Lost Youth: Turning Young Girls Into Sex Symbols
Toddlers in tube tops and naked teen pin-ups no longer seem to shock us. How the sexual image of young girls is being manipulated
COMMENTS
There will never be enough said about this subject. Ever.
That aside, this is one of the biggest reasons I can think of that being a woman is so difficult. Think about it. We're brought up by the world to value a man's opinion. We're taught to place enormous value in our appearances, and if we fall short of the ideal, we're made to feel worthless. We're taught to accept catcalls and comments about our bodies-from strangers, even-as compliments. We absorb the world's edict that we are not ourselves; we are Women. A pretty surface onto which the world's expectations and desires are projected. This starts so early in our lives; it's so sudden and impossible to prepare yourself for. And eventually, you notice that your older peers-who once stood exactly where you are standing-sometimes can't conceal their dislike or distrust for you. They look at you suspiciously, as though the purpose of your existence is to undermine their own. This is NOT a broad indictment of all women. At all. But I'm sure many of you have experienced this very thing at the hands of, say, a coworker, or a mother-in-law, or a boss. In my eyes, being a woman is a struggle that never ends. It just changes shape. The weapons get sharper, the enemy starts to look more and more familiar as we grow into adults. Now, at twenty-seven, I'm no longer worried about men. I share my life with a good one, and that's where my focus is. So no, men and their opinions don't hold nearly as much power as they used to. No. It's the women I worry about now. The attractive older woman who fawns all over my SO, right in front of me. The women I worked with in a doctor's office, who were all older than me by a decade, who shunned me and ignored me and treated me like shit because I was only twenty (and probably a little hussy) and made me so miserable I eventually quit. The woman who eyed me up and down and then told me my outfit was....."fun". All of these little tiny things that women can do to one another to cut eachother down, that each and every one of us has experienced-or committed- at one time or another, know no age, it seems. I hope that if I ever have a daughter, I'll be able to somehow prepare her for this, and let her know that her strength will often be tested, and that she should never forget what she's really worth. I hope, too, that she'll understand, and that she won't let anyone-male or female- make her feel small or powerless or like she's only her body and nothing else. This is a long shot, I know. But I have to hope these things, or I'll feel as though all of my own little sufferings, and the strength they've fostered, will be in vain.
I'm less bothered by men who are attracted to youth than by men who are attracted to innocence. Youth has a lot of good associations--energy, enthusiasm, optimism, open-mindedness, iconoclasm. But innocence is only good for a few things--patronizing, ruining, or taking advantage of. ((shudder))
Excellent distinctions. Innocence has an emotive connotation that seems to elicit predatory behaviors, like a neon sign announcing the path of least resistance.
________________________________________________
LINK
Prison Photography - women“There is beauty and there is truth and most truth in this present world is ugly.”
________________________________________________
