M&S calls young girls 'things'

[lcakethereforeIam]

This isn't just any misogyny, this is...

https://archive.ph/6XLUT

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/03/ms-trans-row-advertising-girls-first-bras-for-young-things/

Eta link

This is from the Cambridge University Dictionary:

used after an adjective to refer to a person or animal with love or sympathy:
The poor things were kept in small cages without room to move.
[ as form of address ] I can't believe you won - you lucky thing!

The website pretty young thing has been around for years and Michael Jackson sang a song of the same name. I think they were trying to be clever and it’s not worked well.

this.

It is just one more proverbial stick. I have this conversation with a friend who has a daughter with a transgender identity quite often. Who wants to be a girl at the moment with all the confusing messaging they get? It is relentless. From news, from any social media, any show or movie, school, you name it.

The phrase doesn’t work for the purpose M&S attempted to use it. And added to what these children are facing, it was a false step.

I was trying to think of an equivalent for boys and I remember my friend and I laughing our heads off that her brother had to get a sports jock strap and he was really embarrassed. But then most of the laughing was the delight that, for once, boys had something to feel awkward about their anatomy. Because getting bras was scary, made me feel extremely young and naive and it was deeply personal. The opposite of fearless young thing. A marketing slogan to make me feel even worse.

Nowdays, of course, I wouldn't give two hoots getting a bra. In fact I am fearless. And because I have noticed I appear to be a belittled commodity by certain advertisers, the word ‘thing’ does seem apt. So ‘for fearless, middle-aged, things’ is more truthful but still not a good way to attract customers.

I commented on another thread that my initial image brought to mind was of seedy music execs sleezing over all the 'young things' in days gone by.
Whether it was done to avoid sexed language or not (it's still sexed imo as I can't think of when a boy might be labelled in such a way ) it still conjures up for me imagery that is uncomfortable.

Old-fashioned (20s to 50s) rather patronising phrase for young girls. If M&S thinks they are being gender neutral with this phrase, they are wrong - it only ever applied to young girls.
Definitely misogynistic.

It's never a good look to refer to females of any age as things....

You've never used the phrase "you lucky thing" or "you poor thing"?

I think the term has always been used to dehumanise.

’You poor thing’ to me signifies that the person you are talking to is a creature worthy of pity, in a such a hopeless state to be almost unhuman. Sure, we use it for people. I have also used the exact same words for animals, probably just as often.

A man calling a female a pretty thing, that is of course dehumanising. It is objectifying. And sure, people use it for little girls too. But when you think about it, is that because the first people who used it used it to position that child as a toy or something they owned? And of course, it was a valuable thing to have a pretty girl. Did it creep into language and people haven’t considered where it came from?

Young people wanting to act in ways that shed their responsibilities for a time being could be said to be using the term to detach themselves from their very human responsibilities and consequences.

Maybe royalcorgi was on to something though but not quite there. Maybe it is not just an English as a first language thing. Maybe it is a British cultural thing. I, personally as someone not born here, have only vague knowledge of the bright young things reference. I would expect the term ‘thing’s usage predates that in literature though. And I cannot see its origins being anything but dehumanising, even when affectionately used and not used with a sense of harm.

Personally, I think the reason they used it is because most of us have heard of it - you lucky thing, you poor thing.

And someone in their marketing team thought it was the best choice of word to describe a teenage girl buying a bra, especially by adding the word fearless.

To me, arriving at 'fearless thing'. would indicate one hell of a journey in trying to find the correct wording.

Strong girl, young woman, powerful lass. They all sound a bit shit. But that's because buying a first bra is not an indication of your bloody personality. So it sounds a bit wank to attribute having breasts with being brave.

And I bet you any money there was a discussion around gendered language, too. And whether to be specific or not.

And maybe, possibly, the un-gendered nature of the word thing covered that base too.

it looks to me like the product of a massively tortured series of meetings and suggestions, which is why it has come out bearing no actual resemblance to teenage girls buying bras. And why everyone has an opinion about what it really means.

DrizzleMySwizzle · Yesterday 18:50

Snowypeaks · Yesterday 18:34
I don't get this at all.
Isn't "bright young things" a well known
phrase? That's how I would have read it.

same

This. Isn’t there a very popular fashion brand called Pretty Little Thing? Haven’t seen any complaints about that (which I think is far worse)
Is it because it’s about bras and another opportunity to have a go at trans kids?

I think so.

I think it might be a more English phrase, now that you mention it, Helle. Can't really hear it as a Scottish phrase.

