I think so, but apparently some people disagree. Here are excerpts from the story at Scary Mommy:
It all started when [Matt] Austin posted a totally innocuous photo with his two daughters before their [high school homecoming] dance — they’re wearing pretty normal dresses and heels for this day and age, and their dad is beaming with pride. He captioned the photo, “My daughters look a little too good on homecoming night. Believe it or not, they’re even more beautiful on the inside.”So sweet.The response, though, was surprising, as dozens of comments rolled in from people who thought the girls looked inappropriate.“Those outfits are not prom appropriate, those are what women wear to the club when they're looking for some action. ... So sad that parents send their young ladies out with everything showing,” wrote one.“I don’t think I’d be dressed like that around my father,” another wrote. “Those girls are too young to be dressing provocatively they should have respect for themselves.”Austin’s response came in hot, and he left no prisoners."One thing that has always pissed me off as a father of girls is when people say things like 'oh these girls need to dress so they don't distract the boys' or even worse 'they're dressing in a way in which they're asking for it’,” he begins.“Let’s get something clear: It’s not my daughter’s job to make sure your son is focused in school. Also not her job to dress hideous enough to where your son doesn’t assault her. It’s your job to not raise a pervert with no self-control."While his first emotion was definitely “anger,” he also kept his sense of humor about the whole thing.“Let’s be clear — those are not the outfits that I’d choose for my daughters to leave the house. If it were up to me, it would be 24/7 Snuggies,” he joked.“But if I start dictating what my daughters wear, it’s going to teach them three things,” he continued. “A: they’ll start to hate me for arbitrary rules, B, they’ll start to lie to me, or C, which is even worse: that it’s OK for a man to tell them what to wear because they look too good. And that ain't happening, Karen."
The story continues at the link, including the overwhelmingly positive public responses to his comments, and his TikTok followup video. (Note: the embedded photo above has been cropped for size).
Related:
Ukrainian prom photos embedded at Divertimento #172
and one of my all-time favorite cartoons, reposted from 2017:
Wearing a turtleneck is like getting strangled by a really weak guy all day. - Mitch Hedberg
ReplyDeleteExcellent dad.
ReplyDeleteModern father abdicating his responsibilities to his daughters to be hip. Nothing is empowering about dressing like a prostitute.
ReplyDeleteI chaperoned a middle school dance last night, and there were girls dressed like that, and some of them were twerking to the delight of nearly all the kids.
ReplyDeletePretty simple: If you want to be seen as a sex object, dress like a sex object. I'm not saying that's right or wrong. Just be honest about it. The father may be in a difficult position. He's damned if he has an honest conversation about young men/boys and sex, and damned if doesn't. I asked my wife what she thought of the photo. Her response was, "Those girls wanna get laid." Okay, so how do we feel about prom becoming an orgy? Is that a bad idea? I'm more and more convinced that adults, especially fathers, are without any real authority. There again, is that good? Maybe children should raise themselves on screen time, with social media becoming the de facto parent--the authority? I'm not anti-sex. But, it's damned naive to think women/girls can dress in the most provocative possible way and not provoke. The idea that young, hormone charged men/boys should somehow be taught to short-circuit a few million years of evolution is a foolish proposition. In years past, there was an unwritten social contract, with wide variability, culture to culture, and era to era: Men would restrain their impulses and women would limit sexual signaling. This seems like common sense, biology-wise. Then again, in states with legal abortion and readily accessible treatment for STDs, maybe full-tilt sexual experimentation should be fully supported in high school. Is that the feminist position? Or that women/girls can and should experiment, but magically/unilaterally choreograph the entire "transaction." When sexual availability becomes a fashion statement, and every girl feels compelled to follow the trend, whether they're sexually motivated or not, how's that supportive of girls? It strikes me as ideology taking us down another rabbit hole.
ReplyDeleteThat was quite the thing you wrote. Incredibly judgmental, projecting your views and morals onto others. Assuming so much yet you know so little. All because two young women wore dresses.
DeletePerhaps you care to enlighten us as to the exact threshold of skirt length that assures that proms do not become orgies and states with basic healthcare don't become teenage sex zones? I'll admit, I see less news than I used to, so I must have missed the point where that all started happening. Is there also a specific proportion of skin that can be covered to prevent men from becoming an uncontrollable rapacious, yet morally justified horde?
DeleteI lost count of the formal an informal fallacies, so I'm just going to chalk the above post up to conservative rape-culture apologetics and a longing for a mythological American sitcom culture where only bad girls suffer consequences, but the episode ends before they try to get basic healthcare.
Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me as to how you'd defend your position if someone argued that girls (or boys) need not wear anything at all to a high school dance. It seems to me you're arguing that there is no possible way to set a standard. Any standard being a trap.
DeleteYour thinking is a wee bit binary. Somewhere between a rapacious horde and a covey of chaste choirboys, there's a lot of ground. Ground where, in the real world, sexuality is "negotiated."
As with the right wing, who deny biological realities due to ideology (the climate crisis being inconvenient for markets, capitalism, fundamentalism), on the left we have identity ideology, specifically the kind of feminism that promotes notions of male-female biological equivalency. Of course biology cannot be erased with ideology even as we may wrestle with its challenges.
Lest you think I'm simply making an appeal to nature argument: There's a difference between saying that any transgression can be justified on a biological basis vs saying that behavior has a biological dimension which ought to be honored.
The charge of "rape-culture apologetics" is pretty tired by now. Obviously nothing I've said is a defense of rape. Better to make real arguments, as opposed to the rape apologist insult. Misandry is another over used term. It signals to the tribe, but doesn't persuade.
All of this is being offered by a life-long "class reductionist," Bernie Democrat. My 42 year old daughter is similarly disposed. A progressive who drinks little to none of the academia-speak Kool-Aid version of gender politics. I raised a strong girl, as opposed to a girl fed on delusions of an ideologically rendered sexual safety net.
*Paragraph 5, "misogyny" is the word I was going for. The word "misandry" is actually underused, IMO.
DeleteAll the sexulisation is in Crowboy's head. Somehow he looks at children and thinks they're sexual. Then he gets angry about it.
DeleteThere isn't a single item of clothing that someone isn't going to get hot and bothered about. We trust most people to act in a responsible manner, regardless.
Sexualising children starts in the head, not their wardrobe.
Well, without getting too graphic, Crowboy remembers his first sexual experiences at 16, with his 16 year old girlfriend. Perhaps that was the one and only time in history that "children" had sex? Okay, I'm definitely perverted for thinking a high school girl might be a sexual being, navigating a complex issue. I hear sirens. How do the police know about this?
DeleteYup, I'd never argue that girls/women cannot be sexual predators. Different subject.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting and thought-provoking discussion thread so far (which is one reason I like to post topics like this one). I am recurrently impressed by the thinking and eloquence of many of the readers here.
ReplyDeleteAnd kudos to all for remaining civil while being vehement, and for avoiding the ad hominem attacks that characterize so many other internet threads.
I appreciate the forum, as I acknowledge and appreciate your courage. These are "third rail" subjects. My local experiences with woke cancellation culture, etc., have been an education. No regrets.
DeleteThere is only one person responsible for your behavior, whether this behavior is how you dress, or how you treat people based on how they are dressed.
ReplyDeleteAt no time in history has there been a culture or society where the individual is the absolute arbiter of behavior, to include modes of dress. Since we are interdependent, absolute individualism is not a sound aspiration. Kant explored this territory exhaustively; much can be boiled-down to the Categorical Imperative.
DeleteJohn Donne:
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
Well said, Crowboy. And the problem in this modern world is that the bells one hears are not just from the local parish church - we can hear the bells from across the country and around the world. It's exhausting.
DeleteYou are still responsible for your behavior regardless of how your society judges it. Personal responsibility for one's actions is not an isolationist policy.
DeleteVery different concept. To say we are responsible (and this can mean many things) and to say we are the "ONLY ONE" responsible are not equivalent assertions.
DeleteI would say that some of the issue is what the fashion industry and stores are selling for these young women. I imagine that the dresses in the picture were bought off the rack, and not tailored to be this short.
ReplyDeleteI saw this meme at the time, comparing today's homecoming dresses to swimsuits of the '40s. https://www.reddit.com/r/terriblefacebookmemes/comments/y5gmqu/need_i_say_more/
I also noticed how short the dresses were in pictures from my local high school's homecoming dance and also my son's girlfriend's dress. In contrast, the dresses for our prom in May were mostly long styles, although some had very high slits which showed a lot of leg. I guess prom is supposed to be a more formal event, but it would make more sense to me to wear the short dress at the end of May and a longer dress in October. Maybe there's a reason nobody asks me for fashion advice.
I might be as offended or more offended by the way young men are wearing skinny pants that are too short with no socks for formal dances.
Re changing fashion for swimsuits, check out this style from your grandmother's time:
Deletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2010/09/bathing-suit-1916.html