by Matt Barr

Streetwalker Barbie shrugged

A bunch of people who are not parents (or who are maybe libertarian parents: "It's your choice, Junior, I don't want to come across like an authority figure or anything") are over at Hit & Run making fun of a piece in the Christian Science Monitor about a clothesmaking backlash against slut chic. The bedrock principle of modern American libertarianism is, of course, that anything that may shock and agitate the sqaures, Daddy-O, is good, so even a free market response that counters cleavage- and ass crack-baring clothes for 12 year olds (especially cleavage- and ass crack-baring anything; if only pot were somehow involved -- party!) should be loudly derided to establish one's credentials.

I won't say where I live, since many of the commenters are taking shots at at least three states in two time zones in response to this capital marketing offense, but I will testify that a majority of the clothes available at the local mall my 13-year-old stepdaughter wouldn't be allowed to bring home, let alone wear in public. The idea that grubby clothes are always going to be avialable somewhere, so why complain (or start a business to make money off dissatisfied clothes shoppers) isn't just profoundly un-libertarian, it imagines a 13-year-old girl who's never existed. The desire is for more modest clothing that isn't conspicuous for its K-Martiness. I would expect some cultural conservatives to solve the problem by letting the girls buy whatever "cleavage-covering fashion" they can find and shut up about it, not Reason's writers.

Libertarians look at entrepreneurs making money as a good thing, ostensibly, but just as the Democrats have become the sex with anyone, any time, on demand, consequence-free party, libertarians' wish for a return to the 60s threatens to overwhelm everything else.

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