to think the girls were inappropriately dressed?

Lamb dressed as mutton!

Elegran

I think a lot of girls don't realise that sexy and attractive doesn't have to mean half naked and that wearing clothes that are too skimpy and revealing suggests that you think that your body is all you have to offer. I know that in the 60's we were wearing impossibly short skirts, but we weren't combining them with G strings! In fact my friend used to wear two pairs of pants and tights under hers.

I followed a young woman yesterday who was a beautiful example. She had very good legs, nicely tanned. She was wearing denim shorts - not too tight and just long enough to cover her buttocks, but you knew there was a nicely shaped behind underneath them. The effect was nicely alluring without being unpleasantly revealing.

Normal - yes, Wise - well maybe not. I used to wear mini skirts etc. But I did not have the first vaguest clue about the way men look at women until I was a married adult. Suspect that although very young women understand a lot more about sex these days, they do not seek to be objects of lust. They want to be attractive and fashionable. They want boys to "fancy them". This probably does not include provoking erections in males of all ages.
Men shouldn't look at women as sex objects, but I suspect testosterone will out, whether the men live in a repressive society or whether they live in a highly sexualised culture, awash with soft porn images.
Girls this age are not able to understand men or to assess risk.
I think it is irresponsible parenting to let very young girls go out in such sexualised clothes.

Now I have ceased to be concerned about 21-yr-old GD, I'm now thinking about the almost 11-yr-old. She is developing into an adolescent quite quickly and has typical adolescent dress sense.

Have to agree, in the first wave of mini skirts, if I couldn't grip my hem when standing up then skirt wasn't short enough. School uniform was a bit longer - at least when I left the house - but round the corner got rolled up at the waist before I got to school. Some things never change!

I don't think things have changed either. I was 13 or 14 myself when I got the contact lenses (they were unforgiving hard discs that hurt my eyes like crazy, but hey, the gigs were gone!), chopped a foot or so off my modest denim skirt, put on the white lipstick and the 4 coats of mascara (flour dabbed on between each one to enhance the flutter) and hit the town for the first time as a sex object. I can still remember the effect on the local men and it's a memory that'll keep me warm when I'm old(er) and cold(er). This was before tights became the norm and we wore Pretty Polly hold-ups, so I should imagine the flash of thigh as we went up the bus steps was not something my parents liked to dwell upon when they were lying awake waiting for my key in the door.

I found myself pontificating the other day about how inappropriately a local girl was dressed and then checked myself. Her shorts were no more miniscule than the purple panne velvet hotpants I wore to a local club when I was 14 and the gorgeous Marc Bolan of Tyrannosaurus Rex as was bought me a brandy and Cherry B during the break from their performance. Ah, happy hedonistic days!!

Ooh, Maggie! Marc Bolan....

I wrote a post yesterday but obviously did not push post message to respond to comments to my OP!

I agree wholeheartedly that boys/men should never assume that the appearance /clothing of girls/women gives them any 'rights' to behave inappropriately. I also do not like the term 'jail bait' but used it because I knew it would convey the specific image of young girls dressed in a way that suggests they are older.

I did wear mini skirts/hot pants/white lace up boots/makeup but I was older 15/16 rather than 12/13.

I suppose I was really questioning the responsibility of parents to educate their children about the impact of image etc.

The girls I saw were too young to be employed so someone paid for their clothes! They were meeting some others , who offered to pick them up by car at the station (this offer was refused..via mobile) so appeared that the adults they knew were OK with their appearance.

I am really not a prude but I worry about the message we (ie society) give to young women about appearance etc. They would have looked just as beautiful dressed less scantily.

I remember my grandmother telling me I looked disgusting because I wore mini skirts.
I turn a blind eye and keep my mouth shut at what my grandaughters dress themselves in now.

I know, Ana! He was so sweet as well - talked to me for around 10 minutes and was just so cute.... Sigh!

