I would not want my son/daughter to look like a whore either. And I’m all about self-expression. This is where we should draw the line. = (

I also wouldn’t like any child to be shunned because they did or did not wear something they didn’t want to. (within reasonable guidelines anyhow)

I digress as well. This is just horrid.

Thanks for sharing.

I believe Chinese footbinding and Cinderella’s sisters squishing their feet into tiny shoes was once all the rage too.

Tell me that I didn’t just read this in a discussion between two feminists. I thought Men Lie About Women was Feminism 101.

“Oddly enough, when I do talk to a lot of men about this, they actually seem indifferent about all this clothing and fashion nonsense. They often don’t get why it takes their wives hours to get ready for an event either.”

Those guys are completely full of shit. They don’t “get it” because they think women should just look like barbie dolls with no effort. They “seem indifferent” but I note with interest that they are not dating or married to women who DON’T spend hours getting ready for events. So, they think it’s no big deal if women perform femininity or not, but their wives do so. And you *believe* them when they claim to be indifferent?

Let me repeat: those guys are lying liars. If their wives stopped shaving, stopped wearing makeup, stopped dieting, and started throwing on jeans and a t-shirt to go to “events” they’d be whining
that their wives “let themselves go” after marriage. Guaranteed.

I have many pairs of shoes because I’m always searching for a type that will not give me blisters. Thus far, I have not succeeded. Not entirely. So I have to keep on searching and buying shoes.

I recommend, oddly, ballet slippers.  I had a pair for a long time, and they were fantastic for walking around as close to barefoot without being barefoot.  Plus I got a pair in black, so they matched my work clothes well.

It’s not fashionable to say that women do have buying choices, and we keep wondering about and debating this same issue of shoes going on some 30 years or more. It never seems to change.

Call it my weak ankles as a kid, but just seeing women totter around on those things was strange to me. I felt creeped out by it as a four year old sitting on the sidewalk outside our apartment building, I felt creeped out by it in high school, and it still creeps me out today!

I believe the statistic is that about 70% of the buying decisions in America are made by women. We have to get at what this is really all about.

Someone farther up on this commentary (I’m scrolling but can’t seem to find it now)mentioned how she was given praise and validation for wearing all this stuff as a young girl. I’m convinced this must be a different brain structure in lesbian little girls as opposed to heterosexual little girls. So what is such a siren song to young women, to me seems absolutely boring and horrifying.
I found all that fussing over “pretty little girls” nauseatingly condescending as a small child. So it had the opposite effect on me for some reason. This was way before feminism hit the newsstands, back in 1961 or 1962.

I’ve always thought this, and even when I was a teenager, I wondered why peer group pressure had such power over girls and boys. I do feel very distant from heterosexual culture and norms; it’s a weird foreign country out there to me. It often makes me ill, as if it is a toxic waste dump of the soul just on the perpetual play list of patriarchy. Play that song again one more time…. :0

Now some mother is going to buy those dumb little baby high heels and put them on baby girls’ feet. Men are not forcing women to go out and buy this stuff, they are evil in manufacturing it, and wanting to make a profit by marketing this garbage. The evil is the male manufacturing establishment, just as cigarette companies are evil for making their addictive products. That is a given! Maybe we just need more media awareness of just how the American public is conned and gullied by advertisting itself — both for men and women.

Oddly enough, when I do talk to a lot of men about this, they actually seem indifferent about all this clothing and fashion nonsense. They often don’t get why it takes their wives hours to get ready for an event either.

Is it women that are really showing off for other women? I guess it might be natural to want to show off now and then for others, but this fashion thing has been going down for hundreds of years. High heels have been around for a very long time, feminists have grown sick of this.

The good news is that women claimed more clothing power and comfort in feminist battles. There are still vestages of women being made fun of for “non-traditional” clothing choices — e.g. men writing about the Hillary pantsuits ad infinitum ad nausem.

When I see the income gap between men and women, and when I see the price increases for women’s clothing at the dry cleaner, and when I see a huge recession, and kids not being able to go to college, I wonder at the choices people make in buying anything. This goes for men and women. And maybe being in the entertainment capital of America, I just see this out of control more than most women. You really can see this feeding frenzy on Rodeo Dr. or at the malls, or at the fashion boutiques. How can women afford a $90 hair cut with coloring? And those salons are packed when I get my haircut, just packed to overflowing.

Women, as 70% of the buyers, do have power to buy or not to buy. Just as they have the power to develop the mind or be mired in heteronormative clothing oppression. It just is, and no doubt this debate will continue well into the next century, as we reinvent the wheel of discourse yet one more time! One for the road :-)