That is the reaction of Australian retailers to a think-tank report which argues that the way they advertise and stock inappropriately sexualised clothing for young children amounts to corporate paedophilia. [link to electronic appendix (pdf)] The report focussed on the growing “tween” market segment for girls 8-12, which is all about lip-gloss and “hot” hair and clothes, with magazines that encourage girls to develop crushes on adult male celebrities. This segment has become so important that now “pre-tween” fashions such as bralette tops are being marketed for toddlers, because heavens forfend that people look at a small child and not immediately know, from a distance, that it is a female being trained to the proper display of hawtness.
The concentration of leisure time on pursuing fashion and beauty from such an early age interferes with other childhood pursuits, but the wasting of time that could be better spent playing sport or enjoying an intellectually-stimulating hobby is only one aspect of the problem of increasingly sexualised child fashions. When the world keeps on presenting young preteen and early teen girls as sexy since infancy, it makes it very difficult for teenage girls to resist sexual pressures when they arbitrarily become “legal”.
The focus on the sexual misbehaviour of Congressman Foley in the USA flirting inappropriately with male teens has become a homophobic free-for-all, but hardly anyone is noting that older men being sexually flirtatious with female teenagers before the age of consent is situation-normal, as anyone who has ever been a teenage girl can attest. The sexual grooming of pre-consent-aged teens is not a behaviour peculiar to predatory homosexual males, it is a common behaviour of all sexually predatory “casanovas”.
Dr Emma Rush of the Australia Institute is the author of the report Corporate Paedophilia, and writes an op-ed in today’s SMH, Adult world must let girls be girls:
If children perceive being “sexy” as important and their play times revolve around this theme (shopping, makeovers, imitating pop stars and so on) then they will miss out on other activities that better foster physical and cognitive development, such as sports, problem-solving games and imaginative play. As a result, aspects of their physical and cognitive development are likely to suffer.
Some seek to dismiss these risks as a “moral panic”, arguing that children benefit from sexualisation because their sexuality gives them a source of power in a world in which most of the power is held by adults. In fact, this very power imbalance means that any sexual engagement children might have with adults is more than likely to end in the further disempowerment of children.
Rather than being empowered, children are being exploited by the process of sexualisation. For children seeking to become empowered in an adult world, a more promising route is to focus on developing cognitive and emotional capacities that enable them to negotiate power relations more maturely and with less risk to themselves.
Such capacities also enable young people to choose to use their sexuality in a respectful way, rather than for seeking to gain an advantage over others.
The counter-argument is always that it’s “natural” for young girls want to look good, and play a bit of dress-up, but how do they decide what “looking good” entails? From what they see around them on TV and magazines. As a recent neurological study shows, we perceive as most beautiful that to which our brains are most accustomed by experience: the less cortical processing power required to identify and contextualise an image, the more attractive we find it. This implies that as images bombarding us with sexualised children make that the normal daily visual stimulus, eventually children dressed simply as children will start to look odd, and even unattractive simply because they aren’t wearing the trendy sexualised fashions.
No child wants to look unattractive, and no parent wants their child to look unattractive. But no parent wants their child sexually exploited either, to be subtly coerced into sexual activity before they really want to, simply because everything they are wearing tells the world that they are “up for it”. But how to find clothing that doesn’t objectify your child?
Sadly, what the trend means is that the most affordable clothing for children is the raunch-for-kids fashion which is all that is available at the cheapest chain stores. It is almost impossible to find clothing for girls aged 8-12 in downmarket chain stores which is not sexualised. For people on low incomes, this means that if you want your daughter to have new clothes for that schoolmate’s birthday party, to fit in so that they won’t be ostracised as too poor to afford nice new clothes, there is no option other than to dress like a raunchy pop-star.
People on higher incomes can afford to go to more upmarket chain stores which offer more traditionally tailored and durable child fashion, so they can choose to have their daughters dress less raunchily for more of the crucial tween years. This difference has implications for which socioeconomic class of teenagers is most likely to be groomed by sexual predators from an earlier age, and thus which group is most likely to end up with an unplanned teen pregnancy, bringing up further children in poverty at the mercy of the only fashion they can afford.
There’s a big difference between disapproving of modesty-fetishes in clothing for adult women and disapproving of sexualised fashions for pre-teen girls, although no doubt the “feminists are hypocrites” card will be waved. Wave away.
Crossposted at Hoyden About Town
I was hoping someone in the blogosphere would post on this – it’s a very interesting (and somewhat disturbing) development from a sociological perspective.
How easy would it be for the responsible parents and guardians to make this go away by simply not buying the products?
“The focus on the sexual misbehaviour of Congressman Foley in the USA flirting inappropriately with male teens has become a homophobic free-for-all, but hardly anyone is noting that older men being sexually flirtatious with female teenagers before the age of consent is situation-normal, as anyone who has ever been a teenage girl can attest. The sexual grooming of pre-consent-aged teens is not a behaviour peculiar to predatory homosexual males, it is a common behaviour of all sexually predatory “casanovasâ€?.”
This is a point that has been contin ually made on fox news. Check out some of Bill O Reilly’s talking points. He tends to believe that standards in America have begun to rise dramatically,
Works if you have money to shop around with, skribe. I’ve been fortunate enough to afford to avoid the skimpy stuff for my girl.
It doesn’t work for the low-income parent waiting until the last lot of clothes have worn out/grown out and only being able to afford clothes at a store which offers nothing but raunch-gear. They’ve got to buy the kid something to wear, so they buy what’s there.
Also, the creeping normalisation in the media means that it’s all too easy to see an 8 year old dressed like Britney or Paris simply as “cute”.
Yes, not buying the clothes is an obvious answer but there are things like toys (Bratz dolls anyone?), magazines, television, advertising etc. There’s a whole culture that is very difficult to escape completely.