Then I was told by a former colleague a couple of years ago that she actually kissed him. I did note that it was not him doing the kissing, however.

whoops, apologies for the rights, not rites - I type too quickly sometimes and don't re-read properly.
I agree with Jess M's comments about the extent of young girls understanding and parental responsibility about clothing etc.
On another rant note - what about the going out pyjama look? That worries me much more than the poor dress sense some folks (of all ages) have. Going out pyjamas seem to be becoming a norm, and I find it hard not to be outraged and worried by the sight of teenage girls wandering off to the paper shop, or young mothers taking their children to school, whilst wearing pj's. I've wondered if it's me, that somehow I'm making associations that just aren't there, but I do feel these young women/girls are making themselves very vulnerable. See, I've done it, I've joined in the horror about the youth of today. Seriously, what do others think. I have a (liberal thinking) friend who is so outraged, she said if she ran the corner shop, she'd refuse to serve someone in their night clothes.

Why is it that these girls never seem to follow the fashion for maxi skirts and dresses?

I think there is a difference between older people saying "that's shocking going out dressed like that" i.e. transgressing social norms of decency and saying "That's risky and naive" . We'd all like men to behave themselves but alas there is a lot of unpleasant behaviour out there. Join "everyday sexism" on Twitter to get a flavour of what it is like to be a young woman these days.

Pyjamas don't bother me. I wouldn't go out to the shops in mine, but the pyjamas I've seen 'out' are quite modest – though why modesty matters is another issue. After all, aboriginal people's living in the tropics and sub-tropics usedn't to wear many clothes until modern times simply because they didn't need them for warmth.

My main (possibly only) complaint about modern dress sense (sense? Ha!) is that so much of it is so bloody awful – completely inelegant and not nice to look at. But that's just my opinion.

Someone will complain about people walking around publicly (shock! horror!) in bare feet next.

Oh wait....

I agree, jess. We shouldn't have to worry about youngsters being naive and risky but, given what human beings are like, we have to accept that it is a worry sometimes.

On the other hand, there have been several stories recently about rapes in India committed against women who werenot riskily dressed.

Conclusion:attitudes must change and authorities must crack down harder on abusers of other people.

Talking of pyjamas, my friend's son, DiL and family (4, 2 and 3 months) have recently returned from Australia and when son started work the whole family were on the station in their jim-jams to wave him off - that caused a bit of a stir on a busy platform in small village I can tell you (Hurrumph, strange Australian habits..........)

I guess sexual harassment is the biggest risk bags i.e. unwanted attention from strangers.

Or even people who aren't strangers...

In the end, I think we have to keep objecting in strong terms to people who cause sexual harassment, and to educating boys everyone in a bid to reduce the problem. Yes, I know that's an ideal, but what else can we do? I don't want to go back to the time when 'proper' girls couldn't go out without a guard chaperone, or to the situation that exists in places like Saudi Arabia.

I've never even thought about public pyjama wearing as being risky at all. I would like to refuse to serve people in their night clothes too, just because I think it's sloppy and lazy, but that's me being judgemental. Though you have to wonder - do these people actually wash before they head out of the house? Surely they don't take off their night clothes, shower and put on clean ones? Perhaps they wear their day clothes in bed? Who knows....

Some months ago a supermarket banned customers in nightclothes and a would-be customer was interviewed on BBC news. She was very indignant at being banned because, she said, she had put her best pyjamas on to go shopping. My DS first mentioned seeing people shopping and eating in cafes in pyjamas in New Jersey about ten years ago.

Iam64,!the young men wearing trousers with the crutch at the knees originated in American jails.The inmates did this to indicate to other inmates that they were available for sex.should anyone be that way inclined.I live in Spain and during the holiday period i despair for some of the young people who come out on holiday,it isn't only the skimpy clothes it is the amount of alcohol they consume.Drinks are much larger here and much stronger,so it is no surprise to see these kids being sick and falling all over the place.It is amusing to see a young woman wearing a short dress spending the evening pulling it down.I agree give the kids some freedom but warn them of the dangers because not everyone is as open minded as am.

I dont think it matters what girls wear. I remember the late 1960s when i was a window dresser in barnsley. The skirts were so short that my pants were on full show and I did not care, in fact I liked the attention. We wear swimming costumes without thinking its not right so why shouldnt we show are undies (not at my age though) They only live once and they should be free as birds/

And like birds a proportion of them will fall to predators, Barbaramary . Probably (but not exclusively) the ones who look as though they would like to be gobbled up. That is what worries parents.