Dolling it up takes on a new meaning

Doing a little lunchtime shopping at a downtown department store, I lingered over a rack of clothing. I was vaguely aware of a woman on the other side of the rack, but I didn’t look up when someone walked over to where she was standing.

What I heard got my attention.

“Mom,” a voice said, “Does this look too slutty?”

Now that’s an interesting question.

I looked up to see a young woman, in her late teens or early 20s, who was holding a scrap of material up to her hips. Not more than 12 inches – maybe less – from the hip-hugging waistband to the flirty ruffle on the bottom, it was almost a skirt.

The young woman’s mother didn’t bother to glance her way.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, sighing. “Look at your top.”

I looked. The tank top, with thin spaghetti straps that didn’t cover the straps of her bra, was too tight and too short, showing a lot of cleavage and a swath of belly.

The daughter laughed at her mother’s defeated tone and held out the skirt. “It’s cute,” she said. “It looks like something Barbie would wear.”

You know, she was right. It looked like one of the impossibly short, sexy, garments made for fashion dolls.

What I’d like to know is, when did dressing like Barbie, and by that I guess I mean frequently looking a little slutty, get to be so OK that you aren’t afraid to ask your mother about it?

My mother was young and she was pretty liberal about that sort of thing. But if I’d held up something I expected her to pay for and phrased the question that way, I would have been in trouble from the outset.

I can only imagine her answer:

I guess it dates me, but I remember when slut was a bad word. It was a terrible thing to be called.

A slut was a woman who was sexually indiscriminate, someone who slept around. A woman who was used with little or no respect of consideration for her feelings and intelligence.

Wearing something a little sexy is one thing, but a slut was the last thing you wanted to dress like. People might look at you and get the wrong idea.

Now, I wondered, thinking about the mother and daughter in the store, is the aim to look just a little slutty, or – on a good day – just slutty enough?

I got my answer a few days later when I picked up the Thursday Style section of The New York Times.

In “The Taming of the Slur,” Stephanie Rosenbloom wrote that the word slut has lost its sting.

” ‘Slut’ is tossed around so often and so casually that many teenagers use it affectionately and in jest among their friends, even incorporating it into their instant messenger screen names,” Rosenbloom wrote.

Today, like so many other slurs that have become part of modern lingo, the word is weak and impotent.

The next day, just before I took my 10-year-old daughter to summer camp, I went out to pick up a few last minute things.

I was reaching for socks when I noticed, mixed with the six-packs of panties printed with cartoon characters and white cotton undershirts for girls, what can only be described as lingerie for grade-schoolers: a tiny panty and bra set that looked very grown-up.

The colorful bikini panty matched the padded, push-up bra with sexy little demi-cups. It was child’s size 10-12.

Looking at it made me sad, and very angry.

Most little girls like to play dress up. They like to mimic the adults they see at home. They want to look like fashion dolls, and like the celebrities they see on TV.

That means a generation of females is growing up without learning the difference between glamour and porn-star chic. Or maybe they’re learning that there isn’t any difference any more.

It wouldn’t be surprising if a lot of little girls asked for the “sexy” underwear. But, as a rule, most 10- to 12-year-olds don’t buy their own clothing. Their parents do it for them.

What would probably surprise me is how many parents might make the purchase.

Why on earth, in a world full of horrible headlines about the sexual objectification and abuse of children, would anyone put a little girl in underwear – or anything else – that was made to be seen as sexy?

Gritting my teeth, I walked away shaking my head. I bought socks and pastel little-girl underwear. When I got home, I went upstairs to the dollhouse in my daughter’s room. I picked up a Barbie doll. She was dressed in a tight little top and a short shiny, ruffled skirt.

With the exception of the plastic cowboy boots that were slipped over her tiny feet, and the matching hat on her head, the doll looked a lot like the young woman I’d seen shopping with her mother.

Maybe a little too slutty.