Staying Informed, Part 1
This is a guest blog post, written by our Programming Coordinator Jess.
I find myself walking a razor wire of being informed lately. Too little time spent reading about the worst of humanity and I feel guilty for not knowing what’s going on; too much time and I genuinely question whether I will ever have kids of my own. Especially as I grapple with my own experience as a kid growing up in the early 2000s.
It’s one thing to have vague memories of being in Victoria’s Secret and wondering why I needed to “go up two whole cup sizes!” at 12, of my mom telling me a Juicy couture tracksuit wasn’t really “school appropriate”, of wondering why clothes seemed to shrink when you moved from the boys’ to the girls’ sections – it’s another to have to face the fact that the reality is those stores and those clothes were specifically designed for pedophiles and to normalize the sexualization of children. Seeing Limited Too, Justice, Victoria’s Secret, all named in the Epstein files has turned what was a slightly dark haze over my youth much more opaque. And I have no idea what to do with that.
It deeply disturbs me to think about some of the things I innocently and naively took part in as a kid; I think in part because there were so many things I didn’t innocently or naively take part in. I was on Omegle in its early days, 4chan and tumblr were lawless and nudity-filled, the early internet was not exactly a “safe space”. But there’s something about the consent involved in choosing to participate or engage with that content (as much as consent can be understood by someone underage) and realizing that what you thought was cute or silly was grown adults sexualizing your prepubescence.
I wanted a Juicy tracksuit because it was pink and soft and had sparkles on it. That was an intentional choice; but it wasn’t made for me or with me, the wearer, in mind. It was a well-styled trap. My friends and I watched Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC in middle school. We laughed at the crazy moms and felt awful for the kids who cried (and hated the kids who were spoiled brats) and yeah, we definitely flagged that it was weird that these were little girls getting dressed up like grown women. We questioned why there was ever a swimsuit round of competition. We may have even thought there was something wrong behind the scenes of one or two especially concerning pageants. But it was packaged and presented to us as entertainment, and we consumed it as such.
As new information continues to roll in, as I try to walk that line of staying informed, I have to hope that the fact that we’re talking about these things so plainly now means we will see actual change. I have to hope we won’t shrug things off or dismiss them as “entertainment”; I have to hope that by shining a direct light on the undercurrent of darkness that lurked while I grew up, if I do have a daughter, the subliminal messaging she’ll receive will be far less toxic and far more empowering.