I know it shouldn’t shock me that Abercrombie Kids is now selling pushup bikini tops for 7-year-old girls. After all, the clothing giant has come under fire before for selling thongs in their children’s line (thongs!) that said “wink wink” and “eye candy” on them, and for T-shirts with slogans like “Who needs brains when you have these?” emblazoned across the front. I really should not be surprised.
Yet I continually find myself shaking my head in amazement every time a new product that would be considered scandalous for adult women is made for little girls. First it was the Bratz-themed padded bras that Target was selling to toddlers. Then Delia’s, the clothing catalog for pre-teen girls, started selling T-shirts with the slogan “I’m tight like spandex” printed across them. (I know “tight” is slang for “cool,” but still.)
Most recently, Mattel came out with a doll as part of its “Monster High” collection, Clawdeen Wolf, who lists “waxing, plucking and shaving” and “flirting with boys” as some of her hobbies. The age listed on the toy’s box is 6 and up.
It’s as if companies just can’t wait for the teen years to make our daughters into sex objects — they need to start as soon as they start walking. Why waste valuable time that could be spent making money?
Responding to the latest Abercrombie controversy, Rebecca Odes, a blogger for the parenting website Babble, writes that “even the use of the word ‘push up’ is unbelievably inappropriate. The push up bra is, effectively, a sex tool, designed to push the breasts up and out, putting them front and center where they’re more accessible to the eye (and everything else). How is this okay for a second-grader?”
The answer is, of course, that it’s not okay. Yet despite how morally reprehensible it is to dress young girls as if they’re sexualized women, companies continue to sell sexy outfits in children’s sizes and the media continues to feature ads, movies and television shows in which preteens are shown as desirable and “sexy.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal this month, author Jennifer Moses blames mothers — fathers do not make an appearance in this finger-pointing — for being overly permissive. “Why do so many of us … permit our teenage daughters to dress like this — like prostitutes?” But it’s not moms who are manufacturing clothing or creating advertising — it’s companies.
Peggy Orenstein, author of “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture” wrote on her blog that perhaps Abercrombie’s pushup bikinis for kids were just made to “piss off parents and get instant street cred among kids.”
She goes on, “Or maybe they purposely push the bounds of good taste so that by comparison something we would’ve found sexualizing and inappropriate before now looks demure and acceptable?”
I think the reason behind the bikini, and all of the sexualized products, is simpler than that — it’s just the money. Girls — yes, even girls as young as 7 — see the sexualized images around them, from magazine covers to Miley Cyrus, and they want to imitate them. They want to be cool, and for their peers to like them. It’s not rocket science: Girls want to be accepted. And as long as the broader cultural message remains one that values girls and women for how they look and how “sexy” they are, the longer our daughters will be subjected to clothing and toys that should be beyond their years.
The real issue, of course, is that this sexualization does not come without consequences. By marketing adult products for girls, and by promoting girls as sex objects in the media, we’re sending out a dangerous message. Not only does it reinforce the notion that really sexy women aren’t women at all, it also opens the door for people to place the blame for sexualization where it doesn’t belong — on girls themselves. The logic of “she was asking for it,” which is bad enough when applied to grown women, ends up being extended to teens and children, too.
Our daughters deserve a better world than this one, where they are blamed for simply wanting to be accepted, where they are not allowed to have childhoods simply because of some company’s bottom line.
Yet I continually find myself shaking my head in amazement every time a new product that would be considered scandalous for adult women is made for little girls. First it was the Bratz-themed padded bras that Target was selling to toddlers. Then Delia’s, the clothing catalog for pre-teen girls, started selling T-shirts with the slogan “I’m tight like spandex” printed across them. (I know “tight” is slang for “cool,” but still.)
Most recently, Mattel came out with a doll as part of its “Monster High” collection, Clawdeen Wolf, who lists “waxing, plucking and shaving” and “flirting with boys” as some of her hobbies. The age listed on the toy’s box is 6 and up.
It’s as if companies just can’t wait for the teen years to make our daughters into sex objects — they need to start as soon as they start walking. Why waste valuable time that could be spent making money?
Responding to the latest Abercrombie controversy, Rebecca Odes, a blogger for the parenting website Babble, writes that “even the use of the word ‘push up’ is unbelievably inappropriate. The push up bra is, effectively, a sex tool, designed to push the breasts up and out, putting them front and center where they’re more accessible to the eye (and everything else). How is this okay for a second-grader?”
The answer is, of course, that it’s not okay. Yet despite how morally reprehensible it is to dress young girls as if they’re sexualized women, companies continue to sell sexy outfits in children’s sizes and the media continues to feature ads, movies and television shows in which preteens are shown as desirable and “sexy.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal this month, author Jennifer Moses blames mothers — fathers do not make an appearance in this finger-pointing — for being overly permissive. “Why do so many of us … permit our teenage daughters to dress like this — like prostitutes?” But it’s not moms who are manufacturing clothing or creating advertising — it’s companies.
Peggy Orenstein, author of “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture” wrote on her blog that perhaps Abercrombie’s pushup bikinis for kids were just made to “piss off parents and get instant street cred among kids.”
She goes on, “Or maybe they purposely push the bounds of good taste so that by comparison something we would’ve found sexualizing and inappropriate before now looks demure and acceptable?”
I think the reason behind the bikini, and all of the sexualized products, is simpler than that — it’s just the money. Girls — yes, even girls as young as 7 — see the sexualized images around them, from magazine covers to Miley Cyrus, and they want to imitate them. They want to be cool, and for their peers to like them. It’s not rocket science: Girls want to be accepted. And as long as the broader cultural message remains one that values girls and women for how they look and how “sexy” they are, the longer our daughters will be subjected to clothing and toys that should be beyond their years.
The real issue, of course, is that this sexualization does not come without consequences. By marketing adult products for girls, and by promoting girls as sex objects in the media, we’re sending out a dangerous message. Not only does it reinforce the notion that really sexy women aren’t women at all, it also opens the door for people to place the blame for sexualization where it doesn’t belong — on girls themselves. The logic of “she was asking for it,” which is bad enough when applied to grown women, ends up being extended to teens and children, too.
Our daughters deserve a better world than this one, where they are blamed for simply wanting to be accepted, where they are not allowed to have childhoods simply because of some company’s bottom line.
