24 responses so far ↓

• 1 christopher // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:06 pm

  first!

• 2 Big Momma Pimpalishisness With A Cherry On Top // Nov 28, 2007 at 1:04 pm

  Hehe, found you from the link on Dooce’s page. I still can’t get to the BYU site. It’s crashed. Kind of like the ultimate revenge right there :)-

• 3 Lizzie // Nov 28, 2007 at 2:45 pm

  Hi Joe,
  I just left a comment on Eliza’s site because I also live in Normal Heights (and also have family in Utah). Found you from the dooce link, too.

  take care!
  Lizzie

• 4 eliza // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:35 pm

  quite a stir you’ve caused! i like the convo going on…

• 5 Sara // Nov 28, 2007 at 5:36 pm

  It’s absolutely brilliant that the fabulous Dooce crashed BYU’s server. Brilliant I tell you, brilliant. In fact, even more brilliant than undergarments and fresca soda

• 6 John K. // Nov 28, 2007 at 8:48 pm

  I find it a tad hypocritical to be a feminist and rail on other women’s idea of morality as limiting or fascist, all the while being happy with nothing less than all women conforming to your definition of being “liberated.”

• 7 Joe // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:16 pm

  Lizzie, nice to meet you. We should hang out sometime. We’re having a holiday party (I’ll put in on my public calendar soon, and eliza already mentioned the open mic thing to you.

  Sara, looks like the BYU server is back up.

  John, I’m not sure if you’re talking to me or eliza (I consider myself a feminist), and I’m also not sure which comment(s) you’re referring to. I assume something in the Flickr thread?

• 8 Luke // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:18 pm

  I find it hard to believe that women came up with the ideal represented in that poster, and wonder if perhaps they consider themselves–or care to consider themselves–at all liberated in any sense.

• 9 John K. // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:19 pm

  Yeah, I sorry about that, I wasn’t addressing anyone specifically. I was addressing the Flickr comments in general and have now posted thoughts there (having discovered I had an account I don’t remember creating.) So disregard I suppose.

• 10 Beth // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:38 pm

  You live in Normal Heights? I was just there last week accidentally — I’m still trying to learn my way around San Diego after four years here! ;^) (Here via Dooce…)

• 11 eliza // Nov 28, 2007 at 11:34 pm

  I just want to say that I neither took that photo nor posted it with with the intention of being provocative or railing on anyone’s person lifestyle preferences. I just thought it was silly. But I think it’s touched a nerve because it shows an intentional marketing tactic used by an institution to shape people’s consciousness about something as personal as body awareness. Of course, more religions do this.

  My comments are 100% consistent, logical, and feminist. All I ever said is that grown women should be trusted to dress themselves, and their bodies should not be considered offensive. If a woman decides that she doesn’t want to wear skirts above her knee, bravo — send her straight to heaven. If she wants to wear a burqa, a bikini, or a tuxedo, I don’t care in the least. I’m not telling anyone what to wear. I just think it’s creepy and backward when institutions shame women into conforming to their standards when they obviously have different taste — especially over something as innocuous as a skirt and leggings.

  I don’t get why this is such a hard concept for some people to understand: it’s not discriminatory to declare that every woman has the right to make her own choices. You don’t see me saying that Mormon girls shouldn’t wear garments, because it’s not my business and I respect their personal preferences. Are they the only ones who deserve that courtesy?

  And I’m tired of cockamamie lines like, it’s distracting [to men] if women wear flattering skirts or blouses. Well, maybe they need to look women in the eye then. If BYU really wanted people to “not be distracted” so they could focus on school, they’d encourage their students to postpone their wedding plans until after graduation. But it’s not about that either. It’s just about the shortest leash possible.

  Everybody is always talking a lot of hot air about freedom — freedomfreedomfreedom — the very word is dropping faster than the dollar in worth. We’re all so proud of our freedoms until someone wants to make a choice to be an individual and then it’s all “get with the program or get out.”

  Yeah, I get it, I know what you’re gonna say next — people can choose to go to a different school. And I certainly suggest they do — that’s the decision I made and I highly recommend it. But it doesn’t make the whole poster any less condescending.

• 12 Jenny // Nov 29, 2007 at 12:36 am

  Hi Joe!

  I’m the Jenny that sent Dooce this link, and wow I had NO IDEA it would cause such a stir! In fact, I’ve emailed her before and received no response, so I expected that, at best, she’d get a giggle out of it. I’m glad she posted it though. Because it really raises issues that I think are important to people in Utah (and everywhere) who have been effected by this whole “thing”.

  Judgement upon others in this way; suggesting that certain clothing makes you a sinner; is just damaging to young women. The most confident, strong, self-respecting women I know are those who were not raised with an overbearing burden of worrying how they “look to men”.

  The whole “don’t wear skirts shorter than your knees or low cut shirts, or you’ll be a distraction to men and they’ll disrespect you” is just TOO close to the idea that Men aren’t responsible for how they treat women (or where they look at them), and that all the fault falls on the “provocatively dressed” woman. It’s almost as bad as saying a rape victim is at fault because she was dressed scantily.

• 13 John K. // Nov 29, 2007 at 8:31 am

  Eliza,

  I mostly agree with you here. A couple things though. You say:

  “And I’m tired of cockamamie lines like, it’s distracting [to men] if women wear flattering skirts or blouses. Well, maybe they need to look women in the eye then.”

