Mom: Your Clothes are Too Sexy. Daughter: Get Over It.

Your Other Dad says men are making women fight over what’s “appropriate.”

This topic is like a minefield: there are loaded opinions on all sides. The language that gets thrown around (“slutty” and “trashy” vs “shaming” and “oppressive”) positions the recipient in a bad light and puts the speaker on a moral high ground — in both directions. The discussion often pits women against each other — mothers and daughters, girls and their friends. Yet it’s worth acknowledging upfront that the issue only arises because of the imagined needs of (straight) men.

Who would care what a girl wants to wear if it they didn’t have to factor in the male gaze? By that, I mean what men think a woman’s attire signals or doesn’t signal. Every discussion of “inappropriate” clothing leads back to variations on the suggestion that the attire is “provocative,” the general idea being that an outfit “provokes” a man into sexual behavior. This notion is premised on two faulty ideas: that men are/must be helpless to contain themselves when aroused and that a covered-up body is suddenly safe from men’s sexual interest.

That’s unfair at its root, as it requires a girl or woman to choose how she presents herself based on how men look at her (or how other women feel about that). It…