‘but hardly anyone is noting that older men being sexually flirtatious with female teenagers before the age of consent is situation-normal,’ perhaps you have never heard of evidence to back up a claim. anecdotes are a poor research tool
Oh good, skribe. I was hoping that commenters wouldn’t go to the trouble of reading this post. That’s so 5 minutes ago, isn’t it?
On the “cute” point: I hesitate to bring in the name of JonBenet Ramsay (sp?) but I suppose somebody’s got to do it.
The monumental, mind-boggling disconnect that allows this kind of stuff to occur was illustrated by the reaction of Mrs Ramsay when asked the inevitable question about whether the grotesque ritual sexualisation of her daughter might not perhaps have been in some way connected to the manner of her death. Mrs Ramsay was truly horrified at the very notion that the barf-making clothes, makeup and stage routines she inflicted on JonBenet could have been construed as having anything at all to do with sex.
What, I wonder, did she think it had to do with?
Sheesh, BBEP. Can’t be bothered doing a tiny bit of homework about age differences in teenage relationships? Two cites pulled from the first webpage about teen pregnancy statistics that I came across on Google (an abstinence promotion site, as it happens):
In the country town I finished high school in the 16 year old girls were nearly all dating men over 18, many of them were dating men over 20, guys that they’d known and flirted with for months and years before their parents considered them old enough to go dating.
Of course, most of those blokes were nice enough guys who just wanted a girlfriend rather than being sexual predators, but it’s actually a bit tricky to tell the difference sometimes, until a man builds up enough of a track record as a user to get glanced at askance. Totally anecdotally, nice guys aren’t called Roota, f’rinstance.
Good to see someone posting about this strange phenomenon (for once, it appears, the Salafists have *something* to teach the rest of us!)
I read a while ago about a girl in the US who actually started a letter-writing campaign from tween girls to clothing manufacturers and distributors, demanding more modest alternatives for her coevals. From what I recall, there was some success.
It only needs for the market to be told, in strident terms if necessary, that this is NOT necessarily what the market demands. If need be, lower-income folks who can’t find what they think is appropriate should (in the grand spirit of improvisation) just up and *make* the clothes that they think are appropriate. Worthwhile changes in the world require effort; so, just make the damn effort. Then others follow, and are grateful to you, and get kool new ideas of their own (feeling “empowered” and so forth). Why is that such a hard thing to understand? Whole nations and civilizations are built on the proposition.
For what it’s worth, I grew up in an ostensibly “low-income environment”, yet my parents always exercised considerable care about what I wore, and altered it whenever they deemed it necessary (though I’m sure these matters are far more complex for girls). Plus I always caved, whenever they said so, until I became enough of an annoying teen to cleverly defy them without their knowing. But by then of course it was too late for me, since I had been taught the principles of good taste, whether I liked it or not. So, BFD. If ya care, then care.
It is difficult to resist fashions though, especially for young girls, who have always played at being ‘grown up’ – wearing Mum’s shoes etc… Surely though things like t-shirts with “boy toy” written across it is not suitable for little girls of eight years old? And surely manufacturers, no matter how profit-driven, can see this is not what they should be putting out there for little kids.
An odd side-situation is the current grown-woman fashion for small-child clothes – the sudden re-appearance of ‘playsuits’ and ‘pinafores’ in the 13-20 fashions is quite odd. (I say this as a most unfashionable 24yo woman)
Calls to mind a big culture shock moment in the US – going into a toy store to buy presents for the nephews and nieces and finding a range of matching pink feather boas, negligees and teddies for toddlers. Very peculiar.
Almost impossible?
Good for them and their two stores in NSW, neither in inner-Sydney, JF Beck. I’m not sure that $50 for one outfit is really what I’d call downmarket, either.
I suspect there’s a touch of hyperbole there, JF, for polemical purposes. Last time I checked, there were plenty of modest outfits in Best and Less, Target and Big W. I suspect the solution is a bit more parental discretion – for the most part, they’re the actual consumers.
E.g.
http://www.target.com.au/html/catalogue02O6/02O6p10.htm
Bismarck,
I found some similar Target fashions but used Chain Reaction because, in my experience, it has lower prices. Whereas tigtog seems to think the down-market chains are purposely sexualizing young girls (to what end?), I argue they’re simply offering what sells. It’s also possible tigtog hangs out with a children-sexualizing crowd.
Tigtog, great post, i was about to write a post about this on my own blog.
As a mother of a tween I adamently refuse to buy sexualised clothing for my kids and think the only appropriate response from retailers is to immediately review their current buying and marketing strategies, and make appropriate changes as necessary. No excuses, just common sense.
(While i didnt see the pics, i was surprised to hear Cindy Crawford permitted her 5 year old daughter to be photographed topless looking back over her shoulder that bore a (temporary) tattoo. What was she thinking?)
I’m such a stickler in this department that my gal has always worn bike shorts under any skirts and dresses since she was out of nappies. I’m not paranoid, just pragmatic- (a brief incarnation working as a social worker in child protection only confirmed what i had always suspected).
BTW Forgive the reduction of a complex issue into simplistic terms, but its worth keeping in mind that there are differing types of child sexual offenders; including the ‘paedophile’ who is sexually aroused by pre-pubescent children – a psychological orientation with a difficult prognosis around rehabilitation, and the opportunistic/situational offender who is attracted to adults, but finds themselves aroused (often initially to their own shock/anguish, and progressive justification) to a particular child, usually in close proximity to themselves such as a step-child, student or friend of their own child.
The sexualisation of young girls doesn’t help anybody; neither the kids cheated out of childhood acting out ambiguous roles, or the problematic adults struggling with these issues of attraction without access to help in negotiating this strongest of social taboos. The increasing prevalence of precocious puberty, family breakdown and community accountabilty just adds another problem to the mix.
And as to the point about fielding the attentions of adult men as a young girl…at one point in my early teens, growing up in a country youth group, more of my peers had been raped or sexually abused by adult men than not. Even the high profile MP and member of the church struggled with his own demons, as it turned out.
