Ask anyone here in the States what they think of sexual slavery and they’ll most likely react with shock and pity and a little bit of denial. “It’s horrible, but I don’t want to think about it.” That’s pretty much my reaction; I think about it enough to be very sad and enough more to do what little I can to see that it goes away. Things like literacy, birth control, open borders, nutrition and respect for the individual go a long way toward turning the ship away from sexual slavery. Whenever I hear someone griping about “all the jobs going overseas” I find myself thinking that the jobs that go overseas take opportunity with them. That opportunity brings changes in the community that mean daughters no longer have to be sold into prostitution.
We abhor sexual slavery here in the West. Or at least we say we do.
Because when I hear about things like the Victoria Secret Bright Young Things line it occurs to me that we tut-tut over selling daughters into prostitution when it happens in India or Pakistan or Shanghai or Estonia. But when it happens here–when we trade our young girl’s innocence for commerce–it’s nothing more than Business As Usual.
Selling underwear to middle school-aged girls (10-13 last time I checked) with “Call Me” on the pubis is definitely not the same thing as chaining the same girl up in a cold, dirty trailer and forcing her full of heroin to keep her docile enough to service male customers three and four times her age. But it’s very nearly the same principle, as it asks a young girl to consider herself objectified into a being designed for sexual servitude and supplication.
Any money that a girl that young gets to buy those panties comes from her parents or the adults her parents allow her to babysit for. Or maybe it comes in a birthday card from Grandma.
The Limited Brands that operate Victoria’s Secret also operate Bath and Body Works, Henri Bendel and other stores I’ve never heard of. (I think I’m outside the demographic for “Pink”–whatever that is.)
On their webpage the Limited Brands Corporate strategy talks about
In order to mirror our associates’ and our customers’ values, Limited Brands supports community programs that focus on empowering women, nurturing and mentoring children and improving education.
Last time I looked, female empowerment meant more than marketing underwear to children with “Feeling Lucky” written on it. Nurturing children, to my way of thinking, does not include enticing them to mimic college students’ sexual behaviour.1
I guess this should be what I expect from a company that considers “beauty” and lovable bodies to have so narrow (literally and figuratively) a definition.
Women are reporting sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction in ever-greater numbers, as the marketing campaigns for Victoria’s Secret and their ilk fail to live up to the reality of the variety of body types that self-identify as female. I blame part of that on the objectification of sexuality in children. In CHILDREN. And today I’m holding Victoria’s Secret partly responsible.
I’ve never been a 10-13 year old girl (and I somewhat suspect this may be one of those things that may be different between a majority of little girls and a majority of little boys), but is it a thing for pre-adolescent girls to buy their own underwear? Growing up, underwear was just something that was kinda there. I didn’t buy it, pick it out, or frankly even care much about it.
When I was a 10-13yo girl I didn’t care about underwear. That trend has continued for an additional 30 years.
But I do know that when I was 10-13 the big deal at the time was makeup–specifically eye shadow and lipstick. I know it seems competitively innocuous but the mechanism is the same. Girls that age are between childhood and teen and are attracted to anything that says “grownup”. For my age, in the early 80s it was makeup that was the forbidden gateway. For this generation I can only hope it’s trashy panties, but given the rumors I hear it may well be a collection of multicoloured condoms.
Anyway, girls get that stuff by saving their allowance and babysitting money (my method) and buying it then sneaking it into the house in the bottom of their purse, begging a lax parent to buy it for them (works great if mom and dad are divorced; Sarah Cowen’s method) or shoplifting it. (Angie Bojrab method).
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
I haven’t really thought this through all the way, so I’m just going to offer some thoughts. I’ve long found the life-size VS model images in the mall to be suspect. The women often have very blank eyes, as if they’ve been drugged or traumatized in some way and have disassociated from their surroundings (it’s always possible this is caused by being under the lights and cameras for ten hours, don’t know). But I wonder if this simply comes down to female submission culture. If men can’t have submission one way, they’ll get it another way, by valuing women by how many blow jobs they give. Many women still have this need to be valuable to men, so they believe in their added value as the girl who blows the most (or does whatever else the man wants). Although (as I said) I’m just offering thoughts here, I do believe that even the forced female submission in Christian circles contributes to this problem.
I’m glad you’re talking about this, Katherine. As the mother of a soon-to-be 13-year-old daughter, I am hyper-aware of the sexualized culture aimed at her age group and am completely sickened by it. Fortunately, my daughter and I are very open and honest when it comes to dealing with the whole thing. We routinely discuss the issues ( I even talked to her about the Steubenville case) and how she is NOT an object to be used. She has no interest in wearing such clothing and has not once asked me to purchase items for her that are suggestive in nature.
That companies are pushing this sexual agenda through their products disgusts me. That parents are ALLOWING and even ENCOURAGING their young daughters to wear such trash disgusts me more. To my way of thinking, these are parents that are either trying to be their children’s best friend instead of their parent and refuse to say “no” or they simply don’t see any harm in it (and such warped thinking is a whole ‘nother ball of wax).
“If men can’t have submission one way, they’ll get it another way, by valuing women by how many blow jobs they give.”
Wow.
I obviously don’t and can’t speak on behalf of all men. However, I can honestly say that among the men with whom I interact in familial, professional and social settings, I don’t know of a single one who would be accurately characterized by that observation. I may be fortunate and/or simply ignorant, but that’s just not an attitude that flies with the men that I know. If you speak or act in a manner that denigrates women, you get called to the carpet for it. Period. Granted, there’s no shortage of ignorant, sexist jerks who embarrass and discredit the Y chromosome camp. They deserve to be called out, challenged and held accountable for any misogynistic idiocy they might have embraced, and I’ll be more than happy to stand in line for my turn to do so. But to paraphrase a conversation that Kath and I had recently, “The good ones are busy trying to be examples of how to take the higher road.”
