Bare Shoulders

This week is the curious case of the bare shoulders incident. For those of you not familiar with this Wasatch High School in Heber City, Utah edited girls photos in the yearbook that were deemed inappropriate. Mainly those showing shoulders, my god those sexy shoulders, and low cut shirts. Many of the girls were upset because it was done poorly and if they had known they would have changed their outfit and retaken photos. The school claims to have announced this before the photos were taken. The students also say that no photos of males were altered and the school didn't edit all the photos that were "inappropriate."

When I looked at the before and after photos I didn't see how showing your shoulders is so terrible. In the low cut shirt photos, because of where the photos are cropped to fit in the yearbook, there wasn't any cleavage. It is just a way of controlling the youth in our culture. It honestly promotes the rape culture. Women have to dress a certain way so men can control their urges.

What is this really teaching our youth? Why the fuck don't men have to control themselves? It's not like every time I see a woman in a mini skirt or hot pants I want to rape her, but this is exactly what I was taught all growing up. We dress ourselves modestly so we can help repress the urges of those attracted to us. Even boys were told to dress modestly, which was never enforced like it was for the girls. Men can get away with just about anything because the excuse is always, "boys will be boys." On the other hand, for girls, they have to stay pure for the future husbands and always dress and act modestly, because "modest is hottest." But is it really?

Everyone should be able to dress how they want without the fear of thinking someone will want to take advantage of them. You always hear how the victims are demonized in rape cases. That if they didn't drink so much alcohol. If they hadn't worn those clothes. If they wouldn't have changed her mind halfway through... First of all, in any case, NO means NO. It is NEVER the victims fault and until we fix this, we will never fix the rest of the issue.

Women are people. They are not lesser than man. They are not man's servant. They are equal and deserve to be treated as such. If a woman is comfortable in her mini skirt in public or showing some cleavage is it really harming anyone? If we can teach our children that the human body is beautiful instead of something that we should be ashamed of we would be much further ahead in our attitude towards people in general than we are now.

Unfortunately we live in a male dominated world. A big chunk of that comes from religion. It started with Eve. The blame has been on her since she ate the apple. Let's not forget that Adam ate the damned fruit too!