Sexing up your Six Year Old

On our way out of the store, I spied a sales lady. She was a sweet, grandmotherly type with tight white curls and friendly blue eyes. Surely, she must not realize that she was selling brassieres for babies. I stopped to get the benefit of her wisdom. I held up the offending garment and simply asked, “Why?” She smiled indulgently and replied that many girls need them. “This comes in size five,” I protested. “Five year olds do not need that kind of support.” “Some do,” she insisted. Trust me, if my five year old needed a bra, I’d be paying a visit to an endocrinologist, not to Victoria’s Secret.

I was reminded of this incident last week when a friend informed me of a more shocking shopping display. She was at a department store in a neighboring town last week and discovered an entire rack of thong underwear for girls, sizes 5 and up. I’m not talking about slender teenagers. These were in the little girls department and were sized for elementary school girls. When my friend expressed her dismay at the customer service desk, she was patronized and smugly told that she was entitled to her opinion.

Every parent I know says they want to keep their kids innocent as long as possible. So how is it that these products sell? I regularly see pre-school girls sporting styles that most parents would cringe to see their sixteen year old wearing. When did we decide that clothing that is sexy on women is somehow “cute” on little girls?

Clearly, we cannot rely on the fashion or retail industries to make appropriate buying decisions for our daughters. It is up to us as parents to make responsible choices for them, so they can learn to make good choices for themselves when they are older. How can we expect our teenagers to understand what clothing choices are appropriate if we allow them to dress like tiny sex symbols in elementary school?

I think most parents agree that our society puts undue pressure on our daughters to look and dress sexy at an early age. Once they are teenagers, these choices are their own. Clearly, if we do not exercise our parental authority in the tween years, the teen years will reveal our shortcomings. Pun intended.