They dance and strip for free while some jerk-off makes a fortune selling videos of them. Looking dumbfounded when she learned that the girls don't get paid for their exposure, Oprah remarked, "Okay, that really is stupid." No kidding.
But, wait! It gets worse. It is not just that women are exploiting their bodies "for free", they are forking out tons of money to look like all the women they see on television. Oprah had four teenagers from Florida on the show. These young girls spend thousands of dollars to imitate celebrity styles and one is already planning on getting breast implants. Are these young women just a rare exception? Come on. Who hasn't spent a ridiculous amount of money on highlights, or bikini waxes, or some other please-make-me-be-sexy type thing?
We are literally buying into our oppression. People are profiting off the exploitation of girls and women, and then taking our money as we each try to add up to the narrow formula of sexy that bombards us.
Major Crimes Act of 1885
In addition to trying to get funding for Title IX of VAWA, do you think it's worth trying to get a grassroots effort going to repeal the Major Crimes Act of 1885 (and anything else hideous tacked onto it since then)?
I have yet to see this floated in the big-name blogs talking about this report, even though I've seen lots of intelligent commenters bring the act up.