Bismarck, you really think those dresses for the 10yo-ish girls aren’t sexualised? A dress doesn’t have to bare a lot of skin to be a sexualised outfit, y’know. All but one of those outfits emphasises what would be the cleavage area on an adult woman (as do two of the toddler outfits, actually).
Have either you or Beck read the actual report appendix linked to in the first paragraph?
How exactly are the two mutually exclusive? Downmarket stores have always emphasised tawdry glamour over longer-lasting style, because stylish clothes require a higher standard of manufacture in order to hang properly etc, so they cost more to make. The tawdry glamour du jour is raunch-fashion, so that’s what they offer.
This is an outrageous slur. Apologise or fuck off.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Not much point in working one’s self up into a swivet about the sexualisation of tweens fashion when those fashions are merely aping what their slightly older sisters are wearing with great approbation. We live in a seamless world. What once happened behind closed doors and what was once spoke behind the hand are now broadcast globally. Much is gained. Something is lost. The myth of tween innocence is one of the losses.
Look to history.
Sexual grooming of minors vastly pre-dated Bratz. In fact Freud went into denial about the (to him) extraordinarily high level of sexual predation upon female minors in fin-de siecle Vienna, calling it fantasy. (Turns out, it was so high by contemporary standards at all, just never talked about.)
At least now its more in the open and tweens now have the some of the vocabulary to describe their world of nascent sexuality.
er,
that should read “wasn’t so high by contemporary standards…”
I agree the raunch fashions themselves are objectifying to all who wear them, but I disagree that there’s not much point in making a noise about it for younger kids. As the report’s author says, tweens absorbed in sexualised fashion marketed as recreational shopping and grooming will:
I also think pointing out to parents that raunch fashion for kids is likely to make them more vulnerable to sexual predators is worthwhile.
tigtog,
Easy there, you wouldn’t want to blow a gasket in your brain.
If you live in a mostly lower SES area, as do I, you’re bound to be aware that girls learn – notice I didn’t say are taught – from an early age that catching a male is a good way to improve their economic standing. Thus it is not uncommon to see year 10 (or even year 9) school girls going out with car-driving males. If that’s the environment in which you live, that’s what’s going on around you.
JF Beck,
You have seriously overstepped the mark with your comment about Tigtog. It is as tasteless as me querying why you apear to have such a fascination with tween fashion. I mean, I’ve never seen you this worked up before.
Corporations spend billions on marketing in order to manipulate consumers. They do it because they know it works. It is simply dishonest to say all responsibility for sexualised dress rests with the consumer, ie the parents.
Nice try Becky – now perhaps you’d like to explain what living near a State Emergency Service depot has to do with this topic. Is it the lads and lassies in the orange overalls that you reckon are the child sexualizers tigtog hangs out with?
Whatever – there’s a lot of difference between “Lives near the local SES” and “Hangs out with a child-sexualizing crowd.” More difference than that between an idiotic comment and a moronic one.
All worthy suggestions Tigtog.
But:
1. Ordering Bree to remove the tongue stud and get back to her French homework is more a prayer than a recommendation.
2. Parents already have a pretty good idea about the nexus between skank and predation. Most parents plot a very difficult course through the reefs and gales of adolescence. Risks are taken. compromises are made. Losses are sustained. Opportunities are lost. Lessons are learned. Most get through it ok.
JF Beck: what exactly does young men dating 15/16 yo girls (ie girls who actually do have breasts to accentuate) have to do with the words “children-sexualising crowd” in the context of a post about pre-teens?
You don’t even have the guts to own up to the clear implication of what you wrote, you’re just trying to weasel out of it. Apologise or not as you please, but own your words.
* * * *
Katz, what pre-teen gets a tongue stud without parental permission? The problems of raunch culture with older teens are a different issue entirely. Your point 2 smacks of a fatalism that doesn’t offer much.
When my daughter was in year 8 she hung out for a while with a very nice but unfortunate girl with a drifty eye, a hair lip and quite a lisp. One day while the girl was at the house playing with my daughter I overheard her telling my daugther with great anticipation about the toingue stud she was soon to get. When I asked why she was going to get a tongue stud – bearing in mind her family wasn’t off – she replied, “It’s for giving head; my sister has one; my mother has one; I’m getting one soon.” That girl had learned that sexuality was going to get her somewhere in life. Now, obviously my daughter and I were part of a child sexualizing crowd.
If people on lower incomes are having trouble finding new, fashionable yet modest clothing i suggest they try the Op-shops. My wife was always able to find excellent qaulity clothing, often with labels still attached.
It is ludicrous for tigtog to assert it is nearly impossible to find suitable childrens clothing and to make it seem to be the responsibility of the clothing vendors. It is also ludicrous to drag Foley into this when, as far as I’m aware, he flirted with males above the age of consent.
So I exaggerated about the tongue stud… replace it with a Bratz-endorsed feather boa.
It’s not fatalism. I acknowledge the huge and mostly successful efforts made by parents responding to evolving problems.
What’s the alternative?
1. Flying squads of “childhood development experts” wagging their fingers at parents pointing out their shortcomings?
2. A Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue ruling on what can be watched, what can be worn, what can be listened to, what can be thought?
Lytton Strachey would love that! A new Victorianism driven by moral righteousness. This is how Strachey nailed this fixation in Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby:
We escaped Victorianism the first time when we stopped being surprised that the naughtiest boys were having the best fun.
Beck, you seem to have changed your argument to say that the sexual mores of our society are responsible for young girls being expected to act like sexual beings in early puberty. I don’t think there’d be many here who’d disagree with such a statement. It’s true. However this:
Is quite different, and outrageous. What you said there, clearly, is that you think it’s possible tigtog and her friends treat children—pre-puberty—as sexual objects. That’s well and away the most serious slur I’ve ever read in a blog comments thread.
.
