Let's say you enter a store that displays a "Free Stuff" sign. Upon entering, holding your hands out like a sheet-clad kid at Halloween, the store owner says, "Oh no, nothing's actually free."
A valid retort would be "That's false advertising!"
So why can't students say the same thing when confronted with the flashy and highly suggestive phrases on the clothing here at campus?
For instance, I was innocently peddling on my second bicycle of the year — the first one stolen not a month into the semester — and I nearly wiped out on the marshy lawn when I saw the shirt of the young lady in front of me.
"All you have to do is ask," it read. I felt certain, however, that were anyone to approach and ask her for something even so minute as a phone number, he or she might expect a quick rap in the chops, followed by, "What kind of girl do you think I am?"
I'd say foppish, but since Etheridge is a name currently given to neither boy-band member nor host of MTV, I would likely get a funny look and the finger.
The problem is what my older and surely wiser brother calls "fakin' the funk."
If you want to communicate a sense of desire with clothing, go ahead, but don't be shocked when someone approaches you with lewd requests.
One can see everything from thin cotton pajama bottoms for that extra cute I-just-got-outta-bed look, to elastic shorts that are already riding lower than a Chevy with ground effects. We can assume, though, that students wearing such suggestive clothing are old enough to decide what they can get away with. After all, we are all adults here; unfortunately, some of the people wearing these outfits are not.
Juveniles aren't treated as adults in the courtroom because we feel they are unable to make adult decisions. Yet, 10-year-old girls can buy thong panties that read "Eye Candy."
Several clothing lines are now creating a new category dubbed "Kids," with tight and extra short shorts and shirts displaying "Little Devil." It's just like the adult line, only smaller, but no one seems to consider that the maturity of the bearer is far smaller too, as it should be. I'd like to think that an 11-year-old girl wouldn't know what to say if a boy approached with inquiries of what makes her a devil or what she means by "All you have to do is ask."
The fundamentalists are all over this one, but no one listens to them because they bitch about everything: You gotta choose your battles with a certain degree of care.
Parents are doing little, or maybe they don't even notice since their attention lies only on what video to put in to quiet their child for another 90 minutes.
So, that leaves us. I have only an older brother, so I've got it easy, but some of you surely have little sisters out there dying to get their hands on what Britney Spears assures them will look cute.
For whatever reason, the idea of having a preteen imitate the cute little schoolgirl Britney portrayed in her "Oops, I Did It Again" video resonates nothing but bad taste.
We're old enough to do as we wish, which is part of the allure of doing so, but perhaps we should consider the moral image we're setting up. Civic responsibility has gone the way of the Dodo, but rest assured, these companies will bear no responsibility for this, and in an age where we strive for gender equality, suggestive clothing breeds regression.
Darren Todd is an English literature senior. Reach him at lawrence.todd@asu.edu.
