Crop tops and short skirts. Push up bras and legs out. Girls believe more skin means more opportunities for them. However, these women in our democracy don’t need to go to extremes to show who they are by what they reveal. The relevance of celebrities today influence what females are drawn to wear. Females today are dressing more explicitly which causes other females to do the same because they think it’s “cute” to be wearing less than more. However, this should not be the case in our democracy. Females are often trying twice as hard to get where they want to be because they are not being noticed for who they are, but instead of what they wear. 

 

Back in the early 1850’s, the women wore elegant ballroom dresses everywhere that basically covered them from head to toe. They wore these clothes everywhere they went. In a recent article by Katy Werlin, she said “Once you have been safely stored away under layers of steel and cloth, it's time to put on a garment that people will actually get to see.” At this particular time, the women looked just as gorgeous with a lot of layers on. Women donned wired bras under ribbed corsets along side hip enhancers and many more. Women wore these things because they believed they felt more beautiful when all the attention was on the clothes, not the shape of their bodies. 

 

Since then, hemlines of dresses and skirts have been decreasing in length. A mini skirt has a very short hemline, which doesn’t fall longer than 4 inches. Nowadays, girls and even women walk around with short shorts that show their whole bottom sticking out like its human nature. They feel as though media has caused them to act in such a way as if  they need to dress like this to hook a man into being theirs or to get a job. Young women who are secure about their body image think they should change their appearance to get society to accept them for how they should be instead of the clothes they are wearing. In a quote by Principal Christopher Garren of Walter Johnson High School said, “Coming to school is not like going to the pool, just like going to the pool is not like coming to school, and you should dress differently for those.” Even teenage girls are thinking that it’s okay to go out to places almost looking completely naked. These women feel as though it’s not fair how hard it is for them to get noticed and to be something in the near future. In our democracy, men are usually the ones who don’t need to try as hard to get what they want, but for women they need to constantly look pretty or dress provocatively to get noticed. 

 

Although women think that the way they dress only affects them, the audience around them is also affected by their selection of clothing. Parents don’t want their children to be exposed to the explicit fashion at such a young age because it might encourage their children to dress in such a manner, where they probably don’t want them to show up to a nice elegant dinner wearing nothing, but a scrap of fabric that’s called a shirt and a bandeau top. Anne-Marie Fisher a sophomore from Walter Johnson high school said, “My mom gets mad because lots of times my bra straps show and she doesn’t like that.” Some parents don’t want their children to look at females who are barely dressed and think that it’s okay to be dressed that way is well. 

 

On the other hand, women should try to set positive role models to those who are younger than them. Girls are presenting themselves in a sluttish manner rather than a classy manner. It’s not pretty for those females to be walking around in a place where guys just want them for how their body shape is.  The effects on children about the clothes that are being worn today are far more different than it was back then. When a 12 year old sees a woman who is looking “sexy,” they want to do the same. Even middle schoolers are grasping on to what women are wearing now.

 

In our democracy, there is no need for over-sexualization. Females need to stop worrying about how to make themselves more noticed to the opposite sex and chasing things that don’t need to be chased. There is a lot of inequality between men and women these days because women feel as though that men have everything laid out for them on a silver platter. We still live in a democracy where women are still struggling for rights. It’s still harder for women to get jobs and by dressing less, they think it would be easier for them to get what they want.