what did that say??

I took my thirteen year old shopping today for some back to school clothing. We set ourselves a budget and hit *gulp* the mall. The mall is a place I avoid at all costs - but this was her day, her choice, her clothes. Emily is into the alterna-trendy stores like Hot Topic and Zumies. These stores sell a lot of the same gendered ideals as do the Aeropostales and Abercrombies of the world. I have issue with a lot of it, but it's hard to escape. Instead of pastel colors and hyper sexualized messages everything is black, red and hypersexualized.

I remain firm on my rules about no teeshirts with words on them, like "I'm a Princess" etc. A band tee shirt, I can live with - little designs, etc - sure. Well, I was in for a shock today as we went into Spencers. Now, I know this store has always been tacky, tasteless and ridiculous. But when I was a kid, it was all about fart jokes and hunky man birthday cards. Now, they have a video playing in the store about how to pole dance. Did you know that pole dancing is the new face of female empowerment? I am not kidding. They actually use the language of empowerment to talk about acting out stripper fantasies. Crazy. Emily and I talked a bit about that and what it means and why I find it to be troublesome. After reading the book Packaging Girlhood, I decided to attempt a more Socratic approach in discussing these cultural atrocities with Emily.

Well, back to the tees.....I am at a coffeeshop......I was going to find a picture of one of these tees I am talking about, but lo and behold, the Spencers site is blocked here due to sexualized content. Well, I can't remember off the top of my head all of the ridiculously unhealthy and derogatory messages being sold to girls to plaster across their chests - but besides the sexual and aggressive messages I have seen before, I was pretty taken aback to see a slew of tee shirts glorifying binge drinking!! One said something like, "I don't leave until I hurl" and had an image of a pitcher of beer on it.

The culture being sold to young girls and women today is so vile and so ridiculous - so, what's next - binge drinking as empowerment? I am young, I am free, I am woman, I am empowered - watch me drink and strip. Yeah, that's progress. :(