Laura Ingraham Is Worried About Date Rape And Misogyny, Suggests Starting With How Girls Dress

Ingraham Lauds “The Power Of Shame” In Teaching Girls How To Dress Modestly

Laura Ingraham suggested that teaching young girls to dress modestly is an important step toward avoiding objectification, misogyny, and even date rape.

The ABC News contributor and conservative radio host spent a significant portion of her radio program on September 26 praising a Utah high school for refusing entry to about a dozen girls at a homecoming dance because of their “immodest” dresses. According to Ingraham, the teenagers were dressed to appear ten years older, and she argued that while the nation is focused on preventing date rape and misogyny, we should “start with the way we appear in public”:

INGRAHAM: These are still girls. There are probably young women, probably 9th or 10th grade. And at the same time we're worried about date rape. At the same time we're worried about misogynistic behavior or making comments about peoples' appearances and bullying and all these other things. How about start with the way we appear in public. The way we treat people. How we speak to them. The language we use. And I'm sure a lot of these girls that dress this way, I'm sure they don't know any better.

“If we are trying to remind people that it's what's inside that counts, your heart, your spirit, the whole person,” Ingraham instructed, “let's really ensure that the first thing a young boy sees in a girl is not her cleavage, or, you know, her pubic area because her skirt is so short.”

On her Facebook page, Ingraham similarly asked, “Do you think girls dress in a way that invites trouble?”

Ingraham has a long record of questionable commentary with regard to gender equality and women's rights. She attacked an advertisement encouraging women to use birth control as encouraging “promiscuity,” and suggested Hillary Clinton was too emotional to be reliable on national security. And in August, she had to explain why she was playing the song “Fat Bottomed Girls” during a discussion of First Lady Michelle Obama (an inexplicably-frequent target of attacks on her weight by conservatives).

With her latest comments, Ingraham -- who is also a Fox News contributor -- joins her Fox colleagues and other conservative media in placing the onus on young women to avoid being sexually harassed or assaulted, rather than focusing on the individuals who perpetrate these attacks on women.