Warning: This post may be a trigger for those who have experienced abuse.
by CATHERINE MANNING
As a kid, I owned several pairs of shorts. I loved wearing them. They were cool in summer and I could jump on my trampoline, ride my bike, and climb trees as freely as I wished.
I’m pretty sure my (rather conservative) mother who bought them for me didn’t think anyone would label me ‘trampy’ and, back then, the thought that I could be “trampy” never crossed my mind.
When I was ten, all that changed. I was invited alone by my friend’s father into his centerfold-clad shed. He turned to me and said, “You look sexy in those shorts” right before he molested me.
Was this his rationale? Did I look like a ten-year-old tramp? Could wearing short shorts give an impression that I was sexually precocious or available; could they mean that I should have expected advances? After all, my shorts were short. My long, tanned legs were exposed. And I did go in there with him.
I thought for so many years that my shorts and I were to blame. I also held my mother, the stores that sold shorts for girls and a sex-focused culture responsible for my abuse.
As an activist campaigning for the protection of children from exposure to pornographic material, I worked alongside many who shared this view that the fact of girls dressing like women was asking for trouble. Yet as I talked the talk, I began to dig deeper and understand what I was actually saying.
Top Comments
Being concerned about the oversexualisation of children isn't the same issue as protecting them from predators. Not wanting your children to be tramps is more about not wanting them to be over exposed to sexual steriotypes and not wanting them to have an image of what's sexy in their head when really should be worrying about climbing tress. So let them wear short shorts but let's not put them in full make-up with sexy 'training bras' while doing so. None of this is about making them less or more attractive to a predator, it's about not turning our children into sexual beings too early.
Thankyou Catherine for saying that much more eloquently than I ever could.