Well, my alma mater has made the news:

Kymberly Clem, a 20-year-old student at Eastern Kentucky University, wore the dress Sunday after purchasing it from the mall in Richmond the previous day, the Richmond Register reported Tuesday. After just a few minutes inside of the mall, a security guard approached her and expressed concerns over the length of the garment.

Here’s the picture of the offending outfit:

Now, according to Kim, according to the guard:

“The only thing he said was that other people didn’t like the way I looked, so he wanted me to leave.”

She then took the issue a little bit further:

“I want to speak for everybody else who has been discriminated against but has never said anything,” she told the Register.

Kim’s gonna learn a valuable life lesson from all this. When you’re young and completely naive, total freedom sounds great. However, with that freedom comes responsibility. Not too many people concern themselves with responsibility. That’s why we have laws. If people did act responsibly all the time with concern for the welfare of others they affect, we’d have no need for laws. Now, the way I see this situation is Kim, for whatever reason they chose, was asked to leave a private business. There is no law against that. She has to prove that a Constitutional Right she has was violated in the process of removing her from that private business. The right to dress inappropriately is not one of those Constitutional Rights. Her Constitutional Right to shop was not infringed either, she just had to put more clothes on in order to do it.

The second lesson learned here is taste is subjective. “Whatever she wants” is unfortunately, not legal. I mean, how would she feel if some other gals had showed up looking like this:

If they had, Kim would never have been asked to leave. In fact, she would never have been asked anything at all since no one would have noticed her in her frumpy overbearing outfit. And, while she may enjoy the fact that she’s young and healthy and therefore her flesh should be exposed for all married men to enjoy ( which I do agree with ), the fact is as our excessive lifestyles of consuming mass quantities of steroid pumped greasy Big Macs being washed down with Bolt Colas and exercising by seeing how many six ounce lifts we can do means that in short order, Kim will more than likely look like one of the babes in the pic. At which point I’m sure she’ll be just as quick to suggest someone dressed like Kim take it to the strip club instead of the family shopping mall as her husband cranes his neck to get a little bit more than what the dress was intended to show but that gal obviously intended to.

Did I mention strip clubs?

That’s what Natalie Portman wears to the mall I hear. I don’t think they asked her to leave.

The last problem I have with Kim’s plans for the lawsuit is her statement about people being discriminated against:

“I want them to apologize and let them know that in this day and age, a woman has a right to wear what she wants.”

That Kim, violates my constitutional rights. If a woman can wear whatever she wants, then men should be able to wear what they want.

Do you really want that?

Frankly, I’m all for a good strip show in a mall. It’s the only thing that makes going to malls bearable for me. However, I married smart in that I got a woman confident enough to know I’m not going anywhere else. So, she just shops and I just watch the people go by. I can’t really believe, especially in Richmond, which is definitely a college town, that there would be enough women intimidated by that dress. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot less roaming First Street on any given Thursday in Richmond. I also can’t believe there is a heterosexual male in Richmond that would ask that dress to leave. So, my five yeats in Richmond totally belie what I’m reading here. So, I’ll just have to accept the fact I guess that times have changed and the Richmond I grew up in and loved has changed to the point where young girls wearing very little clothing are now expected to show their privates in bars and not in shopping malls. What a very sad thing my party town has come to.

I’m putting this under Pavlov because of the obvious power Pavlov has over shopping males. ( Well for that matter, the obvious power ANYTHING has over shopping males. )