Not Miho Kahn.
The mother of a Marine son and high-school-age daughter, this West Chester interior designer recently wrote, illustrated and self-published a book called If You Give a Girl a Push-Up Bra. The paperback pseudo-children's book reveals the slippery slope for girls who become preoccupied with their looks and sexuality.
The book starts off simply enough with an illustration of a teenager trying on a push-up bra and liking what she sees in the mirror. Next the girl is shown applying heavy makeup to her face and weighing herself obsessively. It goes downhill from there. The girl winds up falling in with a fast crowd, getting pregnant, missing the prom and in the end - after giving birth and nursing a baby - really needing that push-up bra.
"This message has been coming at us for a long time. 'You've got to fit within this realm in order for you to be beautiful.' I'm just trying to get at the truth," said Kahn, who occasionally performs a one-woman show she created for the Fringe Festival called "Clean Sheets." "I don't know a woman out there who isn't caught up in 'I've got to lose weight.' "
Sitting in an airy, sun-splashed room at her large rambling home in West Chester, she railed against marketers such as Abercrombie & Fitch, which made the mistake last year of trying to sell a padded bikini top as part of its Abercrombie Kids line for 7- to 14-year-olds. It caused such a stink that the triangular-style top was pulled from the website. If they're trying to sell padded bras to 7-year-olds, what's next? Pint-size garter belts and stockings?
"It's not easy for parents. It's not easy for kids, and it makes me mad. I'm not a political person. I'm an artist," Kahn said.
