Sexy Fashion: Little Women
Around ten years ago I noticed a worrying trend in UK clothing shops while I was shopping for clothes for my young daughters. I generally dressed my girls in practical t-shirts and shorts, or pretty pinafores and skirts that were bright and cheerful and made out of easily washed and durable cotton. For high days, holidays and special occasions out came the frilly frock that Granny had sent for the last birthday. But whilst looking along the rails and shelves in local stores I saw an increasing number of items that I felt were inappropriate for pre-pubescent girls: halter neck spandex tops, tight lycra skirts, hip-hugging jeans, shoes with two inch heels and skimpy underwear, including ‘baby bras’ made for flat-chested pre-teens.
I remember at the time feeling rather uncomfortable at the idea of putting this type of clothing on a young girl as, if she were to be decked out in all these items, she would look less like mummy and more like a baby tart! And why would any mother want her daughter to look like a tart? Now at the time I thought that it was just a fashion phase that would disappear after six months and never again see the light of day, but it would appear that things got rather worse before they got better if, indeed, things have got better.
[Women-Today-4]
A couple of years ago the popular clothing label Abercrombie and Fitch produced underwear for pre-teen girls with the slogan ‘Eye Candy’ written on it; the clothing store Next sold t-shirts for pre-school girls with the mantra ‘So many boys, so little time’ emblazoned across the front, and everyone seemed to be jumping onto the bandwagon. The cheap and popular store, BHS, introduced a range of skimpy, lacy bra and knicker sets for 8-10 year olds while the Headteacher of a Primary school expressed concern over girls as young as ten years old wearing thongs to school. Luckily, common sense prevailed and most of the clothing mentioned above was eventually removed from the shelves after numerous complaints, but how was it allowed to happen in the first place? And why are we still seeing very young girls being encouraged to dress up in clothes that would be better suited to the red light district than to little Jessica’s eighth birthday party? Manufacturers are quoted as saying that they only produce this type of clothing as there is market demand for it – if nobody bought it, they wouldn’t make it! But whose idea was it to start making little girls look like grown women in the first place? And not just grown women, but women who like to show off their bodies in less-than-conservative styles. When did the sexualisation of young girls start to become desirable, let alone fashionable and readily saleable? Who was it who first sat around the boardroom table and suggested that little girls would look really cool in sexually suggestive adult clothing made in small sizes? Didn’t anyone quietly raise the hand of common sense and point out that dressing an eight-year-old to look slutty was not really a good idea by any stretch of the imagination? But then, I guess, in a market driven economy, money speaks far louder than sense. And then there is the sixty four thousand dollar question of why any mother (and it tends to be mothers and not fathers) would want to see her daughter dressed in such an inappropriate manner. There is a world of difference between young girls wanting to look like mummy by wearing her over-sized high-heels, lipstick and Gossard wonderbra stuffed with socks, and having their own cut-down version that actually makes them look like seven going on twenty-seven! Paedophiles must think they’ve died and gone to heaven as they ogle little Lolita’s strutting up and down the High Street in their dinky high heels on a sunny Saturday afternoon, or posturing in an absurd lycra tank top around McDonalds over an early evening Happy Meal. Now I am not alone in my thinking that something is going seriously wrong here.
[Women-Today-1]
The swell of public opinion against pressurising young girls into becoming women even before they reach their teens is growing apace. We’ve recently seen a group of popular children’s writers (including Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpurgo) voice their collective opinion that children are being ‘poisoned’ by modern English culture that is destroying childhood as we know it (or used to know it!) Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has added his voice to the growing throng and has suggested that the current generation of children are being raised by ‘infant adults’ who are not emotionally equipped to raise children of their own. Luckily, here in the Land of Smiles there seems to be far less pressure for young girls to grow out of their childhood in a hurry. MTV culture might have a growing influence on the urban youth of Bangkok, but it hasn’t yet filtered down to all strata of society. However, poverty in Thailand has its own unpleasant ways of making young girls grow up very quickly. It can either thrust them into the role of premature parent to take the place of an absent mum and dad, or it can lure them into becoming prostitutes or paedophile-fodder in order to earn an income with which to feed a family. Unfortunately, these young girls don’t have the luxury of choice, whereas in the west we do. So shouldn’t western mothers, therefore, be exercising their choice a bit more wisely and cautiously? Instead of foisting an early adulthood onto these young girls, shouldn’t we be encouraging them to enjoy every single minute of their childhood? Or maybe we have stumbled across the reason why the UK has the highest rate of under-age pregnancies in Europe. If young girls are encouraged to look like sexy ladies at such a tender age, then surely we shouldn’t be surprised when they start behaving like them just a few years later?
