50 Shades of Oppression

This post is prompted by my fascinating Women's Studies class and this weeks topic of sexual violence against women - and the desensitization of our nation. Of course, 50 Shades of Grey, which released this past Valentine's Day, was included in the question prompt.

When my daughter was 5 years old, the fashion industry made a change in the clothing offered for young girls.

Suddenly the words “princess” or “juicy” were splashed across the ass of little girls everywhere. The waistband of pants took a turn south, barely riding above the pubic area. Shirts shortened, giving way to the bare midriff and schools implemented stronger dress code policies.

As a mother, I was horrified and angry that not only was the fashion industry introducing theses changes in clothing to barely older than toddler age girls, but that people were actually dressing their daughters “like a 20 year old.” (Bad Feminist, Careless Language of Sexual Violence, Page 128). A young child in provocative clothing.

I have watched the progression of our society's return to overt sexualizing our girls for 19 years. This is the part of feminism I don’t understand and probably in line with Prosecuting Attorney Anne Munche's Unnamed Conspirator theory. As a feminist, we are to explore and find power in our sexuality; yet, we allow society (men), the entertainment industry (men), to sway us into accepting what is obviously (we are so blind) chains and control, disrespect, of the female body, brain and worth - all in the name of this so called power. It is the lie of the unnamed conspirator. When talking about “Careless Language,” the meaning extends past our verbal use of sexually desensitizing words and into our daily actions. Of course, if we live in a society, where we choose to dress our young children and pre-pubescent adolescents in a way that encourages and begs for older boys and men to look at their asses, where we encourage and foster the idea within their own minds that their bodies and their person are there to find attention, then it is not so far a step to include a change in the words we use about sexuality, to degrade the overall respect of females as a human being of worth.

And since the movie was brought up in the prompt, the fact that the erotic novel (I'm not even sure "erotic" is strong enough word for this piece of work), 50 Shades, was made into a main stream major motion picture, to which 6 theater screens were devoted on Valentine’s Day – the day lovers are suppose to show love, hopefully respect for their partners (because apparently we can’t show that the other 364 days a year), and have sex together (yea!) – is a blatant indication that we have definitely allowed the horror of trafficking female bodies to be glossed over and become a mainstream acceptable idea.