AIBU about DD's gym knicker "shorts"?

[RiderGirl]

DD is just turned 13 and has taken to wearing "shorts" that I can only describe as looking like 1980's gym knickers in length, the literally sit in the crease of her buttocks. AIBU in saying that she isn't allowed to step outside the house wearing them? We keep falling out about it but I think they're wildly inappropriate!! To make it worse she wears them with a large t shirt and it just looks like she's in a t shirt and pants 🙈

Promiscuity is the same. Not that no woman ever wants to shag around, but putting that forward as the inevitable mode of behaviour for women is to men's advantage.

“Yes it's funny how 'female empowerment' now translates as wearing as little and/or as revealing clothing as possible, removing all body hair, and offering your body up to whatever sexual practice or kink men desire.”
If you or especially your daughters are being sold something as “empowering”; the first thing to ask is, “are people with power doing this?”The answer will invariably be no, otherwise the American election would be based on who could do the best strip tease with a butt plug for a tail.

It's not about 'shaming' young girls, it's about making them aware. And, I'm sorry but wearing skimpy clothing does make males look at females.

Look, you can legislate against actions, you can legislate against things like wolf-whistling and calling out in the street, but you can't legislate about what people think.

Heterosexual men are attracted to and will look at female bodies if they are on display. You can't change that. You can do something about them doing anything about it, but you can't stop them looking and thinking.

The majority of adult females (not all) are aware of this. Young girls just think they are following some sort of fashion and need to be guided.

I realise this will not be a popular opinion.

As I said upthread, you never seen male celebrities on the red carpet wearing next to nothing. Females however seem to wear the least they can get away with. Why, if not to attract attention.

*see

Difference between male and female clothing standards?! I was on the tram at the weekend and there was a guy who sat opposite me and DH, manspreading to fuck so the fabric around his shorts legs was really splayed out around his crotch and because of how short and baggy the shorts were - you could see his fucking ballsack hanging out of the side of his pants. He clearly gave zero fucks. Or all the blokes walking around topless the second the sun appears at all - and never particularly prime specimens of male physique either. Difference is that society isn't poised to jump on men who cross some kind of arbitrary morality line in the same way it is with women.

So don't try to paint men as some kind of bastions of demure purity.

Summer in the UK will be over with in a few weeks anyway so I refuse to get het up about girls wearing short shorts - the temperature and pissing rain will sort that out soon enough.

Gym shorts really don't make you look like a prostitute!

I don't let me daughters go out with their arse hanging out. I want them to have more respect for themselves and not look cheap and nasty. It's completely unnecessary. Step DD's mum gives zero fucks about her daughters looking like cheap chavs, but i make them change before we go out if i can see arse cheeks.

Why is it irrelevant? So if she goes for a run in them it's ok and no man is going to look at her, but if she wears them to walk it isn't?

There's a magical difference between running in them and walking in them?

I don't know if I saw the wrong thing, but they said Nike pro and I've since looked them up and I really can't see the issue. But then I do lots of exercise and see lots of women (and girls) in short and longer shorts as well as leggings so it's normal for me. Admittedly I don't like the really clingy leggings in flesh colour as they make it look like you're not wearing anything at all but that's not what we are talking about here.

But don’t you think it’s sad that 13-14 year olds feel the need to wear such revealing clothing?

So did you call her, tell her you were on your way to pick her up, and remove any privileges as punishment?

I've said to my teens are you sure you want to be wank fodder for old men. It does the trick as a rule.

Wow. Where to even start with this??

I'd be chastising myself for doing so because it's ALL connected to the way women have been harrassed, assaulted and even murdered for the clothes we wear and the amount of flesh we expose.

Women are harassed, assaulted and murdered because they are women, nothing to do with the amount of flesh we expose, that just provides a handy excuse for men who can’t control their sexualised aggression towards women and girls.

I don’t want my child to find herself in a situation she can’t handle, so I don’t let her wear revealing, sexualised clothes. There’s absolutely no reason for a child to be wearing form fitting, tight clothes revealing her arse and vulva, and I’m not about to allow her to be fodder for predatory men to gaze upon, at best.

Exactly

@DisquietintheRanks she's wearing running shorts not a strap on. Do I think men wear tight fitting shorts.? Yes they do.

I'm not saying she should wear them in saying she's not the issue.