Robert Spicer, Ballbreaking. Evidently Spicer was an acute observer of the social milieu Becky inhabits. Although Becky’s tongue stud story has a slight whiff of urban legend about it.
Good post, tigtog. I don’t have any children but I worked in fashion retail for almost a decade and I think this is a creeping shift, year by year, and if we compared young girls’ clothing of ten years ago to what’s in the shops right this moment we’d get a pretty big shock.
I’m actually very pleased to find out from you that a think tank is devoting some time and energy to addressing such an issue. Mass-market fashion is a really weird one because even when just about everybody agrees it’s in a pernicious or offensive phase, nobody seems able to take responsibility for instituting change or even able to point the finger to where the trend came from in the first place.
If I had intended to accuse tigtog of sexualizing children I would have done so. I clearly stated that my family has interacted socially with people who openly sexualized their children; that does not mean that I have sexualized children: my daughter is proof that I haven’t. (She’ll be home from work in a little while and would no doubt be happy to comment, if you’d like.)
Now, I really couldn’t care less if you guys want to have a cry about what you think I meant — you guys are, after all, always having a big indignant cry about something.
I’m with tigtog all the way on this one.
I can not see any virtue (omigod, a value laden word) in 8 year olds wearing shirts that say “look but dont touch’, ‘hard to get’, or ‘make me purr” and i cringe everytime i see it.
I am not saying kids are asexual…i just think there is a significant case for age appropriate development, and while kids are in a sensitive and important stage of emergent development physically as well as emotionally, the commodification of their bodies at this point is appalling. FFS.
I agree that the fashions being discussed are someaht sexualised – but haven’t we always done this to a degree? I’m thinking particularly of flower girls dressed up to be just like the bride at weddings.
And Liam, your faux outrage is unbecoming. It is obvious that Beck was not accusing tigtog in the manner you suggest.
Fine; so what exactly does someone intend when they make a remark like this?
I am still very puzzled about exactly what point you turned up in this discussion to make in the first place. Or is it just a two-knee-jerk reaction, one against someone dissing the great god Market Forces and the other against someone who looks as though she might have some *gasp* feminist motivation lurking somewhere?
Either way it’s despicable to hurl a bit of slimy insulting innuendo and then pretend you didn’t.
And you, Peter, are as sleazy as Beck. What makes you able to decide that Liam’s outrage is “faux”?
After all, you, the arbiter of what is “obvious” can’t tell the difference between a child in come hither clothes and a bridesmaid.
I am stunned that people on this thread can condone the sexualisation of childhood.
This is one of those points where genuine conservatism and the right wing cease to walk in step.
The right is happy to see children used as fodder for the marketplace – not just about this, but about the general use of advertising to activate the desires of children – while conservatives recognise it is morally degenerate.
On this issue, they are correct.
Forget about Beck. Why let him derail a useful discussion? Thanks again for the post, Tigtog.
After I posted a comment I went and looked through the PDF Tigtog linked to and it emphasises that the issue is not only the clothes it is as much the way they are marketed and the poses and situations the models adopt in catalogues and posters.
Dear david. Where exactly have, or anyone else here condoned the sexualisation of childhood? I merely observed that at those earthy semi-pagan ritials we call weddings, we dress very young girls exactly the same as we dress the bride.
Are you suggesting that the bride isn’t sexualised perhaps?
As to Liam’’s outrage (and yours I expect), it is either faux or ignorant. Your call
Folks, Beck is a troll. He is getting exactly the reaction he hoped for when he made the comment. Ignore him and enjoy his more and more desperate attempts for attention.
JF Beck, Peter.
My outrage is neither faux, nor ignorant.
I think the words you’re looking for, Beck are ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that’.
Fair call, Tim. I’m sorry, tigtog, everyone.
Becky,
Stop being such a little miss catty-drawers and play nice. Liam’s suggested wording seems to me an eminently suitable start.
That’s me done too.
Is it not fair enough to question tigtog’s absurd assertion that the poor are forced to dress their children like tarts because down-market shops sell nothing else? We could also discuss her silly attempt to work Foley into the topic. It is you guys who have veered off into an indignant huff over nothing in order to take attention away from tigtog’s nonsense. If tigtog and her friends are forced to shop where only tarty clothes are available, how could their daughters be dressed any other way? Get it?
Lambert’s then joins in to divert attention by calling me a troll, which is itself a form of trolling. (From the link he so graciously provides:
If Lambert would like to discuss something substantive he should do as Jason Soon suggested and discuss the utter trash he’s been cranking out regarding DDT and malaria. Instead, he takes these little wussy jabs at me and then retreats to the safety of Dulltard.
Jeez, the whole lot of you are big babies.
Here’s some sexualization of minors for you LPers to be upset about:
If Lambert the scientist ever gets up the nerve to discuss his DDT garbage with me, a working schmuck, he can meet me here. Hey Lambert, you aren’t chicken, are you?
Enough with the cross-blog fights.
Umm dudes don’t drag me into your feud. All that happened was that JF Beck posted a link to a piece of his on one of my open forums and I said ‘Good piece, Beck. If Tim Lambert is reading he’s welcome to comment on it here’.
I see. I comment on the limited choices affordable to low-income families and you assume that I must fall into that category myself. I wouldn’t be particularly ashamed if that were the case, but it is not, and your assumption that the only reason I would mention it is if it was my own situation is insulting.
Some of us are able to look beyond our own personal situations when critiquing social trends, actually, hard as that may be for you to appreciate. I’m well aware that many other people will not be taking a month off over Christmas and New Year to show their kids around London, Paris and the snows of Scandinavia, and very happy that the business my husband and I own enables us to take that opportunity, although we really should knock off on the rich food that’s given me wee-hours indigestion.
