Two articles I found today irked my feminist sensibilities, which I don’t think are terribly unreasonable.

Fashion Aims Young
by Ruth La Ferla
NYTimes.com, 8/24/06
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/fashion/thursdaystyles/24KIDS.html?ex=1157083200&en=ab640afc66b17af6&ei=5070&emc=eta1< p>

“Today designers and retailers are training their sights on even younger consumers, girls roughly 4 to 9, diminutive in stature but with great big eyes for style. Indeed, to judge by the wares — miniaturized drainpipe jeans, footless hose, cashmere tunics and press-on nails — fashion and cosmetics makers are intent on capturing the hearts of pint-size fashionistas, and the purse strings of their parents.”

Is it a coincidence that young boys are spared this marketing assault or that the fashions are often “scaled-down versions of adult runway looks”? If you’re seeking to put the blame of the objectification and sexualization of women on the shoulders of the women—and solely the women—themselves, then I suppose indoctrinating them as early as possible is the way to go. After all, if women learn that hyper-femininity and fashion-obsession are the only acceptable ways of being a woman, then it’s their own fault if they can’t be seen as anything other than an object, right? And they really shouldn’t complain, considering how respectable sex work is becoming, and how lucrative it’s always been.

Is it attractive to us that young girls look like miniature adults? One theory is that it’s the other way around—our culture is practically pedophiliac when it comes to what makes a woman sexually attractive. Consider the primary mainstream/media-perpetuated idea of a desirable woman: small, thin, cute, big eyes, quiet, not taking up a lot of space (physically or verbally), obedient, submissive, as hairless as possible (except for head hair). This sounds more like a child than an adult.

And now, with girls younger and younger dressing like models, the lines are skewed even more. It makes me kind of sick.

“‘These girls are expressing their views earlier than ever,’ [Lisa Strubel, the trend director for the Children’s Place] said.”

And what so-called “views” would those be? The idolatry of whatever latest plastic, hyper-feminine teen celebrity they want to emulate? The “view” of the knowledge that the best a woman can do is be appearance-obsessed and as unnatural as possible, for the purposes of competing with other women and pleasing men? Since when does fashion (especially mainstream fashion) even begin to encompass the range of “views” and opinions any individual—no matter what age—has? And in a case like this, with marketers insidiously targeting the most impressionable of the population, how can these “views” be considered anything other than societal influence?

My favorite part of the article: One mother refers to her 4-year-old fashion-obsessed daughter, to whose spoiled bourgeois materialistic demands she concedes, as “a pushy broad.”

I could go on and on, about what this amount of marketing at such a young age can do to a potentially full human life, the development of a unique personality and all, about how children are increasingly left to their own devices, what with their parent(s) never at home, working ridiculous hours to—depending on their class status—either put food on the table or as much crap in their kid’s bedroom as possible, about how being raised by a league of teenage nannies would be horrible for anyone, no matter how strong their constitution, about how these kids are looking for guidance is the most readily-available of places, like said teenage nannies, or TV, or magazines, or the mall, or their friends. Friends who are just as neglected and deprived of anything intelligent or critically-engaging or not saturated by the Olsen twins or anything that says that material goods might not be the end-all of every desire but perhaps just perhaps a poor substitute for the emptiness in our souls that is being exacerbated by the very material goods we aim to possess to fill it or even anything with a slightly different perspective as they are, but I won’t.

Then the little girls grow up and there’s shit like this:

Pleasure Politics Surround Sex-Skill Courses
by Malena Amusa
Women’s News, 8/17/06
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2825

“Sex-act training courses for women have gained ground in major North American cities over the past couple of years. The trend is either a sign of greater sexual freedom or a new emphasis on service, depending on whom you ask.”

“Blaire Allison, owner of Metro Event Planners [said]… ‘There is some fear with being unskilled in sex,’ Allison says. ‘This fear has always been there, but now women are like, “Let’s team up and help each other out.”‘”

The fear has always been there? And it just happens to be going public now? We’re now just learning the “proper” technique, the “best” ways to be good in bed? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the mainstreaming of sex work, could it (see Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women And The Rise Of Raunch Culture)?

In high school, a (female) friend of mine told me that boys respect you so much when you give them oral sex. That was in the mid-90s and I can only imagine how much more acceptable ideas like this have become, having witnessed the emergence of “porn chic” into contemporary culture from a long-since-opted-out distance.

Thankfully as this article shows, there is a discrepancy between what is expected of (straight) women in bed and what is expected of (straight) men. Women are supposed to be (straight) sex experts, their passion and sole purpose in life to please (straight) men. (Straight) men, well, they’re not meant to please, only to be pleased. (Straight) women’s pleasure comes from (straight) men’s pleasure, right? Sound a little like any variety of those (straight) porn videos no one can seem to live a complete life without seeing?

Forget intimacy, forget mutual sexual gratification between two (or more) individuals. Forget the thrill of experimentation, of discovering what works for you, for your partner. Forget anything other than the really, really heteronormative—a category which threatens to become more strictly defined and narrow, what with the judgmental invasion of the public eye on anything we might have considered an aspect of at least an optionally-private life before.