A Tremor of Modesty and Restraint

It seems to me that the major marketers might be missing something.  Yes, they are hell-bent on age-compression, but I'm sensing a change in consumer attitudes.  What follows are a list of blog posts, web sites, and reports that indicate an attitude of Enough With Sexy Stuff for Six Year Olds! (and more)

Here's my list, in no particular order

• The push-back against the Bratz line of dolls, of which this, this, this and this are but four examples.
• The website, Modesty Zone and the blog, Modestly Yours
• The market survey by Synovate that reported "85 percent of moms are “tired of the sexpot dolls and characters” in stores."
• The "Moms for Modesty" campaign
• The Dressing with Dignity blog by Colleen Hammond
• Cut to the Chaste, by Dawn Eden (June 2007)
• The "Pure Fashion" phenomenon, which I believe began as a Catholic phenomenon and now has generalized--you can see a show on YouTube
• The American Psychological Association's 2007 report on The Sexualization of Girls
• The 2006 book Packaging Girlhood (and the companion  website and blog)
  
• The 2005 documentary A Modest Revolution
• The 2007 book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both  --review here
• The 2007 book, Girls Gone Mild (with companion website)
• The founding of True Love Revolution at Harvard in 2007, supporting chastity and abstinence from sexual relations until marriage.
• Articles like Ashley Herzog's

Unfortunately, many college women have been brainwashed by a popular culture that embraces a combination of girl-power feminism and the Playboy philosophy. They believe that sex is just for fun and casual hook-ups have no emotional consequences. They believe they are just like men.

But, if the article in my school’s paper is any indication, others are catching on to the truth: the hook-up culture is more oppressive than traditional morality ever was.

• Camille Paglia announcing that hooking up isn't in girls' best interest

I'm of the pro-sex wing of feminism, whose patron saint is Madonna, all right, so I'm not coming from a conservative perspective here, but I do feel that this "hooking up" culture that's going on on campuses where girls just have sort of casual, random sex with guys and never see them again. I mean, I think that is kind of, over the long run, kind of degrading for women, OK? They're playing a male game, and I don't think they understand the psychological consequences.

• A blog on the hook-up phenomenon, in which the blogger wonders about the other side: couples on campus

Recent media puts a lot of focus on the hooking up culture (and clearly, I’m putting a lot of focus on it in this blog), but we rarely hear about this serious relationship culture.  And I guess I can see why this isn’t of particular interest to the media. Serious relationships aren’t a new thing, and especially not to young adults/adults. But in a society where it has become so prevalent to casually hook up, why are these people so eager to couple up? Shouldn’t we assume from the media’s opinion of our generation that we should only want to be “sowing our wild oats” now and waiting until we are older to settle down?’

I think that something that the media is missing is that many college students are in fact looking for this serious relationship that some of our peers find, but being unable to attain it ourselves, we are forced into this drunk Saturday night cycle of hooking up. I’m not saying that everyone is looking for a relationship and fall back on hooking up; some people are just looking for sexual pleasure. But a survey of many college girls (it’s not an extensive survey) I know gives me the impression that they would like to have a relationship.

• Natalie Knott's article from the Whitman college site, on reservations about the hookup culture

So while I do proscribe to the right of women to explore their sexual identity with the same freedom that men have traditionally been allowed, I wonder if somehow my generation has shot ourselves in the foot with our current interpretation of “sexual exploration.” I’m specifically addressing the new idea of “hook up” culture.

• Jack Grimes' article at the Tufts college site, also expressing reservations about the hookup culture:

The hook-up culture is very deceptive. Hooking-up promises to be liberating and strengthening. Yet people find themselves needing more and more 'liquid courage' to even make the first move. Hooking-up promises fun and fulfillment and no regrets, but when morning comes it delivers the 'walk of shame.' The hook-up culture has tricked us. It has led us to believe that our emotions are disconnected from our bodies, that love is divorced from sex.

What can we do about it? Well, a culture only lasts as long as people are willing to live it. If we refuse to believe its false promises, then we can build a new culture that says sex is just too good to be thrown around. We can bring back some middle ground between random hook-ups and being joined-at-the-hip. We can bring dating back to life.

• Dating or hook-up culture at Washington University?  It depends on who you talk to.
• Take Back the Date from the Independent Women's Forum. This seems not to be a grass-roots movement (or campus-rooted movement) but an idea from the IWF.
• Christian Science Monitor article 2005: Modest and chic?
• Modesty movement: empowering or repressive? (2005)
• Bootylicious Backlash (2006)
• A secular mom's take on the modesty movement (2006)
• A secular mom: dignity not modesty (2006)
• Modesty as a virtue, reflected in fashion
• Resisting Raunch Culture that Objectifies Girls (2007)
• Exploited or Empowered?

 

Comments

[Erik]

Bratz dolls... they have a movie coming out this summer, and it looks awful, the very definition of stereotypical teen girl movie.

[Ken]

You think Bratz & Baby Bratz are bad -- have you seen their "Petz" line?

I did -- a Petz fox, in a display about a year ago. Imagine a plushie (stuffed toy animal) foxie, styled and accessorized just like a Bratz, posed as "presenting", i.e. forequarters low, hindquarters high, hind feet braced well apart, and tail hiked up out of the way.

My out-loud reaction was "That is the SKANKIEST vixen I have ever seen." (And with years in-country in furry fandom, I have seen a LOT of skank.)

[Sherry (Redbud)]

What a great list. I am so sick of the in-your-face, oversexed culture. I hope the negative reactions to all this causes some positive change. I do have to wonder about all the parents who bought the Bratz dolls to begin with.