Naughty Knickers

by Mothership on March 26, 2013

I wonder how much spam and how many disappointed pervs I’m going to get with that title?

A lot, I suspect. Oh well.

Many of you may have read this brilliant post that a father (who is also a Father) wrote to Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie retailer, upon learning that they were launching a line – Bright Young Things -aimed at younger teenage girls. The kind with glittery slogans on the bum that say things like

Feeling Lucky? (WTF?)  or

Call me!  (bleurgh)

There’s been a big hoo-ha (no pun intended) about this and plenty of angry people have posted things on the VS Facebook page, myself included, protesting the sexualisation of children and teens, but so far, the retailer has responded by denying that BYT was for underage girls, but instead was for college age women.

Right.

That’s why the CFO, Stuart Burgdoerfer has been quoted as saying at a conference this year:

“When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be?They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.”.

And also, possibly why teen idol, Justin Bieber was chosen as the main entertainment at the VS fashion show this year. Because so many college age women love him NOT. I don’t know anyone over the age of about 14 who would be seen dead admitting they like him.

I think they might be lying a teensy bit.

Interestingly there are quite a lot of women (at least I think they’re women, they could also be saddo blokes who spend all their time in their mum’s spare room surfing the net and pretending they’re girls so as to troll on sites with scantily or nil-clad women) defending VS, too, saying that they like to look pretty, like to look sexy, and that it’s parents who should be policing what their teenagers wear, not corporations and there’s nothing wrong with making sexy undies for kiddies  people who are below the age of consent   girls. Those who get hold of them or even want them before the clock strikes 18 are clearly those whose parents clearly don’t love them enough to tell them not to show anyone.

That reminds me a bit about the joke where the little girl tells her parents that a man asked her to lift up her dress & show her his knickers, which she did, and the parents were horrified. They said never to do it again. The next day they asked her if the nasty man had come around again, and she said yes,”But this time I fooled him. I wasn’t wearing any!”

It’s not really funny, is it? And the logic is equally skewed.

They seemed to be suggesting if we were all better parents there would be NO problem at all with the objectification of women, sexualisation of kids, sex trafficking, victim blaming in rape cases, horrific events like the recent ones in Steubenville.. It’s all the parents fault. No, wait, it’s the MOTHERS’ FAULT because women have vaginas and we know what a load of trouble those have got men into.

And by that reasoning, with all that bad parenting around, there’s enough to justify a NATIONAL LINE OF SEXY LINGERIE, so it’s just as well they’re selling it – I’m sure those kids will be comforted by some avuncular men who’ll be happy to shag them and improve their self esteem in the process.

I’m glad those upstanding ladies have cleared that up. The ones who have made Victoria’s Secret the behemoth that it is and are proud to keep flying the PINK knicker flag high, preferably peeking out of their low-cut sweatpants. We should note, thought, that these same gals have enough moral fibre to bring their daughters up differently from us, we’re only protesting because secretly we’re a bunch of slags who can’t keep our own kids from rampant promiscuity.

Got that?

No, me neither.

No matter how you slice it, this is another case of a big corporation pimping out your kids so they’ll keep on bringing in the mighty dollar to their doorstep for life.

Ugh.

 

{ 2 comments }

1 Metropolitan Mum March 29, 2013 at 1:58 pm

The only words my daughter will have emblazoned on her knickers will be the names of the weekdays. ‘Call me’?!?! WTF indeed!

2 Mothership April 4, 2013 at 7:46 pm

I’m with you on that, MM. ALthough must say I regret having bought day-of-the-week knickers for my girl as she’s completely OCD about wearing the correct day and OF COURSE they’re never clean/findable when she wants them. GAH!

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