So what contortions will you demonstrate to justify not apologising for your insinuations now? It’s starting to get quite entertaining in a kinda ponderous hippopotamus-waltzing way.
tigtog wrote: For people on low incomes, this means that if you want your daughter to have new clothes for that schoolmate’s birthday party, to fit in so that they won’t be ostracised as too poor to afford nice new clothes, there is no option other than to dress like a raunchy pop-star.
That’s a claim that low income people have no choice in the matter. So, you obviously don’t hang around with any low income earners with daughters? Do you consider yourself a low income earner? Do you have a daughter?
Perhaps you should apologize to low income earners for accusing them of inappopriately dressing their dayghters. Oh yeah, before my daughter went to bed she read through the post and comments. She reckons you guys are nuts, likening your position to people who claim the poor are inclined to be fat because they can’t afford a balanced diet.
Of course people can always choose not to purchase new fashions that they find disturbing, and many buy used clothing in order to avoid the raunch-wear, but eventually the supply of older clothes from before the current trend will wear out, so then even the op-shop clothes for kids will be sexualised styles like this high end of the market outfit for an 8-10 year old from the latest Fred Bare catalogue – a basic summer sun-dress, which I’m sure will wear well enough to be handed down through several families, not one of whom will consider it “tarty”.
Click through their online catalogue [link] and just look at how few of these girls photographed at a beach location are posed as kids just having fun in pretty clothes, and how many are lounging around posed in what the lingerie industry has traditionally described as “come hither” poses, quite possibly because that’s all the photographers have ever done before and no-one stopped to simply think about whether posing kids the same way was appropriate.
There’s only about 3 outfits out of 30 I would buy for my daughter in that catalogue, despite the lovely fabrics, and probably only 1 of them that she would be willing to wear. Hope I get to the store before it’s sold out, eh? It’s certainly no easier for families on lower incomes to find clothing that just lets kids be kids.
Interestingly, immigrants from cultures where home-dressmaking is still a valued skill probably do exactly that. But amongst home-grown Aussies, very few women are brought up to sew anymore (and the blokes never were). My mum was taught to sew, and made clothes for us, but although she taught me the basics I don’t sew these days except for some occasional embroidery and a button now and then. Still, at least I can afford to buy a sewing machine and learn how to sew again if really necessary.
Hands up, commentors – how many of us can sew well enough to make clothes for the family? I know Laura can: anyone else?
Re Class and choice – Supre is about the hottest shop in the ‘burbs for girls aged 10 upwards. Its possible to find some age appropriate outfits for under $20, but i still think tween girls needs to be guided by their parents on their purchases. (There is a plethora of Hoe/skanky stuff on offer.)
Browsing in the childrens section in Kmart last month, i saw a black 70’s Ozzy Osbourne tshirt in little girls size 8. Maybe i sound prudish, but dressing my kid to look like a groupie ain’t gonna happen, even if Ozzie is a rather rambling impotent incarnation of his previous self these days.
(In the interests of balance i will also say I have just as much of a problem with young boys wearing shirts advertising violent games or bands such as Grand Theft Auto Vice City, or Cannibal Corpse etc.)
By the way, in the same set as The black Eyed Peas “My Lumps” I spotted my 10 year daughter and 12 year old niece watching the clip to an american ghetto rap song “I Can” which seems rather on topic:
Chorus –
I know I can (I know I can)
Be what I wanna be (be what I wanna be)
If I work hard at it (If I work hard it)
I’ll be where I wanna be (I’ll be where I wanna be)
[Nas]
Be, B-Boys and girls, listen again
This is for grown looking girls who’s only ten
The ones who watch videos and do what they see
As cute as can be, up in the club with fake ID
Careful, ‘fore you meet a man with HIV
You can host the TV like Oprah Winfrey
Whatever you decide, be careful, some men be
Rapists, so act your age, don’t pretend to be
Older than you are, give yourself time to grow
You thinking he can give you wealth, but so
Young boys, you can use a lot of help, you know
You thinkin life’s all about smokin weed and ice
You don’t wanna be my age and can’t read and write
Begging different women for a place to sleep at night
Smart boys turn to men and do whatever they wish
If you believe you can achieve, then say it like this
[Chorus]
A rather ironic juxtaposition to the lyrics to My Lumps i thought!
Tigtog that Fred Bare catalogue is actually quite problematic to my eyes.
WHat the hell is this supposed to be advertising : sheeze.
I’d be surprised if they dont pull it down but weeks end.
That’s some pretty sick shit there, Tigtog, though Fred Bare aint cheap! I have 2 daughters, and being in the lower socio-economic income category, shop at places like best and less and Big-W and don’t find their ranges to be particularly skanky.
Supre is the king of skank
.
Yes. (Just.) Show me a full lining that hangs properly and I’m anybody’s.
The last thing I hauled the sewing machine out for was to make 8 round white tablecloths for my 76-year-old widower father’s second wedding. Does that count as ‘clothes for the family’?
The Fred Bare catalogue is pretty disturbing. The clothes appear to be pretty harmless in the main – although so many full-skirted dresses with bare shoulders are a bit sad from the point of view of encouraging kids to be active and unselfconscious, I assume these are mostly special occasion clothes – but the poses are very inappropriate for such young girls, as it the makeup.
Alex, I’m glad to hear you’re finding the clothes you want at a reasonable price. My daughter’s always been tall, so we’ve been shopping in the women’s section rather than the girls’ section for a couple of years now. Certainly when I last looked for basic play clothes in my local budget-chainstores’ girls’ section a few years ago I was appalled at what was on offer, and it was an issue discussed much with other mums at the time.
It’s interesting to read the visual cues and apparent intent of the marketers of this clothing for girls.
Sublime Cowgirl, above, provides a link to FredBare with the comment “sheeze”.
Pictured is a girl wearing singlet top and shorts. This outfit has remained essentially unchanged as beachwear since the late 1960s.
However, what has changed is the way in which the photograph grabs attention with the girl’s pose of sexual understanding and perhaps sexual availability.
Without this packaging the clothing says nothing, just another variant on a forty-year-old theme.
