that visual stimuli matter, women judge men on physical appearance and sex appeal, as much as men do to women.


EDIT: I also wanted to add that there's a reason I posted this in "sexual health". The context of this thread was more talking about self-image and other cultural debates about body image, self-esteem, and more mental-sexual health kinda topics. It was not about what is a turn-on or turn-off in the pure sexual sense or context of lust.

If that were my intended context, I would've posted in another sub-forum.

 

The thing that bothers me.... to the extent that I allow it to bother me (which isn't much now but with a baby girl soon here I'm sure it'll bother me in the future), is more the "princess culture"..... I mean princesses are actually cute for toddlers and preschoolers but the "I'm a little princess" (or pageant queen...beauty queen...whatever...) goes way, way past preschool age and it's that whole mentality.... how to explain it--- it's an entitlement ("I'm a little princess, treat me like one"), mixed with the more grown up aspect of the princess culture...make up on 9 year olds, etc.--- that bothers me a bit.

That said, I know exactly what meli is talking about. When me and my girlfriends were 13, 14, 15 (whatever) years old--- there were some really bad things in style (style wise) for kids that age. You know shirts in the summer that you'd take one side and bunch it up with a scrunchie or something (showing the belly) and just, other things like that that showed skin when we were young. But I can guarantee you I remember being that age and we were hardly, if at ALL, sexual creatures at that point. We liked boys in a very innocent, childish way at that age and did NOT dress that way to attract boys or men. We dressed that way because the stuff was in style... because we thought the clothes were cute and because it was HOT OUT and we were not ashamed/embarrassed by our bodies. It was just- an extension of--well, being an even younger kid, and dressing how you wanted to dress because it was hot out. It wasn't any of our faults if some sick older person wanted to view us a certain way.

 

Recently my niece was pole dancing under my pergola and I turned to my sister and asked "what's she been watching" and she answered "she's been watching what her mommy does for work". She was a stripper turned burlesque performer. The kid is 3 years old and watches that.. I didn't say anything but I wasn't happy about it at all. My missus has also mentioned that my sister likes a particular burlesque/adult entertainer (can't remember the name) and often watches her perform on her phone which the little one picks up and also knows how to search for these videos. Apparently she has been watching porn and everything and my sister admits that she has no idea what she actually sees or watches. That pissed me off even more. My sister is a great girl, very open minded and head strong, but just because she's so open about her sexuality and sex life doesn't mean a three year old needs to be exposed to it so early. I have a bad feeling about this girls future.

 

That's sad.

 

What is? My thoughts on the matter or what my sister is doing?
My mum and my missus and my best mate know this as I've told them and discussed with them and they agree with me, but us three (apart from my mum) we're different people with different beliefs and all that crap so most of the time my thoughts and opinions tend to be highly offensive etc. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if someone else agreed with me on the matter, someone a bit more conservative..

 

I think it's sad what your sister is doing. I'm all for being a free spirit and all and not sexually repressed and all that. That's a good thing.

But I have a three year old and I think it is sad to expose kids that age to non-age appropriate things because they can't (and shouldn't) understand them. I get upset and turn the channel when there is a violent movie on and my three year olds in the room and when my three year old tried to (accidentally!) rent porn through the cable on demand menu... I made sure to take the remote (fast!!)----(as he actually knows how to rent movies that cost money via the cable on the remote-he's done it before with non-porn.)....Anyways, my long, rambling point is... I agree with you that it can be a good thing your sister is free and all for HERSELF but it's sad for the kid.

 

Oh ok, that's good then, I don't feel like an asshole as much then. I haven't told my dad any of it. It's her kid, I just don't agree. Dad is usually "fuck I don't want to know about it" with most stuff regarding her.

 

Sad, and I think that's illegal too. At least that level of neglect is a crime in the USA, I can't speak for the Australia though.

There's a difference between being "open-minded, and practicing non-repression inspired parenting" and being downright irresponsible because you as a parent blur the lines between what is and isn't vital information to promote good critical thinking skills in a child in today's world, and being ignorant as to what information is gonna overwhelm a child in a negative sense and do as much harm to them as repression of knowledge and shaming them does.

@American, point taken, and agreed to a certain extent. The difference now though compared to their counterparts 20 or even 30 years ago, is we didn't have this same saturation in media culture, the internet, TV and social media that there is now.

Entitlement culture (and this is not just princess culture, but I've seen men have this sense of entitlement too in various business co-worker settings in how they do an assignment and then expect a raise or some kinda pat on the back) is rampant.

What is popular/hip/cool is synonymous with sexual overtones, regardless if they are aware of the connection or not.

Statistics of this same age group (13-17) are also pretty significant when it comes to sexual practices as well, although the silver lining is that condom use is up, there's just an argument to be made that that sense of "innocence" in that age range is shrinking, and we all agree that's disturbing.

Also this thing about what "older pervs think", the fact of the matter is their own age male peer-group is probably viewing them the exact same way, so this line of argument is skew and the wishful thinking that lecherous men will vanish from existence is an idealistic dream, they exist, and we gotta deal with that.

Let me also clarify, that I am not saying girls or guys dress a certain way specifically to attract the attention of the opposite sex, I believe 1 line from my second post, was made to represent the entire meaning of the OP, which is not the case. I believe that SOME do this for that purpose, but certainly not all and a majority do it probably because of peer pressure and the sense of wanting to fit in because that's the style of the times.

