Shorts so short they'd make a stripper blush

When I was a teenager, this is how I acquired a pair of shorts. My brother would wear a pair of 501s until they were so dead they had virtually no fabric left on the thigh, and the arse had worn through and were fit for nought but the bin. At that point I'd steal them, and wear them with cheesecloth tops from Rock Stop or that hippy shop next to Rock Stop, or stolen Carcass t-shirts, along with long long hair, army boots, leather jacket, and occasionally a top hat. And I'd wear them pretty much until the legs fell off, and then I'd be the proud owner of a pair of shorts, albeit ones consisting of hardly any fabric at all.

So I'm no stranger to shorts, and for them being fairly short. But lordy! Kittencat has been asking for a pair of shorts for a couple of days, and today we went to pick up a couple of pairs. And this is where it all went a bit crazy. We saw the boys ones first, and they were alright, knee length, bright colours, bit plain, so we had a look in the girls section at shorts made from pretty fabric with butterflies, flowers and so on. But man, they are short. I'm no prude, but, beside the increased risk of sun burn from the significantly decreased length, I'm pretty sure that hot pants on a three year old is more than slightly inappropriate. And these were SHORT. There was about half an inch of leg in total from the crotch seam. Seriously, Half an inch of leg on the girls shorts against about 4-5 on the boys ones. She's three. These were so short they'd have made a stripper blush, yet this is what's available for small girls. Children's clothing seems to be designed to mimic adult clothing indiscriminately. But hot pants were always something a bit risque, a bit sexy, not the kind of thing you dress your three year old in. Worse is the fact that part of the reason we looked at the girls ones at all is that she is socially conditioned to recognise longer legs and plainer fabric as boys shorts. But having seen the girls ones, Kittencat was lectured on the fact that they were just shorts, not girls shorts or boys shorts, just plain shorts, and that the patterned ones were too short.

Needless to say, we have a pair of plain blue and a pair of red check shorts from the boys section. "Those are boys shorts Mummy. They are just plain shorts."  Girls are conditioned early from the prevalence of this kind of clothing into wanting to dress in a way that can only be described as provocative, sexualised. I have seen girls not much older than Kittencat in the middle of supermarkets doing grotesque imitations of sexual dances from music videos they've learned from Saturday morning television to the sounds of whatever generic pop happens to be playing. We teach girls to objectify themselves, then we bemoan that they are objectified by society.

Fuck that shit.