With this packaging the clothing implies a promise of knowledge and confidence.
But it may be argued that FredBare’s marketing strategy simply joins the last dots in a picture that connects pre-pubescent girls to the world of sexual body language.
When girls go shopping with their mums to buy this stuff is this is what is sticking in their mind when they decide to purchase FredBare singlet and shorts over all other available brands?
If mum said no, I’m buying you Brand X instead, is the daughter thereby prevented from transferring these sexual meanings on to the essentially identical, but not FredBare clothing?
If not, then the issue is one of culture, not of merchandising.
The more I think about this the more it’s all about the advertising more so than the clothing itself, which you can really take or leave, but it is much harder to get advertising images out of your head, not only when your shopping but when you’re at home looking in the mirror or getting dressed for the day.
It seems you could almost argue that the kids clothes are advertised with more emphasis on sexualising the body underneath than is adult women’s clothing of the same kind. The brand Frangipani Rose mentioned in the report has an ad here for a long-sleeved white crocheted cardigan – quite a nice-looking garment – but it’s photographed on a girl wearing only a rather small pink bikini underneath.
To say nothing of her makeup — visible lippy and mascara, ever so appropriate for a child at the beach — and all that goop in the poor little sod’s otherwise beautiful hair.
I’m lucky that I can sew well enough to make some clothing for my family. And when I see little tops for my baby daughter at Target that have ties across where her bust will one day be, then I start to think I should find some patterns and start making her clothes.
Laura, totally with you on the way that they’ve decided that the best way to show the crocheted cardi is over a bikini, yet there’s nothing actually wrong with the cardi per se.
The dress from Frangipani Rose that just screams “wrong” to me for a tween is this one. Why style it with such a deep V-neck bodice, emphasised with crocheting, that it makes a 10-year old look like she has breasts that she doesn’t?
I agree with TigTog on this particular dress. It would have been just as pretty with a straight across top and the bead straps. I almost fainted at the price though.
The culture/merchandising cause/effect relationships is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, surely they reinforce each other. Attempting to argue that it’s one or the other is pointless when it’s actually both.
Precisely my point Tigtog.
Clearly, after pouting a bit, the moppet will vamp as enthusiastically in Brand X as she would have in FredBare.
FredBare, not being at the cutting edge of this whole Lolita thing, is simply producing memes of a pre-existing trope. Adding its widow’s mite to a great steaming pile of ersatz sultriness.
(Did I say Lolita??)
The person who invented plunging neckline dresses for pre-pubescent girls has nothing on the inventor of this. (work safe)
Fuck’s sake!!
Don’t any kids ever go thru a ‘tomboy’ phase any more? Just make *that* seem cool again, and then all this horrid stuff will go away, and then you’ll have to worry about something strange like kids dressing like the cast of “Newsies”. As Nana Rosannadanna used to say, It’s always something.
Really I think the first step is for the parents to have the self-possession to just say, “No, you can’t wear stuff like that. And the reason is simply that we are not the sort of people who let our kids wear stuff like that.” And to tell the stores, “No, we won’t buy stuff like that, for same reason etc.” And call up the store that uses the catalogs with the inappropriate photo-shoots, and just tell them plainly that you won’t buy from their store any more, and don’t forget to tell them what exactly the reason is. They’ll start to respond to your wishes, I think. It’s amazing what even a small bit of vocalizing can accomplish, when it comes to consumer relations.
The Frangipani Rose catalogue is very interesting to me. I gather from a couple of sources that it’s a very small and quite new operation (not like the Fred Bare juggernaut) and at least one of the children pictured – I don’t know which child – is the daughter of the company owner. The photography looks kind of amateur to me.
I don’t think it’s drawing too long a bow to interpret those pictures therefore as a relatively unsophisticated, unmassaged, undisguised attempt to copy the sort of advertising that’s worked well for established kid clothes retailers – who have influence and set the aesthetic benchmark.
The Frangipani Rose marketing is naive, then, but that just makes it all the more indicative of what the market leaders have trained consumers to think is appropriate and indeed worth aspiring to.
Coming in late, (may even be a day behind debate!) but I share Tigtog’s concerns about advertising practices, and I have a young daughter.
FWIW, I cant see how this has anything to do with how parents decide to dress their children, Beck, regardless of their income. The issue the report focuses on is the extension of raunch culture, through advertising, down the demographic chain. IMHO There’s some pretty borderline images on this site alone.
OTOH, I dont think there’s any need for regulation myself – Im quite sure a few well placed hits with the ‘P’ word will see DJs and Myers pulling their heads in quick smart.
My best guess is they’ve done some very grubby market research, using dodgy McDonalds’ consultants, in long term customer loyalty, and are pitching at tweens for the long term investment in their teen and adult dollar. But Im afraid intent wont cure the effect – time to watch what they’re peddling out there.
Frankly, I just dont want my daughter feeling its cool and hip to mimic ’sexual available’ older styles, thanks very. And I really dont care if she likes the look, and hates me for it, either.
Too bad, darling, when youre 16 you can buy what you want!
I’ve only seen the news story about TAI’s report, together with some blogs posts on it.
It seems to me that a problem with this kind of analysis is that someone may see a picture of a kid as sexualised while another person doesn’t.
Quite right, j_p_z: that’s exactly what I’ve done with my daughter and what most of her friends’ parents have also done. She now sighs about how some girls at school only talk about fashion, and how boring they are.
I’ve also done the calling the store and the clothing company thing when I see clothes and advertising that concerns me, as have others I know (I called Fred Bare this morning, to be told “it’s a free country” as indeed it is). So far it’s not making much of an impression on the advertising that lobs into my mailbox, though.
Not too much doubt in some cases, though Sacha.
Oops, here it is.
I agree with most of what’s been written here (I have a 12yo daughter).
