Experience of the Sensation of Buying a Girl

Want to combine the practicality of buying book bags and pencil cases with the thrill of human trafficking? The Girl Store, in a wildly inappropriate philanthropic effort, is selling school supplies on a website designed to mimic the sale of children into sexual slavery.

Here's the deal: The Girl Store is a charity that claims to help keep young Indian girls from being sold into marriage or sexual slavery. The idea is that you buy school supplies for girls that otherwise couldn't afford them and that, in turn, keeps them in school.  The online store for these items is designed, apparently, to appeal to people who'd really like to buy an actual girl, but will settle for just buying some pencils for her.

Catherine A. Traywick at the Ms. Magazine Blog describes the flash intro to the website as being "greeted by shaky footage of a disheveled Indian girl smiling bashfully as an unknown cameraperson pans up and down her body, lingering on her little hands, before finally settling on her face." The text that goes with it reads, "100% genuine girls. Young... innocent... and available. Experience the sensation of buying a girl... her life back. Buy a girl before someone else does." If you make it past that intro, the landing page features three sullen little Indian girls for whom you can buy school supplies.

Who told these people that the best way to combat the early, forced sexualization of girls is to design a website that does exactly that? Shock value alone is not justification. There is no such thing as exploitation for a good cause. This a a bad marketing strategy of epic proportions.

That bad strategy would at least be helped out if the cause it promoted was solid. It isn't. The idea that all that stands between a girl and sexual slavery is a Hannah Montana book bag is outrageous. No one ever looked at a girl and thought, I'd like to sell that girl into marriage, but, gee, she already has her school supplies for the year, so never mind.  Education, of course, is a powerful tool, but the issue here is so much more complex than The Girl Store would suggest.

Human trafficking and child marriage are two serious problems facing girls. Those girls deserve so much better than what The Girl Store is offering. Tell The Girl Store to stop its offensive marketing ploy and focus on real solutions to the problem.

Photo credit: gustaffo89