Good afternoon folks! Now that our collective excitement over the Blood Moon has subsided and the moon has returned to its normal, non-bloody state, we’re going to take some time to talk about everyone’s favorite things. Rush Limbaugh wants them to stop staring at him, and Microsoft wants them to keep you from getting fat. You know where I’m going with this.

We’re talking about boobs this morning.

High school student Megan Grassel is the world’s latest boob-centric entrepreneur, having recently opened a small business called Yellowberry, which allegedly sells non-sexual bras for young girls.

Megan got the idea for the lovely little company when she took her baby sister bra shopping. According to Megan, she was “appalled” by the selection of bras available for her sister’s age group. Filled with push-up padding and covered in sequins, she found the bra selection to be hypersexual and totally inappropriate for her tweenaged sister.

So, like any budding entrepreneur, Megan saw a business opportunity. She recognized a gap in the market — non-sexual bras for younger girls, according to her — and she decided to fill it. One uber-successful Kickstarter campaign later, Yellowberry was born. The company sells neon-colored cotton bras, with no padding or sequins, aimed at girls between 11 and 15 years old. At $42.95 a pop, the store has already sold out. Megan’s a one-woman business success.

Now, before anything else, let’s talk about how this is pretty awesome on a bunch of levels. Women-owned businesses are awesome. Products that are made by and for women are awesome. Megan’s entrepreneurial spirit, smarts, and business acumen are super impressive and I applaud her for it.

However.

Let’s talk about the reason why she started Yellowberry in the first place.

Megan was freaked out by the bras that existed in the market. She deemed padding and sequins too sexual. But what if you’re just a fan of sequin-covered, sparkly, happy things? What about sequins makes bras sexual? What about padding?

The fact that bras are used to cover and support breasts. The breasts themselves are what make bras sexual. Not the fact that they’re covered in sequins. Not the fact that they’re padded. Taken alone, those facts are just descriptors added onto a piece of cloth and (maybe) wire. But Megan and her thoughts on how breasts should and shouldn’t be presented are what sexualized those bras.

And that’s kind of an issue. While Megan’s busy being appalled at how inappropriate these padded, sequined bras are, she’s simultaneously demonizing young girls who might like to wear them.

There’s an element of slut-shaming here, and a fear around the concept of adolescent sexuality. If these bras are so disgustingly hypersexual, what does that say about the girl who chooses to sport it? Presumably, that she’s some kind of oversexed harlot — not just a girl who might think sequins are fun.

Clearly, glitter is the best.

Folks, I know what it’s like to be an oversexed young girl. I started growing boobs when I was in fourth grade. Everyone — from the kids in school right down to my own parents — couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that I was young and had breasts.

They were discussed at length. What I could wear because of them, what I couldn’t wear because of them, how I should stand, where I should go, who I should talk to. My breasts were simultaneously an asset and a huge threat. They made me cool. They made me slutty. They made me precocious and dangerous and fast.

So whenever anyone starts getting anxious about young girls and how overly sexual their breasts are, I get concerned.

What are we really saying to our teenaged girls when we shame them for wanting to wear padded, sequined bras? What message are we sending when a bra store called Yellowberry pops up, whose existence is a direct reaction to societal anxieties around adolescent breasts and sexuality?

We’re saying that young women, their bodies, and their sexualities are threatening. Their breasts need to be tamed. Their sexuality needs to be managed and contained.

So, Megan Grassel, I applaud your entrepreneurship and your colorful, no-frills bras. But I hope you’ll reevaluate your motivation for making them.

—

Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured image courtesy of [Ralf Roletschek via Wikipedia]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Feminist Is Your Bra? appeared first on Law Street.

Picture a drug-dealing teenager in your head. Maybe he’s white. Maybe he’s black. Maybe he’s hispanic or asian. But if the image you’ve conjured looks anything like those portrayed in the media, three things remain the same; he’s a man, his clothes are baggy, and you can probably find him in a back alley somewhere, slapping hands with junkies for cash.

But in a study featured in the Sept. issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice, social work researchers have found that the old corner store cliché of adolescent drug-sellers no longer suffices. Authors Jeffrey Shook, Michael Vaughn, and Christopher Salas-Wright argue that there are three different classes of adolescent drug dealers: dabblers, delinquents, and externalizers.

Dabblers, Delinquents, and Externalizers

According to the study, dabblers rarely use illicit substances themselves, and participate in violent or risky behavior even less. But in comparison with the general population, dabblers still show signs of elevated, marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol use. Of this class, 62% said that they have sold drugs only one or two times in the last year.

A new study shows three classes of teen dealers, all of which share elevated levels of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco use. Courtesy of Torben Hansen via Flickr.

Delinquents, however, participate in violent behavior more often than dabblers. “Members of the delinquent class” reads the study, “were significantly more likely to reside in households earning less that $20,000 or between $20,000 and $49,000 per year.” But among this class, teenagers were not likely to use illicit drugs like crack/ cocaine, or other hallucinogens.

Finally, the group the authors deemed the “externalizers” engaged in risky and violent behavior the most. Externalizers often come from broken homes, and households where parents do not condemn the use of illegal substances. Externalizers often times belong to peer groups where drug use is the norm.

The study, called “Exploring the Variation in Drug Selling Among Adolescents in the United States,” uses data from the  National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH.) The researchers panned through a pool of 12 to 17 year-olds from across the country to find 3,080 adolescents who reported to have sold drugs in the last 12 months. They then ran analysis on participants for attributes ranging from grades in school to propensity toward risk.

One of the authors, Jeffrey Shook PhD, is an associate professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh who holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan. He first began to look at youth drug dealing  while writing his dissertation on how court systems process juvenile delinquents. Shook says he began to see trends between selling drugs, and using them.

“The more that I got into it, the more that I looked at some of these links, particularly the link between use and dealing. A lot of the ethnographies that we get, a lot of them focus on urban drug dealing which doesn’t show as strong of a link [between use and dealing] as I think that we’re finding.”

Interventions, New Approaches

In the past, scholars have delved into the differences between drug-dealing youth and the general youth population; but never before has such a study been performed with the guise of comparing drug dealers to other drug dealers. This, the researchers say, will “help reveal key differences in the characteristics and behaviors of these young people and aid in the development of interventions that better reflect the nuances of drug dealers and drug markets.”

One possible intervention, Shook says, could be community based treatment. Rather than the current system, which he believes has a woefully misguided focus on “a more punitive response,” weeding out drug use at the grassroots level could have substantial results.

But he admits that adolescent drug dealing is an area that needs more research before any solid claims can be made on how to bring about wholesale change in the system.

“Each [study] tells you a little part of the story. You have to keep doing them and putting together the picture. I think there’s a lot more work to be done,” Shook said.

[Journal of Criminal Justice]

—

Featured image courtesy of [Justin Scott Campbell via Flickr]

Jimmy Hoover

Jimmy Hoover is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Jimmy at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 3 Kinds of Teen Drug Dealers, Study Says appeared first on Law Street.