That all sounds about right, @Datun . It isn't an offensive slogan, as such. It is just a deeply unsuccessful one, starting with a weak idea and progressively more tortured as it was hammered through a sequence of unsuccessful committee meetings, with the preoccupation about avoiding gender terms being just one of several factors contributing to the general rubbishness of the eventual outcome.

I do think breasts are a prime area where this kind of tortured thinking can gain a purchase. Society so aggressively prevents breasts from being what they are. They are the hook (so to speak!) for so many pieces of symbolic meaning, which latch on to them (so to speak!) to the cost (ouch!) of their bearers.
Sex, nurture, womanhood: what a weight for two little curves of flesh to be dragged down by, Which is why they need adequate support. Which is why a great slogan would focus on making young bodies comfortable through such prosaic qualities as being well measured and well made.

Pretty Little Thing - I don’t particularly like the brand name but I assumed it meant the clothes items that were being sold.

This was my thought too.

I'd have been tempted to give M&S the benefit of the doubt (I'm familiar with the phrase 'bright young things' which seems a little dated for the demographic likely to be buying a child her first bra) if it was just coming out of the blue, but it isn't.

Yes, I agree.

Breasts are relentlessly sexualised. So how to get a girl, and probably her mum, to shop in your store, on the basis of the teenage girls breasts has to be a bit of a marketing minefield.

The thing is, I'm not sure they have to market it that deeply. I should imagine it's the number one choice for most mums and teenage girls.

A picture of a young girl, possibly two girls smiling, and the words first bras, available in sizes blah blah blah, would probably do the trick without all the angst.

This is fairly appalling. However:

1. I don't necessarily find the phrase '.... young things' (Sweet Young Things, Brave Young Things, etc) dehumanising, it's been in ironic use for over a century now. Usually meant to poke gentle fun at said sweet young things by an older generation. However, I think it was a massive misjudgement for the phrase to be used about literal girls, minors. It can very easily be taken the wrong way. Perhaps I'm being way too generous here and that M&S has deliberately deployed a genderless, sexless phrase in order to pander to current en vogue trends, and will hide behind plausible deniability - 'it's just a phrase! Look, Evelyn Waugh used it!"
2. Unlike the Gbeebies presenter who made a crack about 'confused boys' I honestly don't think this is why M&S may have used this phrase. I don't think they're using neutral language to make boys and men 'feel better', I think this advert is targeting young women and girls who need a bra ('first bra' after all) some of whom they know will be 'identifying' as gender neutral or trans-masc or fluid or whatever. So I think M&S will try to defend this as coming from a desire not to upset or offend girls, rather than 'confused boys'.

I mean, it sucks. It's a badly thought out advert. I just don't think this particular one is aimed at including gender-befuddled males.

I like gender befuddled. I think it should be adopted officially.

It could be used across-the-board.

How's your Ethan? Still gender befuddled?

Quiz for film fans! Which one of the following is not a tag line from the film trailer of Bright Young Things?:

The Glamour
The Scandal
The Outrage
Sex
Gossip
Celebrity
Some things never go out of style
My first bra

Do mothers feel pressure to buy bras for their daughters as a kind of 'rite of passage' thing? And do a lot of girls end up wearing bras before they need them? (I never had a daughter so it is terra incognita for me).

If so, could this be part of the reason why M&S has (in this advert) promoted them in such a meaningless way?
I mean, if bras are bought in order to somehow acknowledge a transition from girl-child to young woman, then they have to be advertised with a whole load of waffly stuff that touches on that transition. If, on the other hand, girls/mothers only considered a first bra for reasons of bodily comfort, then they could be advertised on the basis of their functional properties.
Speaking as someone who only has titchy breasts it took me decades to realise that for the most part I didn't need a bra. I think I started wearing them for the wrong reasons.
How do mums of daughters feel about this? Is there space for girls and mums to talk about what a bra is really for, in practical terms, and whether one is actually needed?
For young girls who are developing quite large breasts it will be really important early on to be able to talk about getting proper support from the bra, to avoid pain and postural problems -- so it would be good to see advertising that touched on this. And for other girls it might be really important to be able to say "Nah, don't bother for a bit. Who cares if the shape of your nipples is vaguely visible through your T-shirt." Wish my mum had said that to me.

Cuture war nonsense from the usual suspects in the Telegraph. Do we have to start a campaign against PrettyLittleThing because we are all so offended?

No because I think thats the clothes items they are talking about. Which are indeed things. Although I would disagree on the pretty, a lot are very little.

Thing is definitely referring to the wearer of the clothes.