Friday, March 18, 2005

What's Next - Legislated Hem Lengths for Skirts?

Sometimes, politicians waste far too much public time on the utterly pointless. "Sexually Suggestive Cheerleading"??? What kind of nonsense is that? What's suggestive? The fact that the girls are wearing leotards? That they are pretty? The gymnastics they are doing? Somehow, I suspect the good senator has calluses on his knuckles from walking.

Oh yes, and just who decides what's "suggestive"? Some old fossil who forgot what it's like to be a teenager the moment they turned 20 - and that was at least 40 years ago?

While the conservative elements will accuse me of moral turpitude simply for suggesting that they take their assumptions and stow them elsewhere, I think that just maybe it's time for them to come out of their freaking shell a bit and realize that there's a world around them - and it's not necessarily as idealized as they'd like.

There are operas with scenes that make anything a high school cheerleading squad think up look positively harmless. If anyone thinks that banning "suggestive" moves from cheerleading is going to have any useful effect, I strongly urge them to recall their own childhood - how much did they do that they thought that their parents "would have frowned upon"?

What's next - regulating the dress of young men and women because it's "too suggestive" (perhaps the good senator would like to see women wandering around in Burqas instead) Or would he like to return to the era when all the furniture had to be draped in fabric - as the turn of a fine wood leg might be too much of a turn on for a male guest?

Don't get me wrong - it's not that I don't believe we should have moral standards in society - but I simply don't accept the notion that trivial stuff should be legislated. Typically legislating how people should behave tends to backfire.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's see... we will cut school funding if a school KNOWINGLY allows suggestive moves in a cheerleading routine? What about a lip-synch contest? Or at a school dance? Where do we draw the line?

And what if we allow a student to come to school wearing a shirt that reveals a belly button ring? Do we need to legislate a system of penalties against that too?

And if there are swimming lessons, perhaps the girls should shop in a 1940 Retro store so that they don't inadvertantly show TOO much skin, as it might... well, too steamy for THIS audience, I'm sure...

Sorry - but I too have a problem with the US ideal of enforcing an arbitrary standard of morality by penalizing our school system for allowing kids to be kids.

Collective Punishment

Ever since Pierre Poilievre opened his mouth and declared that Trans Women need to be banned from washrooms and locker rooms , there's b...