I also mentioned "mood, and general edginess and entitlement", personality traits that are in my opinion typically associated with immaturity that I've seen an uptick in the (18-25) age range.

My main point is the immature mentality (dress, demeanor, and everything else) is spilling over into the adult world.

I don't think I'm the only one concerned about this.


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At this point the conversation might need to diverge here between the aspects of dress, and then mentality of youth today as they grow into adults that we interact with daily.

Media is raising our kids, yes we know that's the job of parents but there's a reason this happens, and likely that's probably due to economic reasons to an extent. Both parents working means the children are unsupervised and the media ends up raising them along with peer pressure.

Other times Yggdrasil's situation, is a perfect example of why things are breaking down, and that has to do with flatout bad parenting and probably a lot of psychological problems people have that they don't deal with and just brush under the rug and treat that as handling their baggage.

 

Hm, as a parent I don't really like to even think yet too much about the way things are different from when I was growing up (born in 1980) and kids that are growing up today. I just noticed today just how good my not quite three and a half year old is at using my smart phone. Navigating between menus, unlocking it, knowing how to start a video recording, a slide show of the videos, go online,.... that's a three year old. It's kinda crazy the world these kids that grow up knowing this stuff and then even more and more technology comes will experience. Much different.

And yea, to tie back into what you were saying.... I do think there is more of a loss of innocence because of social media, the internet in general, cell phones, etc.- with kids compared to when we were kids. For ex.-when me and my friends were 14 year olds wearing the clothes we wore (which really wasn't sexual at all), that is all true in that day and age... but in this day and age I believe kids grow up much faster and whatever they are wearing (say a 13 or 14 year old) they will likely have pictures up on social media and lots more pressure and knowledge of things to deal with... Anyways I know I will likely be one of the those parents that annoy their kids to death- wanting to know what they do online, who they are talking to and stuff. I won't just let media/internet/etc parent my kids.



Anyways, monk, I do understand the point to this thread and how people kinda run with it- to certain things you weren't trying to make the thread be about. I think when it comes down to it all I can really think to add let at this point is that it's really up to the parents.. if you have a 12-16 year old (whatever age) ... you are the one who has to draw the line if you don't think they should be wearing a certain thing. And def people should keep in mind that not everyone in the world DOES have good intentions/is a good person.... but I think it really comes down to good parenting.

 

Yes it is the parents job....which is why we're doomed.

The parents of children now, are the ones who might be failed role models in the first place whose own parents either were too loose or too controlling both contribute to messed up psychology of that generation's youth, and the effect continues to domino.

Parents are GOING to fail because all their time in most families is spent at work and they can't watch their kids on these things they might not even understand. Keeping up on technology is a full time job that people get paid to do, and we expect parents to do that + whatever else?

Not realistic, and that's why I made this post because a collective of people, call it society if you want to, have a part to play in this.


The only problem is that society at large, in their competing views, do not have a logical oriented goal, and resort to "slut shaming" among other EMOTIONAL oriented tactics that fail causing their own problems.

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I hope others continue to add to this conversation as it is evolving into a discussion I find interesting as a parental discussion.

How do you parent in the 21st century and beyond, what failed parental tactics and strategies can we do away with that previous generations used?

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Youth today are "innocent" in the sense that they are naive or highly likely naive or in over their heads. They themselves might know how to work technology but I don't think the majority really understand how their technology is a double edged sword and Pandora's box of potential problems.

I don't recommend getting them cell phones in high school, by now most potential kidnappers already know how to disarm any benefit a mobile would provide anyway.

If you must, give them a dependable disposable mobile phone brand for special events like prom.

Also sheltering or hovering are probably the worst parental strategies as it eats away trust between parent and child. My advice is to speak the truth to them in dosages developmentally appropriate, go vague when necessary, but establish the framework for those blanks to be filled in as they grow up.


Even if parental guards are setup online, kids totally get around them by using proxies or other internet detouring and re-routing tricks. Lots of my friends used them and online security is basically a game of wack-a-mole.



Semi-related to this, about a year ago I was working on a group project with some classmates of mine and during a break they decided to go onto a few "chat with strangers" websites. I won't mention the sites here as I don't want to plug them but it was obvious that creeper-exhibitionist type people and those underage visited the site.

My lab partners certainly encountered both sets of people and it can be logically assumed the people on the other end did too. Not a good mix, and not something you could call "innocent".



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As to the OP: I think my answer is that generally people go through a stage of "bad style" and it doesn't by default imply anything more.


I still stand by my opinion that the sense of "bad style" is a possible indicator of immaturity in their personality, be it a guy or a girl. ( in a guy's case I think lots of girls agree that guys that look unkempt = probably immature and not boyfriend or husband material) so it's the same idea.

And I also wanted to say this post was discussing trends, not absolutes.

 

Also I want to say I've seen what was considered risqué in 1980's style of dress....that's nothing compared to what is risqué in the last 15 years.

Seems conservative by today's standards.

 

There's a time and place for everything. While it's nice to be able to express yourself via clothing it's also nice to not be the abuser of it. Know the boundaries.