It's Wednesday, in fact.
A day when all small children with normal parents dress up and walk around the neighborhood, or mall, or grocery store collecting candy. A day we remember with great fondness - Halloween parties at school, bobbing for apples, having costume parties, trick or treating from classroom to classroom. Going out with your siblings as soon as it got dark in whatever home made costume you could cobble together. One year, we dressed LilSis up as Dorrie the Witch (leg warmers were certainly popular that year). You'd come home and after your parents went through your candy and threw away anything suspicious (or confiscated what they wanted for themselves) the bartering and theft would begin. I hate taffy, and those grody peanut brittle candy things. I would trade like nine of those and all my nougats for a pixie stick, which I would promptly put up my nose (what can I say? I was twelve...I thought it was cool). Then after the sorting and bartering was complete, the hoarding and hiding and theft would begin, to last until Thanksgiving, until you threw away the things that you couldn't be induced to eat no matter how sugar deprived you were.
Simple times, right?
Newsweek was kind enough to provide me with an article, and this lovely photo:
Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a pirate or even, um, Avril Lavinge. Or a witch. Nothing wrong at all. Good, classical outfits. When did witch and pirate outfits for little girls become sexualized? What parent in their right mind would let their daughter wear a french maid's outfit? Or a prison outfit? Let's look at that photo, shall we?
Belly, leg, leg, bosoms and leg, and the implied "jailbait".
I would honestly have to question the sanity of any parent, especially the sanity of any mother, who would purchase an outfit like this for their daughter, let alone allow their daughter out of the house like this. In fact, if I see a child dressed like this on Wednesday night I might have a stroke. Don't you think purchasing or allowing your daughter to purchase one of these provocative (read: pedophile? please rape me) outfits encourages them to think, in some small part of their immature and still developing brains, that they way to get what they want is by being sexy? Teaches them that the only value they have is obtained by trading on their reproductive organs and their implied promise? That the only way they can get what they want is by sexually appealing to men?
Before you go raising your man hating flag, just think about it.
How would you feel if you were little Daphne's Dad, and you let her wear the pirate outfit, and the fifteen year old boy that lives around the corner suddenly wanted to go trick or treating with your eleven year old daughter? I don't think you'd feel very good about that. What message does that outfit send to a man (I'm not saying men are bad, but just visual, as it was pointed out to me today...and the simple gestures women innocently make can be misinterpreted)? What would you think if your daughter Allison, who had previously been the apple of your eye, started sixth grade and became sullen and withdrawn from you? And her grades plummet, and she breaks curfew, and can't be found....and all she wants to do is spend time with some boy. Why? Why is that?
At some point we have to assume responsibility for what we allow our children to do. It's quite stupid to allow our daugthers to dress like sluts and our sons to act like assholes as children and then expect them to miraculously outgrow it as adults. Be consistent and be firm. Don't buy your children these costumes, these accoutrements of adolesence they crave. Give them an upbringing that will help them succeed, and not give them a sense of entitlement. Teach your children - of either gender - that sex is something to be respected and shared between people who care about each other, and that anything else is tawdry and meaningless. Give children a sense of self respect and self worth that isn't based upon beauty, or the size of their parent's home, or their parent's wallet.
And for god's sake, let your kids walk to the freaking bus stop!
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