A Response To A Mother's Note To Teenage Girls

I haven't blogged in such a long time, but there is an article going around Facebook that made me pick up my metaphorical pen again. Here are my thoughts.

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I read a blog post recently, written by a kind and well-meaning mother. She tries to address the issue of modesty on social media sites. Her perspective was one of a mother looking out for her teenage sons' best interest. While I applaud any parent who will take the time to monitor what their kids are doing online, many of the points made in this article offended me so much that I had to take a moment away from the computer to gather my thoughts into a response.

I will start with this: I am not advocating young people, male or female, to post compromising pictures of themselves online. We should all be very careful what we post on social media sites because you never know who will see it.  With that being said, here are my main problems with the blog post that I read.

1. Is a woman's body a body or a trap for men?

The blog post I read is addressed to teenage girls that the writer's sons know online. It talked about teenage girls posting pictures of themselves in PJs (sans a bra) or wrapped only in a towel.  Not only that, but these girls apparently were standing in ways meant to be seductive, or sexy; the “extra-arched back" and "sultry pout" being among these girls offenses.

Here's the problem with this, though.  Putting the blame solely on a female who shows her body or stands a certain way or makes a particular facial expression is wrong.  Seeing a woman in one of these positions and thinking,  “she has done something wrong”, “she should be ashamed” or “she should change her behavior” is a symptom of a larger problem.  

This just reinforces the idea that a woman should be ashamed of her body. That she constantly has to be ultra aware of where she places her hand, or how she leans over, or if she is biting her lips because suddenly a woman isn't just a person, she is a thing, a weapon, a temptation.

It doesn't matter that she is just living in the body given to her. No, she needs to be careful, be wise, be cautious, because her body isn't just a body, it is a sex symbol. And with this you have taken the female's humanity away from her.

I am not saying that these young women didn't purposefully pose in ways that made them feel sexy. In fact, I am sure many of them did. But were the photos explicit? Were they sent to the teenage boys with a written message to come and get some? No. Sometimes a girl wants to look and feel attractive. This doesn't mean that you get to shame her for it.

2. The blame game

No matter what you think of young ladies posting pictures of themselves online and how much is too much or too little to post, I think we need to take a step back and understand the real question here, who is at fault for what?

The mom in this article is concerned because her teenage boys see these pictures and she doesn't want them to have these images in their minds. Okay... why? Because the image of a girl in her PJ’s without a bra is an evil, in and of itself? Or because of what young guys think of when they see these pictures? I'd have to go with the second one.

A young guy sees a picture of a girl and finds it sexy or attractive and all of a sudden his mind goes somewhere else. I won't go into detail about where his mind goes... we all know. But here's the thing. It is not the girl thinking these lustful thoughts. She did not force him to objectify her or think of her in that way.

It is the guy in this scenario who has taken things too far. It is the guy who doesn't have control over his thoughts and maybe his eventual actions, but it is the girl who gets blamed!

The mother in the article even asks the question, "You don’t want our boys to only think of you in this sexual way, do you?" No, they probably don't. But apparently a female is an object and a male is no more than an animal completely devoid of self-control.

If you put a piece of meat in front of a lion it will devour it. If you put a picture of a scantily clad girl in front of a guy he must fantasize about what he wants to do with said girl. And with this you have taken the male's humanity away from him.

Why didn't this mom write a blog about teaching her teenage boys to not think of women as objects? Teach them to not relate everything to sex? Can these guys not handle that? No, I am sure they can. Stop molding our young men into people who have no control over their thoughts and actions.

In one of her closing paragraphs this mom says, "We are hoping to raise men with a strong moral compass, and men of integrity don’t linger over pictures of scantily clad high-school girls." So, then teach them to not! Because it doesn't matter how many girls you block on social media sites you are going to find scantily clad females posing in sexy ways everywhere. So teach your young men to see women as people, not things.

3) Double standards

The really ironic thing about this article is that it had several pictures of this mother's teenage boys in nothing but a swimsuit posing on the beach, which had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Were they scantily clad? Yes.

Were they posing seductively? I don't know, how does a man pose seductively?  Not by pushing out his hip or making pouty faces like a girl. Maybe he does it by showing his muscles and looking into the camera sternly? This was exactly what these guys were doing.

And honestly, I saw nothing wrong with these pictures, and neither did the mom because even after someone pointed this out she didn't take the pictures down, she just made a second post with the same article and different pictures if you'd rather read that one.  Why? Because men's bodies aren't usually seen as objects that are only there to tempt someone or fulfill someone else's desires.  Men are seen as people... That is, when they aren't seen as hormone driven animals with no self-control.