UM, NICK, DID YOU PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THE POST WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT?: Louis Vuitton handbags are so ugly, it's just wrong. I do sort of like Burberry scarves, though, so long as they're not the tan plaid.
More seriously, though, I think there's a conceptual link between Joe's observations about the really sickening aspect of Japenese men's preference for the schoolgirl-type (if not actual schoolgirls), and Sara Butler's observations on the Playboy-means-women's-freedom argument.
Two thoughts, in outline form:
1. Clearly part of the problem is that men aren't being adequately socialized into behaving like decent human beings.
2. Equally it seems that there's a problem with women's self-definition. The article Joe links to mentions that women tend to abet men's schoolgirl prediliction, and Ms. Butler's article was written by a woman. Something seems to be missing definitionally: where the line gets drawn between a healthy level of self-respect and comfort with all of the various aspects of femininity, and when it spills back over into perpetuating the same old stereotypes, just at a level where all the participants are more debased.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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