AUSTRALIA—Following a push by a national child activist group to ban the sale and display of school uniform costumes from adult shops, Australian Sex Party convenor Fiona Patten issued a statement calling the attempt misguided and a further indication that Australia is turning into the nanny state.
Kids Free 2B Kids founder Julie Gale called for the action after a Melbourne adult shop featured a window display with a “back to school” theme, including adult-sized school uniforms and a blackboard.
Patten said that the display had absolutely nothing to do with children and was aimed at adult women who enjoyed dressing up and engaging in fantasy play.
“These costumes are worn to a variety of events, like school reunions and office parties, where there is no sexual connotation at all. But even when they are being worn by women who enjoy dressing up sexually for their partners, Ms. Gale has no right to try and tell women how they should behave in the bedroom,” Patten said. “This is the same as telling Muslim women they shouldn’t be wearing burqas, nuns that they shouldn’t be wearing habits or young women out for the night that they shouldn’t be wearing provocative clothing. Women should be free to wear whatever they want.”
Patten added that Australia has a solid tradition of adult performers dressing up in school uniforms. “Chrissie Amphlett from the Divinyls and Angus Young from AC/DC are creative performers and great role models for aspiring musicians who both chose school uniforms with varying degrees of sexual overtures for their signature acts,” she said. “Plenty of young people have watched these performers over the years without turning into rapists or nymphomaniacs.”
Eros Association President Susie Humphries, who owns two Brisbane-based fantasy/fetish clothing companies, Leg Avenue and Picone, is one of the major suppliers to the adult and costume rental industries.
“Dressing up in an angel’s outfit does not mean you are religious,” she said. “School uniforms are big business at school reunions these days and Book Week now sees teachers dressing up as students and students dressing as teachers. Dressing up in a school outfit is fun—not pornographic.”
According to industry sources, the three best-selling adult fantasy costumes are French maids, nurses and schoolgirls. Additionally, over the last few years sales in fantasy costumes have increased by 70 percent. One Melbourne wholesaler said that the biggest increase in spending on these three lines had occurred during the height of the global financial crisis and had not dropped back since.
Gale stated that the sale of school uniforms through adult shops “legitimized child pornography.” Patten said that this assertion was not only outrageous but detracted from the real issue of child sexual abuse by equating adult dress-ups with the real and actual abuse of children.
For more information about The Australian Sex Party, visit here.
