Life & Style | Parenting
Scared to dress their age
Fashion urges women to dress in 'little girl' pinks and kids to wear heels
- By Olivia Lichtenstein, Daily Mail
- Published: 00:00 May 1, 2010
- Image Credit: Rex Features
- British glamour model Katie Price (aka Jordan) has built a career out of dressing like a Barbie doll
When I was a child of 7, one of my most prized possessions was a pair of plastic high-heeled Cinderella slippers with elastic straps and faux jewels. I used to click-clack around the house pretending to be a grown-up.
So far, so normal; the average 7-year-old has always snuck into her mother's room and tried on her clothes, shoes and make-up; it is all part of emulating your female role model and experimenting with what will happen in the future.
But this was strictly "dressing up" and our childhoods were mercifully free from Hannah Montana and Bratz dolls.
Sad turn of events
Where girls of the past had party shoes and a best dress that were just a little more grown-up and saved for special occasions, today's little girls have an entire wardrobe of clothes more suited to a street-walker than a child.
How on earth did we reach this depressing state of affairs? Is it the mothers, the fashion designers or the media who are to blame for girls as young as 3 maturing to this extent?
How can mothers utterly fail to realise the consequences of dressing up their young daughters in clothes that, at best, overexcite young boys and, at worst, add fuel to the sick desires of paedophiles?
Mothers no longer limit their daughters' grown-up role-play to the safety of their homes.
This once-healthy, private behaviour was part of a psychological process of preparing oneself for the future; now it is imposed on girls by the fashion industry, celebrity culture and parents' insecurities.
Blurred boundaries
As a result, our shops are awash with inappropriate clothing for little girls and mothers collude in this trend by dressing daughters in a way that robs them of their innocence and shortens their childhoods.
There is no denying the fact that the boundaries between adulthood and childhood have been getting dangerously blurred and that many clothes available for young girls are downright inappropriate.
We live in a topsy-turvy world where women are desperate to look like girls while girls crave to look like adult women. In my view, the overall message to men is that attractiveness is inextricably linked to extreme youth.
The storm caused by Primark's padded top for 7-year-olds recently made me wonder whether this was just the tip of the iceberg. I decided to investigate what was on offer on the High Street.
Horrifying discovery
It was bad enough when my now-16-year-old daughter was 7 and asking for cropped tops but the notion of padded tops would have been unthinkable then.
My trawl revealed a horrifying array of clothing on sale to girls as young as 3 in everyday shops and at affordable prices.
Today's fashion-conscious pre-teen is a paedophile's dream — all the innocence of childhood with the suggestion of womanly attributes. What mother in her right mind would allow her daughter to wear such things?
Primark also offers body-con dresses for 8-year-olds. Clothes such as this are designed to cling to curves, insidiously implying a young girl's future role as a commodity.
Pink protest
In BHS, viewed by many as an old-fashioned, wholesome brand, I found padded, diamond-studded tops for 9-10-year-olds, figure-hugging dresses for 8-9-year-olds and tracksuit trousers with "Princess" emblazoned across the bottom.
When I contacted them, they informed me that the padded and lacy pink tops had been withdrawn. As for the strapless dresses, the style will be "modified to incorporate shoulder straps" and the "Princess" tracksuit bottoms will be reviewed.
At Next, you can buy strappy pink sandals with a one-and-a-half-inch heel in a child's size 12 and wedged flip-flops with "Beach Babe" on the strap that can be teamed with a fluorescent pink miniskirt available for girls aged 4 and up.
When contacted, a spokesperson for Next said: "Everyone at Next is sensitive to issues of age-appropriateness within children's wear."
The sandals (which are, a spokesperson informed us, "a fun item, offered in response to demand for fancy-dress"), the flip-flops (not "inappropriate as holidaywear") and skirt ("available from age 3-16, with the length graduating proportionately to ensure the hem sits above the knee but most certainly not thigh-high") will remain in store.
Other items I felt were far too precocious include a range of Hannah Montana-branded items in the Disney Store: patent zebra-print boots in size 2-3 with two-inch heels; tiger-print tops; and miniskirts for 2-3-year-olds.
Asda has Hannah Montana cropped tops and denim pencil skirts for 5-6-year-olds.
A recent Grazia magazine has a feature on the wardrobe of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's 4-year-old daughter, Suri. Fed by her mother's obsession with American teen show Gossip Girl, Suri wears heels and tailored jackets.
Holmes's favourite pastime is dressing up her daughter. If children are treated as dolls by their mothers, how can they fail to internalise the message of their future role as objects of desire for men?
You might say: "Lighten up, it's all harmless fun." But is it?
Tom Narducci of the NSPCC doesn't think so. He says: "These clothes have a strong impact on young girls — on what they see as valuable and worthwhile and how they see themselves as they become young women. If you teach them to behave this way, it legitimises the people who want to abuse them."
Recently, Dr Linda Papadopoulos carried out a review for the Home Office. Her report states: "The world is saturated with more images today than at any other time in our modern history.
"Behind each of these images lies a message about expectations, values and ideals."
Who among us was not shocked by the image earlier this year of Katie Price's 2-year-old daughter, Princess, wearing false eyelashes and full make-up with her curly hair blow-dried straight?
For all Price's admonitions that it was a bit of fun, can she honestly say she can control the desires of any passing deviant who is free to view her daughter's picture now and forever on the internet?
Child psychologist Laverne Antrobus claims: "Adults aren't able to contain their own anxieties and are now offloading them on to their daughters by impressing on them that they have to look pretty.
"These days, the emphasis everywhere is primarily on appearance and this has worryingly moved into clothing for young children."
Antrobus, who has two teenage daughters, says: "When you're 7 years old, you don't need to be judged by your appearance. Children are bombarded with images and face pressures that we as children didn't have to face.
"As a result, they are struggling with mental health and depression at a much earlier age.
"Kids pick up everything — all the messages about the need for beauty, youth and thinness. To have value today is all about the external."
Learn to say ‘no'
Antrobus is very clear that our children need us to be a parent for the first 16-18 years of their life — you can be their friend after that. As a parent, the principle of saying "no" should not be lost.
Inappropriately dressed young girls legitimise the notion that children can be related to as sexual objects.
Children are being approached and groomed at an earlier age and this feeds the crime that is paedophilia.
What's more, a 2009 Home Office survey found links between this trend and violence in teenage relationships, with 20 per cent boys believing it is OK under certain circumstances to hit a women if she is wearing revealing clothing.
Don't we mothers know in our hearts that it's wrong to dress our children this way and that we have a clear duty to protect them from becoming mere objects for the delectation of men?
Preserve their childhood
Let us stop pandering to this dangerous trend and dress our daughters as the little girls they are and let them have the childhood they deserve.
Quite apart from the sheer distasteful nature of the tacky clothes on offer, we must teach our daughters what is valuable and worth striving for — and that the colour of their lip gloss and the shape of their bodies should be way down the list of priorities.
More from Parenting
More from Life & Style
Unwind with Gulf News' weekly feature publication
Life & Style editor's choice
-
'Hypnotism cured my diabetes'
When Linda Robson was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she found an unusual way of tackling it
-
Driven: Renault's desert Duster
This Renault may sound like it was named after a hoover. One thing's for sure — the Duster is here to clean up
-
Study in style: InsideOut video shoot
Go behind the scenes at InsideOut's May 2012 home office shoot
