A culture that produces highly sexualized firefighter and police officer costumes for little girls ...
or a culture that so sexualizes little girls that the girls' faces have to be blurred out, even when they are modestly dressed, so that grown men don't have "bad thoughts?"
I find the second far more disturbing, far more perverse.
ReplyDeleteBecause it does so not simply for "fun" (which is a yea-to-life attitude) but presumably out of reasons of ideology - piety, goodness, somehow thinking that this is "God's will." Hashem wants us to blot out little girls' faces, because it's inappropriate for a "bas melech" to be seen in public like that. Even without the "stumbling block for men" idea, that in itself is really, truly sick. A "paper burqa," as I once heard someone describe it.
The other thing is that really MIshpacha Magazine (or whoever put this out) probably doesn't honestly believe in it. They do it because this has become the "frum" standard, and if they want to sell magazines to the charedi world, they simply can't put in photos of the female face. Also highlights the extent to which "norms" and "taboos" are ultimately what drives the frum psyche - not halacha.
I don't know where the second ad is from. I found it online, and it's pretty old. The first picture is current. It was taken by a woman who was looking for costumes for her daughter. She complained to the store selling it, and the costumes were pulled from the shelves.
DeleteWhich is yet another example of how the non-frum world is not nearly as morally bankrupt as some frum people would like to believe. Some company thought that producing the costumes was a good idea, but the larger public found it unacceptable.
She might have been an evangelical, mightn't she?
DeleteSee the following by someone who, based on her name, is a secular Jew:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/09/dress_codes_and_the_fingertip_rule_schools_should_not_be_telling_girls_that.html
I wouldn't even call the first set "highly sexualized". They're a bit silly (because no real service professional dresses anything like them) but hardly risque. Little girls do wear short sleeves and short skirts and that's perfectly fine.
ReplyDeleteThey're the kiddie version of the "sexy [insert noun]" costumes for adults.
DeleteWhen it comes to extremists, you find the extreme right and extreme left are very similar.
ReplyDelete