The men who aren’t interested in forcing women into submission aren’t, by and large, out there planning ad campaigns for Victoria’s Secret. (Though I’d wager that there were at least a few women involved in this particular ad campaign/product line. Where’s the ire over their participation? Do they not deserve to be held to the same standard?) Those men are busy trying to be good husbands, good fathers, good coworkers, good friends and good examples of how to treat women with respect and honor.
Again, I’m not even remotely suggesting that we don’t live in a world where many women are forced into submission of one type or another – and much, much worse. And yes, it’s a beyond-sad commentary on society that attitudes and behaviors like the ones demonstrated in this Victoria’s Secret campaign are tolerated; often without so much as a second thought being given. However, if the point that you’re trying to make is that women deserve to be treated with respect, honored for their inherent worth as human beings and recognized as having dignity, equality and fundamental moral worth, might it be a good idea to allow for the possibility of the same dignity, integrity and worth in those of us who make the effort, every day of our lives, to be the kind of men that you would have us be? We ARE out here, trying to make a difference by living to a higher standard. And, believe it or not, we care about more than just getting our knobs polished.
That part of my comment was aimed at worldly (not Christian) male culture, especially of the younger generation. I tried to make a contrast between that and the Christianity cult of submission, but I clearly didn’t (and I don’t know if I should, since pastors such as Driscoll posture in the same way as worldly men do, carrying on about oral sex–I’m guessing because it’s the ultimate picture of submission). I was also highlighting a trend, not pointing to specific men. This trend goes all the way back to the beginning, but it finds its way in our modern, post-feminist world in a brave, new way.
Thanks for the clarification, Jill. I confess that a certain type of broad-brush indictment/dismissal of men has been something of a hot button of mine recently, so forgive me if I come across as being a bit defensive.
Please know that I’m not calling you out, trying to be argumentative, or implying that the dynamics you’re describing don’t exist. Rather, I’m hoping to offer a somewhat hopeful perspective by promising that there are plenty of men – both Christian and non-Christian – who eschew the type of idiotic, embarrassing drivel that Driscoll and his ilk promote. In fact, most of the men who came to mind as I was taking mental inventory of decent friends, colleagues and family are decidedly non-Christian. They just have enough sense to treat women with respect.
As far as Christians are concerned, I believe whole-heartedly that anyone who uses Scripture to justify any act or attitude that in any way diminishes or disrespects a woman isn’t reading nearly carefully enough. Christ makes it clear that our model for relating to women is how Christ related to the church. I.e., he loved it sacrificially, to the point of laying down his life for it. If I’m not loving my wife (or mother, or daughter, or perfect stranger, or…) in that way, I’m absolutely in the wrong.
All I’m suggesting is that if you’re really not making blanket statements that you mean to apply to all men, then qualifiers like “some men” or “some segments of our society” go a long way toward avoiding misunderstandings.
I was definitely NOT making a blanket statement. My brain wasn’t/isn’t working all that well today, anyway. I meant it more as a trend, as in, you could say that a trend is happening, but it doesn’t necessarily apply to individuals, and it might apply to a majority, except somewhere in the middle. See? I told you I’m not making sense today. Since Katherine’s post is loosely about feminism, you could say that feminism in its heyday was a trend, but some women eschewed it entirely, many others were in the middle about it, and only a few were extreme in their viewpoints. But it was still a societal trend. That’s what I meant about men. And I do think it’s a kind of backdoor trend for *some* men to take back authority where they can by controlling women sexually, and I believe ad campaigns such as the VS’s are meant to teach girls to be sexually submissive from an early age. Women are, no doubt, complicit in this trend, just as feminism had its male supporters.
That I can more than agree with. And no worries, it’s been an unsettlingly long time since my brain fired on all cylinders, so I’m in no position to point fingers.
Recently, though, I’m finding myself less inclined to think of these types of trends as being gender-rooted and am seeing them more as generic manifestations of man’s general inhumanity toward man. Strip away the sexual politics and you’ve got your basic cruelty, disrespect, manipulation, devaluation and all of the other hallmarks of run-of-the-mill human depravity.
Again, I’m not disputing or disregarding your point, but I sometimes wonder if framing these issues in the broader scope of things like gender dynamics doesn’t do something to abstract them – to distance and depersonalize them. Once the discussion gets defined in terms of men, women, conservatives, liberals, homosexuals, Christians or any of the other myriad in/out group constructs, it gets generalized and responsibility for specific behaviors toward flesh-and-blood individuals gets diluted.
(BTW, I’m preaching to myself here. Feel free to not come along for the ride.) If I let myself get caught up in believing that Group A says/does/believes something that I find reprehensible, it’s easy to dismiss all members of that group and to absolve myself from my responsibility to know, love and respect those people as individuals for whom Christ died. I don’t have to confront my own biases and I don’t have to temper my own beliefs with any degree of humility or grace. I see that dynamic taking root in some particularly ugly, insidious ways in the Christian community. Most pronouncedly in the mindset of, “You’re welcome to come be just like us. We’ll gladly welcome you into the fold! (Until then, we reserve the right to judge, dismiss, reject and generally ignore you.)”
But I digress…
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I take no small amount of comfort in seeing that there are people out there who stand out in stark contrast to a lot of these “trends”. I don’t know how she does it, but Kath seems to attract them. Seeing the (mostly) sane, intelligent, reasoned, compassionate and kind approaches to the world that she, you and many of the other commenters bring to this blog does a lot to maintain the small amount of faith in humanity that I try to hold onto. Thanks to you and everyone else here who makes the effort to rise above the lowest common denominator.