Cult of Youth, Infantilisation, Fashion

[ailbhe]

Thoughts:

Little girls and young teenage girls wear clothes which adult women can't without "trying to look young."

Adult women dress in these for advertising purposes with an explicit sexual message.

Ew.

Things which come immediately to mind are very short skirts with white ankle socks, school uniforms, babydoll dresses, etc. There are more but I haven't thought properly about it yet. But I know I've seen other instances of women, mainly in sex-sells-products type adverts, dressing like little girls in order to appear more alluring, presumably through vulnerability, but ew. I think it's to do with the virgin-whore thing. Ew ew ew.

Also: do little boys wear things which adult men don't usually wear? Or do boys and men wear basically the same clothing, so there isn't the same message-sending ability? I can't think clearly about it, right now.

Comments

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Er, sorry, but you've awakened my inner archaeologist; all you can tell from prehistoric finds of so called "fertility goddess" figurines is what people *worshipped*, not what was considered attractive in their society.

If you look at representational art (art that is explicitly conveying a cultural ideal of beauty) from Egypt, Greece, China, Mezoamerica, India or Africa, there is a striking preponderance of narrow waists and firm, high breasts.

I'm not saying that that is any kind of proof of the evolutionary theory, because it's not; but we need to choose our evidence carefully.

The other thing is that I'm not sure how you get from "men 'really' prefer fat women" to "men want to not be held responsible for liking thin women". There's a link missing in the logical chaint here for me - am I overlooking something?

[ailbhe]

No, you put a link in that wasn't there at all!

(Also, no-one knows that the Venus figures were for worship, that's just a pet theory, like the Dun Aengus one that was so popular with the Victorians - for all we know they were for Chinese medicine type stuff where you point to the places that hurt and get diagnosed without physical examination. What *is* reasonable is that it was a body type considered worth sculpting for some reason, either because it was normal, idealised, or a terrible terrible warning).

I'm not saying that they prefer fat women "really" whatever that is - just that there's so much cultural influence on what men consider sexually attractive in any given place at any given time that evolution doesn't account for it.

Evolution has been used as an excuse for infidelity, harems, finding particular body types attractive (fat AND thin), the whole breasts=buttocks thing, and all sorts of other things. I don't buy it.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I wasn't using evolution, but ethnography; yes, it's true that in some societies there are localised and usually temporary strong preferences - not just for pendulous breasts, but bound feet, blackened teeth, wasp-thin waists, facial scarification etc. But there are certain trends that can nevertheless be observed in a lot of post-axial age civilisations, and whether the adaptationist explanation I quoted is the right explanation of them or not, they are still there and we may as well engage with them.

Concomittantly, I don't think men needed to wait for evolutionary science to come along and give them an excuse to think with their penises. I absolutely agree with you - more than I can express in an LJ comment - that subverting science in order to justify the status quo is a frequent and, to my mind, capital offense. But I don't think that ignoring any kind of data that's out there (like: pretty much all men everywhere have always preferred to marry/sleep with young women) and just crying "patriarchy!" is the right debating tactic to combat that.

[ailbhe]

So now we've both argued against positions the other doesn't hold. That's that sorted then.

I haven't got as far as debating yet, I'm still busy being appalled and furious. Channelling the anger is the advanced lesson.

[ailbhe]

And as to high breasts - there are still groups where long, floppy breasts are desirable (somewhere hot where people don't wear many clothes).