The problem is easy to see but there is no solution. You can’t stop peer pressure, your kid(s) reading Dolly, watching the teen shows on TV, going into the toy sections and seeing Bratz dolls, seeing the other kids at the local pool etc etc. Sometimes I wonder if making your kids stand out by making them wear ‘out-of-fashion’ gear might damage them in some way and may even be very minor psychological abuse.
Some of my daughter’s Yr7 schoolmates have belly button piercings (with or without parental consent, I don’t know) and that’s our running battle at the moment (there’s NO way I will give in on that one and if I find out that it’s done at some retail piercing place I’ll dob them in).
I looked at some of the pics linked here and really have to wonder if some of the problem might be in eyes of the beholder.
A lot of this may be about getting children used to purchasing, so it becomes a habit early in life. The purpose is to keep them purchasing in their young adult years and to ‘SPEND SPEND SPEND!” to the benefit of the corporations
That’s a good point, Alan. Obviously, the image of an independent consumer purchasing their own choices is an adult, so the children must be presented as having a veneer of adulthood, which is at least partly overt sexuality.
I don’t think that’s the whole explanation, but just as raunch culture as the commodification of sexuality was first marketed to young adults and then teens on one side and parents in the ‘burbs on the other, it just keeps getting pushed along the marketing demographics.
The tendency to shrug about how [insert matter of social concern here] is just the natural progression of marketing and the free market at work is exactly the problem that the Australia Institute is aiming to address with their reports. Competitive markets are an efficient goods and services delivery system, but totally free markets are amoral, and that amorality can clash with social goals.
Nice to see that DJs has decided to sue over this outrageous slur. I hope Ms Greig does also.
Well i’ve relooked at the site TigTog linked to see if i’m overreacting, but on another glance this still concerns me.
Perhaps its just an optical illusion, but its not in good taste for a girl her age and should have been picked up by the layout editors before posting it online.
You are overreacting, believe me. Just what is it about that particular photo that you dont like? Is it because shes lifting her skirt slightly? Or the bare shoulders? Or the way the folds in the skirt show?? This is truly pathetic.
Its not pathetic- these models are not being posed as children playing and having fun in the clothes, or even just ‘being’ – sitting on a bench for example – their poses are very reminicent of the provocative poses generally adopted by adult models – the illusion of ‘hips’, the mouth slighly parted – once someone points it out, suddenly it all hits you how strange a pose that is for a child on the beach. Its not a natural pose, and thats what seems quite wrong.
Are you talking about the same photo? So its the hips and parted mouth? I read it as a girl thinking woops, I’m about to get wet. She is at the beach after all. But then maybe I’m just normal. So yes, its pathetic.
Note the equally provocative pose of the girl in the background.
Have we become so desensitised to the commodification of womens bodies as a tool to sell stuff that we dont notice this in a child?
It is an unnatural pose for a young girl to be sure, and a strange choice of image to display a set of clothing, when the shorts are barely even visible in the image.
Therefore i am left assuming that they are trying to sell me on the clothing primarily by marketing an image they have deliberately chosen to project.
To be fair, perhaps it was all just an unfortunate and ill considered shot, but i dont think it hurts us as a community charged with raising the next generation to have this discussion around personal and community responsibilty to them.
sc,
I went through the whole of the AI’s now gone electronic appendix and will admit that some of the shots were pretty silly. But silly is a long way from corporate paedophilia. Most of the photos were certainly nothing to get upset about.
JFB
I agree the terminology Corporate Paed. is an overly sensationalist term, and i cringe when i see the word paedophile mis/overused, but, the tween marketing phenomenon and its often questionable overtones is real, as any thinking mother of kids will confirm. Many Adult stores now routinely stock size 6 to cater for this created demand, somthing that was unheard of just 10 years ago.
I’m glad marketers have been taken to task over this…if it means a more cautious approach i dont think anyone has anything to lose.
THe best approach companies can take to stem this storm in a padded AAA cup Bralette is to state (or feign) sincere regret for any unintentional offense that has been taken , withdraw any ambiguous images that have caused community concern so as to be seen as responsive, and state that in line with their commitment to quality, care and community responsibility they will take extreme care and thought in the marketing of all future campaigns so as to present images reflective of freedom and innocence of a carefree childhood in line with community standards.
The target demographic of affluent Mothers (who have the bucks to afford the clothes and the education to critique them) will appreciate this show of corporate support, rather than a show righteous indignation from the male executives which is being percieved as an insult to our protective instincts.
Have we become so desensitised to the commodification of womens bodies as a tool to sell stuff that we dont notice this in a child?
I think you have become so sensitized by what you think you see in these photos that you and your feminist friends see it all over the place. And dont think this sensitization doesnt have real consequences.
sc,
Have you seen this ad campaign?
that’s the second time in threads on this topic that I’ve seen J F Beck post a link to that Lee ad and I’m still puzzled about why he thinks it’s relevant to this topic since the model in the photograph is an adult woman, not an eight-year-old.
SC, I used to work in retail, and just wanted to interject that size six, although unusual a few years ago, was a really popular size at the shop I worked in – mainly for very adult, mid-30s + women, who just happened to be tiny – particuarly Asian women
JFB – while i’ll avoid the merits or otherwise of using these images to sell shit, the difference with that Ad campaign and inappropriate images of young girls is that like it or not, the Lee Jeans images of the couple are (mostly) actually representative of typical behaviour of that age group playing with and exploring their sexuality. (The guy even remotely looks like the boyfriend i had when i was a late teenager).
The photographer in bed with the model is another story but, the issue at hand isn’t consensual expressions of sexuality or exploitation of over-age kids is it?
Perhaps the link illustrates the very likely potential that most art directors and photogrphers in the fashion industry are between 20 – 38, get the bulk of their work by doing sexualied images of women, and perhaps just arent that in tune with the issues faced by a parent trying to negotiate their young daughters through an increasingly bizarre world.
Same wavelength as me Laurie, sorry for cross post double up.
