Don’t Cover Up Your Daughters

Hiding her body won’t make men stop looking

Last week, a viral video caught a Colorado man harassing a group of teenage girls at the beach, chastising them for their bathing suits. (They were wearing run-of-the-mill bikinis.) Despite the teens’ repeated requests that the man leave them alone, he refused to stop lecturing them. 

“Take young eyes into consideration,” he says, gesturing at some children. “They don’t need to see pornography.” When one girl suggests he simply not look at them, he responds with a laugh as if the idea is preposterous. “You look around and you’re the only thing that sticks out because your whole body is showing.”

It never occurs to this man that the problem is him. That the reason he believes young women’s bodies simply existing in a public space is ‘pornography’ is not because the teens were doing anything close to pornographic—but because he was turned on. He can’t fathom that his inability to focus on anything else at the beach besides those girls’ bodies is actually his issue, not theirs. 

As is often the case with sexist men, he made his desire their problem. 

Believing men’s sexual issues are women’s responsibility is a common (and dangerous) projection—one that seems to be enjoying a cultural resurgence. From beaches and schools to the pages of The New York Times, women—young women and girls, in particular—are being shamed for wearing things that men might find ‘tempting’.

As a parent of an eleven-year old girl, this is something I think about a lot—especially as my daughter gets older and experiments with her clothing and style. 

Because when you start to notice that men—grown men—are looking at your child who still sleeps with a teddy, you become hyper-aware of what they might be seeing. A sliver of stomach? The strap of her bra peeking out from a tank top? A girl that looks older than her age?

I resent having to see my daughter through the eyes of men who shouldn’t be looking in the first place. 

But I also know what’s coming: the leers, the comments, the crowded subway cars or hallways where men will push their bodies close to you even when they don’t need to. 

When you want so badly to protect your daughter, it’s tempting to believe that throwing a cardigan over that tank top, or buying a longer skirt will do the trick. That hiding her body from the world will make men forget that it’s there. 

We all know the truth, though: There is nothing a girl can wear that will make her invisible to the men desperate to see her. And there’s no piece of clothing stronger than those men’s belief that she is there to be looked at. 

So why even bother? For the ability to say that she wasn’t wearing something “provocative” when the inevitable leer or touch happens? To assure yourself that she didn’t deserve it while implicitly buying into the worldview that says a girl who wore something different somehow did?

Absolutely not. I won’t force my daughter to dress in response to a shitty world. She shouldn’t have to adjust to sexism, sexism needs to adjust to her. 

I want my kid to wear as many crop tops, tight shirts, and short skirts as she wants to. (Or, for that matter, as many men’s sweatshirts and combat boots as she likes.)  She needs to be able to play with her look, and have the ability to walk through the world however she feels most comfortable. 

Will I tell her the truth about how misogyny means that people will judge her for the way she looks? Of course. Will we have conversations about how society uses what girls wear to blame them for others’ bad behavior? Obviously. 

I want her to be informed, and realistic. But I refuse to let her buy into the lie that covering up will keep her safe. It won’t. And giving up the freedom to look how she wants to look isn’t worth that false sense of security, however comforting it may be.

There is nothing she can wear that can shield her from sexism, so she might as well wear what she wants. Because there will always be some asshole at the beach bothering you—at least this way, you’re blowing him off in style.

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