Girls at the Easter Show - WTF!

So I've been thinking its been a while because I've been flat out with shift work and a certain manager who seems to have it in for me (B!TCH).  Although this is not my bed time, Child 1 is watching "The Wiggles" and Child 2 is down for his nap, so technically, I can still call this a bed time pondering.

Let me preface by saying as a mother of 2 infants, a shiftworker partnered with a shift worker, I don't get out all that often (unless its a train station cos I work at one).  Last week dear partner and I took our daughters to the Easter Show.  I met them at lunch time after coming off the morning shift and having a SH!T fight with one of my managers who was not behaving as professionally as she should have in a possition of authority - so lets face it I was not in the best mood when I arrived at the show.

I might add, this is only the second time I have been to the Royal Easter Show (at 27yo) and I made hubby promise this would not be a repeat of the first time we went 2 years ago where we spent the entire day in the rides and games area waiting for his then 10yo daughter to exhaust her ride tickets (6 hrs) and us getting more and more grumpy that we were missing out on all the free fun stuff, animals, food and varius displays - particularly the wood chopping.  Should I say, it was an exact repeat and I am vowing I will never be tricked to go to the show with my step daughter again, unless we have NO RIDE TICKETS!

We then bought too many show bags IMO and headed to the arena to get a good seat to eat dinner to sit and watch the motorbikes and cars and fireworks (BIG DISAPPOINTMENT) which was interupted by a call from partners ex to ask him to use some of the money she gave him for entertaining stepdaughter to buy show bags for her other kids (WHAT! Its the end of the day and we already spent our money and I'm getting more and more pissed off!) like as if she didn't plan to do that all along - the milking COW!

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was with all that waiting around I had lots of time to view other people and their goings on.  And what I saw the girls wearing shocked me a bit.  What is the mother of an 8 yo thinking walking along side her dressed to the nines when her daughter is wearing the baggiest shortest white cuttoffs I ever saw - so short that the pockets were hanging down from inside the hem by 2 inches and her underpants (blue) were hanging out the back!  And by hem, I'm not sure what I mean because there was no hem!  They had been frayed and washed and frayed some more so that they had big long frayed tassles that looked like tampon strings hanging off them!  Then I looked around properly and all the young girls are wearing them!

Except the ones I was seeing were worse!  When I wore cutoffs in the early 90's, I either hemmed them, or trimmed the tassles each time they were washed.  What is the go here?  Am I out of touch?  These were teamed with all manner of tops and high heeled shoes, not to mention the most memorable were patterned hose and open toed heels with a plunging singlet that had about 20 holes in the back with knots tied in them.  This 16 or so year old girl was not wearing a bra (no biggie) but she was also not wearing a jacket and it was cold.  And she was carrying on with about 4 guys she was with, falling all over them and giggling with not a single female friend in sight.  She looked like a mole.  And she was acting like a mole...  Poor thing probably didn't even realise it :'(  My heart goes out to her and I want to slap her mother.
This current trend IMO shows such a strong disregard for personal grooming and self respect.  Mothers must buy these 'shorts' for their daughters and fathers must let them leave the house looking like the kind of girls their own mothers warned them about.  Don't get me wrong, if you're a cute girl or woman with nice legs short shorts can be awesome - I'm not against short shorts.  But isn't the idea with fashion to show off one asset at a time?  Legs, back, decolletage, cleavage, or shoulders etc?  If they want to show off everything at the same time - why bother wearing anything at all?

Who is teaching these girls self respect and how to behave so other people will also respect them?