Marathon Will Let Teen Girls Run To Win Hair Removal; Teeth Whitening

Nope, it’s not officially the weekend until we have sporting events promoting artificial beauty processes to teen girls!

At the Divas 5K in Miami (a race where girls as young as 8 are allowed to run), young girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are able to win teeth whitening and laser hair removal. Yes, you read that correctly—win a 5K and get your filthy teenage teeth whitened! Awesome. First prize is actually Botox, but anyone under 18 is actually not eligible for that prize. Thank goodness. Also, competitors under 15 are not eligible for any of those prizes. Double thank goodness.

From Benjy Caplan over at Miami New Times blog:

The Continental Road Racing website claims that “This series is all about girl power,” a term that here has less in common with feminism than with coal power, a process by which coal is tossed in a furnace to generate profit to the detriment of society as a whole….

Some would argue that there is something problematic about having children even participate in an event that seems to say that injecting poison into one’s face is preferable to not looking like an airbrushed magazine cover model, that this is kind of the opposite of an event promoting sisterhood and female empowerment.

No shit, Benjy. I’m tired of companies slinging around ‘girl power’ without taking two fucking seconds of thought to say ‘hmmm, does this actually promote a positive image of strength for young women or is this just some bullshit label we’re slapping on it to disguise how problematic certain elements of it are?‘

You know what though?

No matter what I or any of us think of the choice in prizes for this particular event, I would just like to send out a hearty, loud ‘Congratulations, young ladies!’ You running a marathon. On a Sunday. It took three people to convince me to get out of bed this morning so I could sit around and blog all day. You are fucking awesome. I can’t even blame my age for not being out there with you, because when I was your age I spent my weekends ducking out of my mom’s chore list to hide in the garage, smoking pot and reading Archie comics over and over, desperately trying to figure out whatthefuck that thing on Jughead’s head was.

And I listened to shit music like this.

(Whatever. It’s been stuck in my head all day and now it’s stuck in yours. ENJOY!)