Kohl's: Is Your 12 Year Old Girl Overweight, Self-Hating? Roman Polanksi Has a Fashion Tip!
Friday, February 4, 2011 at 5:28AM What a delight to hit the Kohl's main site and find this shiznit flickering out at me:
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Thirty-five percent off indeed.
1) I'm no prude, okay, but golly, one of my primary regrets of not being a mother is that I won't have the grand opportunity to parade my daughter's bra strap to eligible mates in the 12-97 year old age bracket.
2) Even if, as I suspect, this isn't actually the young lady's bra strap, and it is in fact a fake one built into the top, and this is just something that All The Kids These Days are wearing... YOU HUSSIES GET OFF MY LAWN.
3) When I was this age, showing one's bra strap was considered a humiliating fashion faux pas. You might as well go out in public without your parachute pants. It was Ultimate Redneck. Now? Off-the-rack hobaggery, aimed directly at girls who are struggling with their appearance at the worst possible time to be struggling. I look forward to the next fashion trend, which will doubtless involve unblown noses and permanent nip slips.
4) I applaud the subtlety in the name of the product line, "Self Esteem." Rejected titles:
- Jail Bait Big 'n' Wide
- Bulimia Grrrrrrl
- Fetish Formers
- No Man Will Ever Love You


Reader Comments (6)
Maybe the young ladies are trying to keep up with the males of their generation?
PS: Oi! what's with the captchas? Nobody can really prove they are human —didn't you read Philip K. Dick? ;)
I always demand literacy tests of The Readers, be they human, cyborg, or bra-strappy.
Raising girls is an art, not a science. Culture gangs up on you. Movies, fashion, technology, etc. is the enemy while you try to keep kids on the rails until their brains are physically mature enough to process all of the opportunities that they face with some perspective. While I am a rabid independent, that Clinton/Monica thing had much more of a negative impact on attempting to raise girls than the latest fashions did. (Before this turns political, almost none of the politicians out there are role models in that regard - I am not singling out Clinton or Democrats.) As a culture, we are losing the battle on that front.
Your first sentence hits it exactly, which is why I'm quite sure I'd muck it up beyond all comprehension.
Ew.
It's difficult enough that girls are developing so early these days without further sexualizing them. I wouldn't have a problem with the top if maybe the strap were the same color, but yeah, that's white, it's definitely meant to make you think it's a bra strap. It's not that it's showing skin, it's the suggestion. WTF are people thinking?!
"Off-the-rack hobaggery" hee! Well said MB.
So, wow.
You and I must be about the same age, since I also remember the previous consequences of bra-strap sightings. Back then, you may as well just hung a sign around your neck that said "trailer trash" in big bold letters. One brief (even accidental) glimpse and you were toast.
What I don't get, as I have quite recently seen even here on my fair campus, are the clear plastic bra straps. You can still see them, and you still know what they are. In fact, in some ways they draw even more attention than the regular type because at certain angles in the light, they reflect. :-P If you're gonna put it out there for the world to see, you may as well not try to be so coy about it.