Kiddie porn, crass commercialism or both?

Paris Hilton- a bad role model, but she didn't put herself on the cover of Dolly.

There has been a lot of noise in the media lately about whether some of the items being marketed to children, and the marketing itself, are leading to the 'sexualisation' of children.

On the one hand, I can remember being jealous as a child (maybe 7 or 8 years old) of one friend who had a cute midriff top- my dad expressed his disgust at such clothes and said something along the lines of I would never be allowed to wear one. Then again, he was against the idea of me getting my ears pierced too. Eventually I was allowed to get that done for my 10th birthday (my grandmother had a fit over that). My best friend at the time had had her ears pierced when she was 6 months old. The same friend had a kiddie makeup kit with miniature lipsticks that I thought was very cool. And, come to think of it, that friend's mother had miniature g-strings made for my friend and her sister when they went on a holiday to Fraser Island. Her sister would have been no more than 7 or 8 years old, if I remember correctly. I think I was about 11. I remember my friend's little sister saying after the holiday that the g-string would have been more comfortable if the string had had lambs-wool padding! I didn't even know what a g-string was up until that point (don't laugh-I was a very naive child, and we didn't have TV!).

I remember feeling left out when all the girls in my primary school had their first bras (whether they needed them or not), and knowing my mother wouldn't buy me one until I actually needed it.

I remember feeling miffed as a teenager at my dad's insistence that I never be allowed to wear a bikini. Mum finally gave in when I was 15, and I was allowed to buy a very modest Speedo racerback bikini. I was thrilled.

On the other hand, while I'm quite happy to wear a skimpy bikini these days, I have to say I really dislike seeing bikinis on very prepubescent children. I've seen bikinis on toddlers, for crying out loud. It just looks wrong. So, so wrong. Same with the groups of 8-13 year old girls who wander around the Indooroopilly shopping centre dressed in tiny miniskirts from Supré and wearing heavy makeup. It creeps me out. On the other hand I would hesitate to say that the parents who buy these clothes are trying to sexualise their children just as I would hesitate to say the mother of my childhood best friend was trying to sexualise her daughters by having mini g-strings made for them. In hindsight I think it's gross, but she probably just thought it was cute dressing them as mini adults.

Bratz dolls: Gam and I saw some in K-mart the other day that were pretty much dressed in black leather and some lipstick, the whole whips-and-chains thing, and had dummies or milk bottles or something attached. They were called 'Baby Bratz'. That's ick-factor on a par with putting Paris Hilton on the cover of Dolly magazine (which Dolly actually did after Paris' porno with Rick Salomon). The Bratz brand is also attached to a range of underwear for prepubescent kiddies that includes padded bras. Tasteful, no? Here's a post from The Spin Starts Here on that particular topic. To me, the scariest thing about it is the fact that someone has obviously been buying the things. Items don't get stocked if they don't sell, and it seems there's several different brands of these awful 'bralettes'. Someone's buying that shit.

It's gross and it's wrong, but what should be done?

Yet, when we're parents, particularly if we have any female children, I feel we're going to have to walk an increasingly thinner line between restricting our kids to the point where they feel terribly uncool and socially held back, and letting them turn themselves into mini Paris Hiltons just because that's what all their friends are doing (they're going to be in trouble if they want to have blonde, straight hair, I suspect). Certainly when I was a kid I didn't view wearing lipstick as sexualisation, I viewed it as dressing up. Dressing up was something we did at home, or at a friend's house. It wasn't any more a sexual thing than my brother and his best friend dressing up and pretending to get married when they were kids.

I think people need to be careful about projecting concerns onto children that really should have no meaning to the child at all. By all means, I think some of the items (and people) that are being marketed to children as desirable are probably inappropriate, but amongst this all I have seen very little in the way of evidence that the mindset of children is any less 'pure' or substantially different to what it was when I was growing up.