Where should we stand on pimp chic, specifically kids dressed up as porn stars? (See today's Independent) I remember the horror I felt when a lovely girl in Year 8 turned up in mufti for a school trip with a t-shirt stretched across her chest baring the legend 'My place now'. She was then 12 years old and this was in the last century, before we all got enured to prurient FCUK t-shirt slogans. I was really, really upset by it at the time - did she realise that the t-shirt was advertising that she wanted to have sex? My colleagues were amused at how upset I was.
I have got considerably more sanguine as I have got older, so I no longer get quite as apoplectic as I did. I am used to 14, 15 & 16 year olds wearing clothes that advertise their fondness for intercourse, or that they are pimps or porn stars. If you challenged a young male teenager about whether he really wanted to be seen as a pimp, he would probably laugh in your face, in much the same way that boys do when you challenge them about the ethics of Grand Theft Auto, or the morality of The Devil's Rejects. Are we underestimating their sophistication? If so, we should shut up, act shocked in a sort of indulgent way, and be grateful that the arguements are about their clothes not their actual behaviour. Or is it our job, as teachers, to challenge kids to question whether they are being abused by a fashion industry that uses them to promote sexual abuse?
PS Anita Roddick's writing on the subject is here. [Google-searches-you'd-never-have-predicted #326 'anita roddick pimp ho']
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I have referenced this article here.
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