Oh man, I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. Victoria’s Secret is selling mindless sexbotism to pubescent girls with a new line of unmentionables called—what else—Pink (the color popularized by the Hustler cunt), and Molly Saves the Day has got their number.
Victoria’s Secret has essentially started marketing merchandise that says “INSERT VULVA HERE” to little girls, and even the Chicago Tribune calls it “G-rated.” Well, it may be G-rated to the girls who buy them, thinking pink is just a color and expressive of femininity. But girls are walking — as the article mentions — to classes and in public wearing pants with “pink” on the bottom. And while they may not understand the innuendo, I’m sure a lot of the other people who see them do.
Why don’t they just start a men’s line called “Rape,” revive the Eldridge Cleaver penis pants, and get it over with?
[Via Lauren’s excellent pop culture edition of the Carnival of Feminists]
I was revolted by this. It reminded me of how stubborn, trendy and naive my friends and I were as teens. I can just imagine a parent refusing to let a daughter out of the house with that written on her ass and having to, after much arguing, explain the double-entendre in order to make the issue clear. As a parent, I would resent the hell out of being put in that position by a retailer at the mall. Mom might win the Battle of Billboard Ass but lose the war on raunch.
These are the things that make me scared but also militant about parenting a daughter. At 6 we gave her all the reasons why she couldn’t have pants with Barbie on the ass and when she asks for whore-like undies at 10 (because they’re fucking everywhere) she’s going to get another talk about patriarchy and corporatization.
However I would rather not see this crap everywhere. Why can’t a kid be a kid for fuck’s sake?
Oh dear! And the worst part is that it doesn’t surprise me. I may never look at the color pink in quite the same way again.
I always thought I was so lucky, having been spared the march-through-a-live-minefield trauma of raising a daughter. What a relief, let stronger parents than I worry about stuff like the whole Barbie obsession issue, the threat of eating disorders, the credit card bills from Delia’s, etc. I was a free woman! And I probably couldn’t have handled it anyway.
But not after today. Hell no. From now on, I’m up in arms, totally prepared to bare my teeth and hurl my body in front of an onrushing freight train or whatever it takes to protect the fabulous Ro-Tel from this kind of insidious shit. Stand back, VS, i’ve been UNLEASHED by a midget in a pink tutu!
you know what the best trend that ever happened to my daughters was? the skater/goth whatever.
baggy shirts, baggy pants held up with studded leather belts, and steel-toed combat boots. chains everywhere(can come in handy in self-defense too)
i was never more proud to see my girls cast off the “preppy-pastel-skintight-sweater” obsession the school administration had/has.
black fingernail polish and lipstick? yes dear i’ll GLADLY buy it. butt-floss? NO!
they don’t really like me at the kid’s schools.
Is it possible that Victoria Secret designers don’t know what “pink” can refer to? How outrageous of them to market this crap if they do know.
I hate things printed on the rear of young girls’ clothing. It evokes a cattle brand or a billboard, or a sign hung on a enslaved person at auction.
Of course they do, just like La Senza knows exactly how young of an audience it’s targeting with its 30AA push up bra.
(oh and I forgot to mention, they’re selling it at La Senza Girl)
“Pink” could refer to a number of things. When the word is spelled out in a “u” shape across the ass, though, it’s pretty hard to not interpret it to mean “pink parts here –>” And yeah, creepy to be marketing it to the prepubsecent crowd.
I’ve seen plenty of those type of shorts that say “Juicy”. Guess now they can say “Pink N’ Juicy”. *sigh*
~M~
As far as I know, the Victoria Secret Pink line is quite old, it’s just the name they give to the colourful cotton line without frills or “sexiness”. As much as I hate the brand’s marketing, the Pink line is normally pretty harmless -polkadots, stripes, that sort of thing.
The innuendo takes this to new heights (or depths, eh), but several years ago when my daughter was a preteen, her favorite clothing company at the time, Limited Too, was really trying to sell a lot of these kinds of sweatpants, with words like Cheer, Soccer, and Dance boldly emblazoned across the heinie (but as hard it was to find any pants left in the actual store that didn’t have rear-end embellishment, I’m thinking maybe they missed the mark with how well they thought those would go over then). They gave me the icks immediately … as if young girls don’t already have enough creeps ogling their behinds as it is.
Actually, much of Limited Too’s clothing catalog gave me that same feeling, especially considering where the photographers’ focal points often seemed to be (the current website gives no sense at all of what the catalog is — or was, anyway — like). I had a disturbing sense that those catalogs may well have actually had an underground following among a certain group of men who probably weren’t all that interested in buying clothes for their prepubescent female loved ones, shall we say. Similar to the well-known secondary (heck, primary?) purpose the Victoria’s Secret catalog serves too.
(~this site worst viewed with IE in 800 x 600 resolution, unfortunately for me, pout)
My daughter turns 14 this year and our wardrobe fights are already legion. Abercrombie, and now this. Goddess help me.
I have to agree with Sunny in Texas, though my now college-age-daughter wouldn’t have worn one of these in a million years, at any age. Certainly full goth regalia is far preferable. Interesting—I don’t quite know how of “read” it—that the model is black (not pink, at least not mainly pink). Its much better to let your girl child run around looking like an urchin than like a sexbot.
um–l.c. gillies–um
everyone is pink on the inside.
Pink? It’s been going on for Y.E.A.R.S. As if it helps any, they’re actually targeted toward the college girl demographic. Which means, uh, me. They’re everywhere. There’s actually even an official Victoria’s Secret PINK group on facebook, where they give you doggie stationery & free pink dogs if you buy stuff.
I think we should be more revolted by JUICY. Especially when emblazoned across the ass. I remember this girl who would wear JUICY jewellery at age 12. I explained to her one day what it meant & she was all EW– EWW– EWWW!!!11one
But she kept on wearing it.
What does it mean that I recognized and got annoyed the “look-at-this” aspect of writing on the butt, of course, but not that “Pink” itself represented a double entendre? Do I just not read Hustler often enough? Do I not fetishize genitals enough?
(My wife, 30, received a “Pink” set from Victoria’s Secret for Xmas, and Pink is written across the chest of the baggy sweatshirt…maybe that’s why it didn’t jump out at me…)
I didn’t recognize it either–I’ve never heard anyone use the word “pink” that way. And I usually have a dirty enough mind that I can see innuendo in anything. Maybe it’s an older usage?
I think a lot of times the parents AND kids are clueless about the innuendo that these companies are selling to little girls. A couple of months ago I was grocery shopping and a mother and daughter caught my eye because the daughter reminded me of me at about 14 -taller than all the boys, jockish, and sweet-faced. The mom was college-professory looking, and the daughter had on baggy track pants and a t-shirt. Emblazoned on the tee - “I (heart) bareback.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that the girl and her mom were merely horseback riding enthusiasts and very, very clueless.
sunny in texas,
I wish you were my mom when *I* was a teenager! I hate to wait until I was in University to bust out the 80’s industrial-wear and mohawk without my parents losing their minds! Heh.