Yeah i figured the size 6 thing was primarily aimed at tiny petite women, ( half their luck) but i know of many 11 and 12 year olds that wont shop at in the childrens sections anymore who are lapping these up nowdays.
“…many 11 and 12 year olds that wont shop at in the childrens sections anymore…”
??
See, there’s your problem. Either there’s an awful lot of independently wealthy 11 and 12 year olds who have the pocketbook power to decide exactly where “they’re” gonna shop or not shop; or else there’s an awful lot of parents who should just learn to say more strongly how it’s gonna be.
I wonder if the famous “creeping postponement of adulthood” which has been in ever greater evidence in the West since the 60’s* has anything to do with this…
[* -- cripes, the 60s! Is there anything they *can't* do?]
Now that I think of it, it’s even weirder than I thought: let’s say you’ve got all of these boomers and GenX-or-Y types who pathologically seek to put off adulthood indefinitely; at the same time, you’ve got these kids who seem to have an urge to leap-frog adolescence, and sit straight at the grown-up’s table. Sooner or later, will the two lines intersect?
“The child is father to the man… no no, really, I wasn’t being poetical, I’m quite serious.”
–the revised Wordsworth
jpz – look i agree with you. Its a multi faceted issue which needs to be looked at on several fronts.
THe current debate is about the media/fashion industries complicity in the situation.
Class, education and societal trends clearly have a role to play.
Off the track, and on a health related level , there is serious debate and scientific study around the issue of precocious and increasingly early onset puberty at the moment.
There are a lot of hypotheses which are being seriously considered including the the issue being debated above (the premature sexualisation of children), to exposure to meletonin, exposure to chemicals in hair products and carpets etc, to being raised in single parent families without the mitigating presence of adult male pheremones/hormones. ( I kid you not)..
Ok, this is my last post on this topic.
While i’m pleased to admit I’ve been called a MILF more than once, who in their right mind would like their kid expressing this wish?
THe kids cothing company Pimpfants, evidently.
Sadly this not a joke.
I think sheeting the blame for the increased sexualisation of pre-teen girls onto corporations is lazy – it seems a more generalised cultural phenomena than that.
I also get a little disturbed by comments such as one up thread about what Salafists might be able to teach us. I ma glad though that the comment was made becasue it does tend to highlight the fact that the de-sexualisation of pre-teens , and even women in general may not be quite the boon for womens empowerment that is anticiapted. So there is a danger in a moral panic about female sexuality that does seem to me to lead pretty directly to that somewhat hysterical prudery (which is itself deeply prurient) that does not seem to me to be very closely co-related with the empowerment (i really hate that word but there it is) of either women or girls.
I tend to think that in a society where sexuality is more frank and women are allwoed to express rather than supress their own there will be an entirely natural tendency for girls, in role modelling their own behaviour to imitate that of adult women. I do think that there is often something totalitarian and sinister about culturally enforced notions of feamle chastity and purity. I think it almost always ends up being the case that women become the prisoners rather than the gatekeepers of such notions.
All that said I do think there is a genuine concern when 10 yo-ish girls are encouraged dress and comport themselves as sexual objects, but it I think it is not the sexiness itself that is the problem, it is the trashiness of it. I think that fighting thsi battle by try to de-sexualise growing adolsecent girls is proabably a losing battle, and for the reason above I ma not even sure it is the right fight to be waging. I mean past remedies have involved something like convent like conditions being imposed to somehow maintain the “purity” of adoslescent girls – I can hardly beleive that that is what anyone here would be seriously seeking.
I think a better approach is to use the positive connotations of sexiness and hotness that many girls seem to model themselves against to push better role models. To me pushing role models with the message that they are being pushed precisely becasue they are NOT “sexy” seems pretty counterproductive. Maybe stressing the point that positive role models who don’t dress and behave like tramps and bimbos are actually more sexy might be more productive – I ma not suggesting that little girls all now switch to dressing in smart business suits or the like but that maybe stressing that “sexiness”, which to certain degree is a placeholder for the very naturall urge that everyone has to be appealing and attractive , wold actually be enhanced by a little more naturalness and unaffectedness.
Johan W, you make some very good points.
Many people in reacting to this report seem to be looking more at the 12yos than at the 8yos, and arguing that it’s nota ll that bad. I agree that it is natural for girls entering pubescence to start modelling both their behaviour and their clothing on adult women, especially the young adult women who get media and community admiration for their looks. Obviously it’s an art for a parent to balance indulging the pubescent’s natural experimental urges with some caution as to dressing in too overtly sexual a fashion.
Offering fashions for 8yos that emphasise non-existent cleavage, or which carry messages referencing sexuality in pop culture, or promote makeover play as superior to waterpistols etc are pushing that playful experimentation urge down into a demographic where IMO it doesn’t belong. I’m all with you on the “more naturalness and unaffectedness” regarding advertising and fashion for pre-pubertal children.
Indeed, so we get more of Peter Costello’s kids. More to mould & eventually direct into the army, or kitchen…& going by the ’sexualisation’ thing you can see the Corporations in league w/ our HIGHER MORAL VALUES (lol) Federal Govt. are ensuring young girls are primed to work in the BIG FUTURE INDUSTRIES incl. Casinoes, Strip Joints, Porn, Fashion, Advertising, Pap Musik, Cosmetics, Hooters & other food chains etc…all courtesy of the USA…& the Packer, Berlusconi & Murdoch New World machine.
Ha!
There could of course be some reason totally unrelated to the Australia Institute report, but the pictures from their Summer 2006 catalogue that I linked to upthread are no longer online.
I predicted over at my blog then that they wouldn’t still have it online in a week’s time.
Internal trackback – I’ve done a related post:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/10/17/the-veil-or-the-push-up-bra-its-a-false-nonchoice/
trackback to a rant on For Rattle! (younger sibling of For Battle!)
http://forrattle.blogspot.com/2006/10/corporate-paedophilia_20.html