Little Girls Aren't Children Anymore?

Thongs, push-up bras, Brazilian waxes and temporary tramp stamps...all things that you wouldn't associate with an eight year old. Am I old-fashioned or am I justified in being horrified at a little girl sporting a tramp stamp? Please tell me that I am right to be turned off by this.

These days, companies have been introducing a dubious collection of products for girls, those in the eight to thirteen age range especially. One of them being a graphic t-shirt with the words 'I'm tighter than spandex'. Are you serious? We are already having enough trouble trying to keep perverts away from our girls, alluding to her vagina is of little assistance. Who are the people who sign off on the distribution of these things and what could they have possibly been thinking? I am incapable of finding one reason a ten year old would need a bikini wax. Of course, that's because there is none. How could I have forgotten the toy stripper dance pole? No society! It is not and never will be OK to see any child under the age of consent do the spinning chopper on a pole. What next underwear padding for boys?
  

Has childhood, for girls in particular, changed so much that it has become acceptable to create such products for them? This takes the whole dressing up like mommy thing a little overboard, don't you think? And you must admit that all the things I listed at the beginning of this post are quite sexy. It's hard to process that someone out there wants their under aged daughter (or son, but that's for another post) to be sexy. We tend to use the term 'sexy' a little loosely these days but the meaning in the Oxford dictionary hasn't changed that much. I still wouldn't want it to be used as a description for a child. Let's leave it in the adult world and deal with it there.

I am well aware that many parents--I really want to say every parent but you never know--were extremely displeased at the introduction of some of these productions, prompting their quick withdrawal. Of course, as a parent it is your right to socialise your child as you see fit. However, what good does it do you to instill in your child from an early age that being sexually attractive is a value? We are always arguing about women being constantly sexualized--go look at a beer or Axe advertisement--so why are we doing it to our little girls?

This rapidly burgeoning culture of sex is already wreaking havoc on the psyches of adult women and men and that pressure is the last thing our children need. For goodness sakes' buy that girl a chemistry set or something.