Thursday, April 17, 2008

Adolescent Logic

You wear a low cut shirt to school. You draw two big eyes on your chest, looking down towards your cleavage. Right below the eyes, you write "LOOK". At this point I want to make sure it's clear that I'm talking about one of the female students at my high school, and not myself. Ok, low cut, big eyes, "LOOK" on your chest. So what do you do when one of the teenage boys actually looks? Well, if you are an adolescent you get all offended and start yelling about being sexually harassed. You demand the boy get suspended, you demand justice. Yup. Actually happened. Go figure.

7 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

Unfortunately, it's not just (chronological) teenagers. True, it's less prevalent in the world of education where we work, but you know there are businesswomen who wear tight suits with short skirts and low-cut blouses which visually attract anyone's eyes to their cleavage -- then they make a fuss about how their male collegues don't respect them as equal professionals. Well, duh. If a businessman ran around in a bi-colored codpiece which attracted the eye to his groin and then hollered about how women saw him as a sex symbol, he'd be laughed out of a job. But women do this kind of thing all the time; they dress in a way that says "think sex" and then they have a hissy fit when some men think of them as sex objects.
Now, I'm not saying that harrassment is justified -- it never is. But I don't think it's justifiable to send one message and then holler when you don't get a different one.
Yeah, I can say this because I'm a woman. You can't without getting yourself in trouble.
But don't go buying any bi-colored codpieces either, okay?

Max Sartin said...

Teens do it a lot, and not always in a sexual way. How many times have we heard the kid with the weird haircut or crazy clothes whine "but they keep LOOKING at me!" Either way they don't get the irony of dressing for attention and then calling foul when they get it...

Max Sartin said...

Oh, my codpiece is actually tri-colored, and I was planning on bringing it down to Moab in June...

A Paperback Writer said...

No problem. You can wear it while I'm off on the OTHER side of the river, looking at petroglyphs....
And since I don't exactly frequent "adult" clothing stores, I'm not sure where one would buy a codpiece (except on ebay -- you can buy anything on ebay). Wouldn't it be great fun to walk into the Blue Boutique and ask if they carry them?

Max Sartin said...

Yeah, well, maybe I'll just leave it home. It would be really hard to replace, although I have to agree it would be fun to see their faces at Blue Boutique when asked if they have them. Only problem is that they just might, then I might feel obligated to buy the thing....

Anonymous said...

Frankie Says...
Yeah, it's true, in the Corporate world it happens all the time.. Even had it happen to me, some girl working for us with a license plate frame that says "see me on Utahbikiniteam.com" and as I walk past her wearing a bright dress with reds and oranges on it I say "that's a colorful dress." The hippocritical bitch says "I don't like it when a comment like that is said to me from somebody I don't know that well, I feel offended, now shoo." Yes, this bikini model told me to 'shoo' simply because I said her dress was colorful... I could have gone off on her at this point, but instead I took the safe road since the only witness there was one of her close 'high maintenance' friends. I mentioned it to my manager, then moved on. The sad thing I have noticed is that adolescense doesn't go away, these people grow up to be in the same cliques, and have the same attitudes as they did in high school.... Once again this proves the old proverb -
The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Max Sartin said...

Let me get this straight. She will parade in front of hundreds of oogling men in a bikini with no problem, but when someone who works with her says "Nice Dress" she gets offended? Now. just to be clear, you didn't say anything like "Nice colorful dress, I like the way it clings to your firm buttocks, may I touch them?" You are absolutely positive all you said was "colorful dress"? That's the problem, they are so self engrossed that when you say "colorful dress" they hear all the rest. Just like the young women (in the next post) that stopped in the middle of the road and had no idea why that would upset the people behind them. After all, the earth does not revolve around the sun, it revolves around them......