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DiscussionBra Episodes in Shows for Tweens
Maybe it’s just me, but growing up, I always felt uncomfortable about shows directed to tweens making episodes about training bras. When I was growing up, some of the more popular episodes with this topic was Lizzie McGuire “Between a Rock and a Bra Place” and All Grown Up “Separate But Equal”.
In the Lizzie McGuire episode, Lizzie and Miranda go shopping with Jo for their first bras. The awkwardness is played up when Lizzie has to shout that she wants a bra in front of her brother, dad, and Gordo (male best friend and eventual crush). It was hard to watch when Gordo and Sam looked in shock and Matt just called it gross. Obviously that’s what men are like but it was weird messaging for tween girls that, like Lizzie, we already having a hard time trying to ask for one or navigate the need for one in the first place.
What was even more weird was the table reading. In the show, you obviously don’t get to hear the movements/directions or scenes read aloud but in the table reading you do. So there was one scene where I guess the director was talking about a girl in Lizzie and Miranda’s gym class and just referred to her as a “flat chested girl” while Lizzie and Miranda spoke about how they needed a bra more than she did. That just comes off as super weird to me. In another side bar on the topic of bras and weirdness, I remember a part in the baby sitting episode where Gordo was stumbling over his words to say that Kate looked like she had “nurturing capabilities” because of the size of her breasts.
Most of the writers are grown men. The network wanted to strike the bra episode down for the ‘risqué’ subject matter but didn’t seem to find it uncomfortable how the writers were making such crude dialogue about underage girls.
As for the All Grown Up episode, Phil and Lil are set to have their 12th(?) birthday party. However, the plan for the party ultimately changes when Phil walks in on Lil in a training bra, runs away, and eventually they decide to have separate parties. I don’t know why girls’ transition into puberty always has to be a such public thing in tv shows and why boys are always shown to be terrified or grossed out by it. I feel like it would be a better message to center girls in their own stories about puberty without having a male presence involved and without males having such adverse reactions to situations that are already so sensitive to the girls affected by it.
I don’t know what tween shows are like nowadays (if there are even that many out there) but I really hope representation and discussion around girls puberty and training bras has improved. In a society where periods are viewed as dirty and just having breasts is sexualized, I’m sure it would mean a lot to many girls to have some positive (and informative) messaging around puberty.
What amazes me is how many gay people are on board with it tho, even middle aged gays. Makes zero sense to me. Like getting called out by gay people for criticizing an ideology that comes for their sexuality is fucking weird.
I’ve found that gay men are just clueless about it. For the most part, it doesn’t affect them. Younger lesbians just want to jump on the bandwagon and are clueless as well. Like you said, older lesbians in long term relationships are removed from it. What a wake up call they’re in for if they ever re enter the dating world.
A lot of younger gays and lesbians are on board with this because we have been bombarded left and right with “if you don’t support your trans siblings enough, you’re not a good gay person because gay = trans. In truth, there are many young trans people in my generation who are not raging AGP narcissists and are actually okay to be around. I think the problem is nobody is really aware of this type of trans homophobia unless there are online or are personally the victim of it since everyone is constantly being told to ignore the elephant in the room and “be kind” to people who are questioning their sex and even encourage it.
even middle aged gays
They're self-serving. This ideology- no matter its misogyny, homophobia, and racism- or more likely because of it, is where the money is, and they're not like young people who are still figuring out who they are, they're not likely to be influenced by these fuckers. They know who they are, and as I've heard some LGB people say, they might be tras on the streets but they're "terfs in the sheets". In other words, they're lying, selfish, empathy-deficient, incredibly stupid, gutless opportunists. Fuck 'em
It's NIMBY ("not in my back yard", an acronym used a lot in discussions about reducing homelessness) but applied to relationships.
They're totally fine with other people walking their sexual partners through the park in latex dog costumes, but not when it's their partner wanting to do it, and definitely not if their own children are going to see it.
But it's perfectly fine for other people to experience this trans bullshit nonconsensually.
They're totally fine with other people walking their sexual partners through the park in latex dog costumes
arghhhhhhh
this prompted the most horrendous flashbacks to those uk cops who were doing this/ posing next to people doing this
and omg yet more flashbacks of the usa when biden's hire for the department of energy (sam someone?) turned out to be one of those latex dogs 🤢 seriously what they fuck is wrong with men? and if they're so fucked, can't they close and lock the damn door so we don't have to see this shit. but i suppose we're part of the fetish, just like men who pretend to be women with their fetishistic costumes. if the public weren't there, they wouldn't get hard ons 🤮
I hadn't heard of NIMBY so thanks for that. just sounds like plain cruelty tbh, to say that when there are women being raped in prisons and shelters and wards. i suppose yeah they won't care until it directly affects them. these politicians who say 'well yeah some women have a penis' until they themselves or their female relatives or someone they know has a run-in with one of these 'women' and says something, it won't change. 'tis the human condition i guess. fundamentally selfish and lacking empathy.
Jesus Christ, every time a trans person tells me I was "socialized to like certain genitals" I want to scream. I was socialized to like dick, thank you very much! Disney and my traditional religious family started cramming it down my throat when I was still in diapers. Somehow my true nature resisted all this socialization. Do these people really think that my dad refusing to speak to me for months as a 15 year old wasn't enough to push me back into the closet, but ugly weirdo internet trolls telling me I'm a bad person will get the job done? I "examined my preference" for about a decade, there's nothing that can be done about it now. Keep screaming your rape threats, that will definitely make me want to date you...
I have a lesbian aunt who was told by her family that, if she can love her male friends platonically, it shouldn't be hard for her to learn to love a man romantically as well.
She tried marrying a man. It didn't go well for either one of them
Its scary how quickly people have forgotten that gays & lesbians have tried "unlearning their genital preferences" for ages. It doesn't work!