@KimberleyClark - I wore VERY short skirts when I was a young teenager way back in the late 80s. I don't honestly see the difference. Remember Madonna videos in the 80s? Lots of girls, including me, were copying her look and wearing lacy underwear as 'clothing' - I remember being especially fond of a cream lace basque-style top that showed quite a lot of my burgeoning cleavage!

I think there's always a bit of the old 'do as I say, not as I do' that goes on between generations, and when I look back at photos of my mother and her incredibly short mini skirts and mini dresses in the 1960s, I'm really glad she never read me the riot act on what I was wearing in the 1980s or I'm quite sure I would have accused her of being a bit of a hypocrite!

Back in the nineties i wore basques, tiny skirts, see through clothing and often underwear as outer wear...huge difference being I was early twenties then not 13.

Well, quite, but that's exactly the point, isn't it? Because it is, indeed, MEN who 'can't control' themselves why should women change our habits and choices if our clothing makes not a snot of difference to the amount of violence and aggression metered out to us by males? What difference does it make if we're fully naked or covered from head to toe if we're going to be raped or sexually harrassed anyway? We may as well employ full agency to enjoy our sartorial choices in any case.

Why does it fall to us to cover up or ensure we're not showing more than the requisite amount of flesh if any at all? What length of shorts or skirt IS acceptable? I'm recalling here, those old photos from the early 20th century showing a man measuring the length of women's bathing costumes to ensure they weren't 'indecent'. That very word; 'indecent' has changed in meaning and shifted perspective constantly - what's permissible now would have got us hanged or drowned two hundred years ago - and still WOULD in some parts of the world. And clothing IS indivisible in those parts of the world from the woman wearing it. The very nature of some clothing being the entire reason women are even permitted out of the home. So, clothes are political and cultural and imbued by religious meaning and interpretation. Unfortunately, they are not 'just' clothes for a great many women.

There are plenty of men who find nuns insanely alluring and they're not showing any flesh whatsoever. I mean, if men can get all horny over a woman showing NO flesh then perhaps we should all be covered from head to toe all the time, right?

It's down to men to police and moderate their behaviours - their own AND those of their kin. It's down to women to wear whatever the fuck we like and not be subjugated by the oppressive patriarchial systems that would demonise any of us for the threads of cloth we choose to wear.

And ALL women have a part to play in this. By telling our daughters to cover aren't we effectively enabling and strengthening those patriarchal chains of bondage that get us labelled as 'sluts' or 'slags'? Those descriptors have NO male counterparts for the very good reason that men are not subjected to the same pressures of bodily shame that have been handed down to us generation after generation.

I read another thread on Mumsnet earlier where a poster said her own daughters had called her a 'slut'. Frankly, I'd be worrying way more about why young women are using that word at all than whether their shorts are 'too' short.

The above sentence was meant to read; "I mean, if men can get all horny over a woman showing NO flesh then perhaps we should all be UNCOVERED from head to toe all the time, right?'

YANBU. I'm working at a University campus this week and I'm 😳at what some young women are walking around in. At 13 I would be horrified. I'm no prude and am only early 30's but what on earth has happened in the past 5-10 years? Instagram has been very, very bad for young girls. On one hand I admire their confidence, I'm seeing girls of all shapes and sizes wearing shorts like that and pastel leggings with the outline of their vag and arse on full display - there's no way my friends and I would have felt able to do that regardless of our size, but on the other hand I find it a bit depressing that the sexualisation of girls seems to be getting worse and worse, despite feminist gains in other areas.

I'm hoping that by the time my daughter is 13 (six years or so) there will have been a backlash against this trashy trend. This insidious social media psyop that wearing revealing clothes is somehow "empowering" is bullshit anti-feminism IMO.

Because it is, indeed, MEN who 'can't control' themselves why should women change our habits and choices if our clothing makes not a snot of difference to the amount of violence and aggression metered out to us by males?

The operative word there is “women”, we’re talking about children here - 12 and 13 year old girls. As a woman I can make an informed choice about what I wear, I can get myself out of tricky or threatening situations caused by those predatory men - I know what they look like, how they operate. My 12 year old daughter doesn’t, it’s not unreasonable to curb her clothing choices while she learns.

No, I think its fine to require everyone above toddler age to keep their arse and genitals hidden.

@Jellycatspyjamas well, yeah, as the parent, you can obviously police your daughter's clothing choices so are you gonna chuck out the Nike Pros?