{"id":57543,"date":"2013-10-22T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57543"},"modified":"2014-06-09T21:00:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T02:00:54","slug":"how-sexy-stole-naughty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/10\/22\/how-sexy-stole-naughty\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sexy Stole Naughty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lindy West for the win<\/a> at Jezebel, asks what’s so sexualizing about calling a child’s costume “naughty.” \u00a0The costume below was widely criticized for sexualizing little girls, but West nicely observes that there is a non-sexual, child-related meaning to the word naughty. \u00a0You know, being bad. \u00a0The non-sexual version of bad. \u00a0Doing something you’re not supposed to do. \u00a0A non-sexual thing. \u00a0You know what I mean! \u00a0West writes:<\/p>\n

Sure, naughty has had sexual connotations as far back as\u00a0the mid-19th century<\/a>, but it’s been used to describe disobedient kids since\u00a0the goddamn 1600s<\/a>. So why did we let hornay college chicks hijack the word in all its forms? Why can’t children be naughty anymore?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a great question.<\/p>\n

The instinct that “naughty” means “bad and sexy” probably stems in part from our Puritanical roots. \u00a0Today it gets tied up with the infantilization of women<\/a> and the notion that women should<\/a> be cute like girls<\/a>. \u00a0Add the rampant sexualization at Halloween, including costumes in which\u00a0women dress up like little girls dressed up like sexy adult women<\/a>. \u00a0It’s hard to see how one could avoid interpreting this “naughty leopard” as an example of the sexualization of little girls.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, West is right. \u00a0<\/em>The biggest problem with this costume’s title is that it includes the word “leopard.” \u00a0Because that’s just false advertising. \u00a0It doesn’t<\/em> say sexy leopard and the dress — I’ll stop calling it a costume now — is not particularly sexualizing.<\/p>\n

West calls for change:<\/p>\n

Why don’t we send “naughty” back from whence it came\u2014into the realm of wedgies and spitballs and pies cooling on the windowsill with bites taken out of them!? It’s time, people. You know it is. Take Back the Naughty. For the children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for the grown ups, too, who are tired of the idea that being a sexual person makes us bad, bad girls and boys.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lindy West for the win at Jezebel, asks what’s so sexualizing about calling a child’s costume “naughty.” \u00a0The costume below was widely criticized for sexualizing little girls, but West nicely observes that there is a non-sexual, child-related meaning to the word naughty. \u00a0You know, being bad. \u00a0The non-sexual version of bad. \u00a0Doing something you’re not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":57554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,225,23384,55,2099,254,120],"class_list":["post-57543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-clothesfashion","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-holidays","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/10\/Screenshot_19.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57543"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62932,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57543\/revisions\/62932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}