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When you seach for girls...

Apparently boys have lives and girls are bodies.

Is this a new twist on old sexism? Boys versus girls? A mechanical reflection of a cultural bias? Or should I not read too much into a limited collection of 1s and 0s?

Someone searched for “girls” and found my blog. This is no surprise. I use the word liberally and often. I mean my kids, however. It struck me odd, though, this general search for the plain word "girls." Just for fun I tracked over to see what else this search brought up. My blog was like Bambi the lamb among Bambi Does Hollywood.

Just look at what technorati thinks people who search for “girls” might also be interested in:

Related tags for girls
• Sexy,
• Babes,
• Photos,
• Flickrbabes,
• GORGEOUS,
• Women,
• Hot,
• Beautiful,
• Naked,
• Beauty

Charming. Just the world I want to raise my daughters in.

As you might already have guessed, the search netted not only the “related” tags above, but also---excepting my blog---a lot of porn.

I feel stunned/flattered/boggled that someone searching for “girls” would choose to visit my String Theory post when it lies alongside Naughtylyla.

NaughtyLyla i like to feel the smell of a...
Girl Blog by bl4h • 2 blogs link here
very hot,sexy and delicious. My Turn ons are i like to feel the smell of a man,his lips and tongue all over my body


I decided to see if the counter to girls---boys---netted similar results.

It didn’t.

Boys, it seems, are more than tight gluts and sex drive. Boys, it seems, have LIVES. They like music, and sports. They go to work and/or school. They like movies. See for yourself:

Related tags for boys
• Work,
• Friends,
• School,
• Girls,
• Life,
• Gay,
• Backstreet,
• Music,
• Everybody,
• Movies

As with “girls” the search results matched the related tags.

I was deeply disturbed.

One of the current plights of females right there, condensed to a bulleted list, in Technorati.

As the mother of females (note new avoidance of word “girls”) I feel tired and over-challenged when I see this sort of thing. I feel even more so when I see this sort of thing:





These are actually geared towards children.

Izzymom’s post Just What Your First Grader Needs…A Padded Bra sums it up pretty well.

Even shorter: great scott how very ick.

By Julie Pippert
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© 2006. All images and text exclusive property of Julie Pippert. Not to be used or reproduced.

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Comments

Momma Star said…
Have you seen the underwire training bras? WTF?
Julie Pippert said…
Be glad you have manchilds. Really. I know it's never a cakewalk. Somehow, though, it seems easier to teach boys to fight perception of themselves as aquisitive sexually-motivated beings than to build enough esteem in girls to buck roles and yet still have a healthy view of their own sexuality. I could be wrong. ;)
Run ANC said…
Stuff like this makes me sooo glad that I had a boy!
And, almost totally selfishly off-topic, why do the Bra-makers assume that just because you have a small chest, that must naturally want to wear a padded bra?? (Yes, I'm defensive!) Speaking for the "under-endowed", sometimes you just want a normal bra without the cushions or water balloons attached.
OK, so NOT the point of your post, but I had to vent.
Bea said…
What disturbs me most about this is how little I'm surprised by it.

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