  Well, that would be nice, but it just isn’t going to happen. To me, that is just living in a hypothetical dream world. Men are what men are, nature has proved this out over thousands of years.

  “Yeah, I get it, I know what you’re gonna say next — people can choose to go to a different school.”

  Yes, I do say that, but probably from a different angle than you think. When someone goes to BYU the honor code is not only to “keep them in line” but provides them the reasonable expectation that the person next to them will behave in a similar fashion. Now, you may agree with that standard, but is it not reasonable for a student to be able to go SOMEWHERE (out of the thousands of schools in this country) where they can count on their classmates not offending their sensibilities, no matter how silly those sensibilities might be?

• 14 John K. // Nov 29, 2007 at 8:33 am

  should read: * you may NOT agree with that standard *

• 15 eliza // Nov 29, 2007 at 11:07 am

  John,

  You’re right about the purpose of the dress code. I personally don’t believe that people should be able to exert influence over how other people are styled (I feel that, unless it is infringing on someone else’s rights — not to be confused with preferences – able-minded adults should be able to choose their own lifestyles). But some people feel otherwise, and they have the legal right to attend exclusive institutions that agree.

  But as I said on Flickr, it’s still fair game to discuss and question those policies, and their origins, intentions, and effects. If people are groomed to believe that anything above the knee or below the collarbone on a girl is immoral, that does affect me, because I am a girl and they are learning a prejudicial way to interpret and react to my appearance, whether I’ve signed the honor code or not.

  Women are always told how to value, criticize, present and withhold their bodies by capitalist and patriarchal institutions. Can’t we at least give some feedback?

• 16 John K. // Nov 29, 2007 at 12:50 pm

  Well, I don’t know about all that. I do have news for you though. Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Your beef exists with every culture and every country. Whatever it is you dislike about the world and its attitude toward the female body started long before capitalism was a glimmer in Adam Smith’s eye.

• 17 eliza // Nov 29, 2007 at 5:08 pm

  That those issues exist outside of capitalism doesn’t negate the fact that capitalism is instrumental in ourculture’s attitude toward and treatment of women. We have to deal with our reality, and we also have to factor that certain cultures and countries struggle more with female depression, eating disorders, self-hatred, self-medication, and addiction, and they tend to be western ones.

  No one can say capitalism (not in its ideal form, but in its existing form) isn’t anti-woman; it is anti-every individual. It’s about selling things whether they are needed or not, and that has been spawned an industry of inventing ‘needs’. Creating an impossible ideal and punishing women for not achieving it (or worse — not aspiring to it) keeps the economy on track. It’s done to men too, but they usually get wooed with “be an adolescent forever!” marketing, which I would rather deal with if I had to choose.

• 18 Erin // Nov 29, 2007 at 9:08 pm

  Here is the real issue. You sign a contract, you abide by the contract. Everyone in the world is free not to go to BYU, and that’s just fine. Whether or not we agree with the standard that BYU has set is not the issue: it’s that people who choose to go there need to abide by their own promises. I don’t think it has anything to do with boys being distracted and not able to control of their own actions. I think it has more to do with an institution trying to stick to a set of rather tough standards, and stop people from “cheating.” If you don’t like it- you’ll be better off somewhere else. And honestly, I think most people would be anyway.

• 19 John K. // Nov 29, 2007 at 11:10 pm

  Yeah, I just don’t know. Is it worse for an unrealistic standard to be set for women, or for a standard to be set for women that they are to be seen and not heard (and sometimes not even seen.) I don’t have the answers because I don’t deal with these things.

  But it seems to me that the capitalist strain would be more desirable. At least women can make their own choices about how closely they attune themselves with these expectations put forth in marketing or weather they abide by them at all. It seems to me that you and many others have done a fine job eschewing those expectations and supposed norms.

  Historically in places with other systems you don’t have an impossible ideal to live up to because your only expectation is to sit down and shut up.

• 20 eliza // Nov 30, 2007 at 11:02 am

  Yeah, I just don’t know. Is it worse for an unrealistic standard to be set for women, or for a standard to be set for women that they are to be seen and not heard (and sometimes not even seen.)

  I find it utterly depressing that these are the only two options you can think of. There are plenty of examples in history of egalitarian cultures, we just tend to study only western cultures and the ones we go to war with.

  @Erin: “The real issue” is whatever people want to discuss. That students should live up to their word is pretty cut and dried — I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. The interesting conversation, I believe, comes from what we don’t agree on, or what isn’t certain. It’s good to become conscious of the messages being sent to young women, especially from authorities like their source of spiritual and academic leadership. I’m glad that our photo started a thread that raised this awareness.

• 21 John K. // Dec 1, 2007 at 12:14 am

  Who said they were the only two options. I’m saying I believe we are progressing. Nothing changes overnight in this world.

• 22 Elisabeth // Dec 1, 2007 at 6:42 pm

  Let me just say this is one alumni who is very, very embarrassed by those posters. I saw them (at the Thanksgiving game weekend) and wanted to see all of them taken down.

• 23 Nina // Dec 3, 2007 at 6:34 am

  Ok, so really. If people want to wear hoochie skirts they are free to drive right to SLC and go to the “liberal” Univ. of Utah. You can tart it up at my alma as much as you want.

• 24 Reason #14 why I should remain a heathen: « Modestly Conceited // Dec 7, 2007 at 4:08 pm

  […] Flickr pic here. Blogged here and at […]

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