Why?

Adventures of a Modern Day, Middle-Aged Hero, on the Glory Road(to family security)

3.30.2011

I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch

In order to avoid allowing any negative news stories to affect the happy fog of love I have been in for the last few days in regards to my wedding anniversary, I have gone to the length of avoiding all news outlets if at all possible.  Alas, I was not able to hide from the world forever, as finally my own wife let me know about a story that had tripped her trigger.
In this case, the controversy in question is directed at clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch, who had the poor judgment(and taste) to release a ‘push-up’ style bikini aimed at the highly competitive 8-12 year old bikini wearing crowd.
A &F has since acknowledged their lack of judgment(but not taste) and is changing the marketing strategy and verbiage to address the bikini as ‘padded’, not ‘push-up’, and saying that it is probably ‘suited’ for girls 12 and up.
Many moms(including my wife) are fairly outraged over this development.  Me?
My older daughter is rapidly approaching 9-years old…and I am not sure I see much difference between a 9-year old in bikini, and a 9-year old in a puch-up/padded bikini.  Neither one is something I would choose to put my daughter in. 
I have gone off before about how it’s a shame that it requires actual effort to find what I think are ‘age appropriate’ clothes for young ladies.  But, this being a capitalist system, not all blame can go to Abercrombie & Fitch.  They would not have put the money into designing, producing, and marketing these bikini’s if market research hadn’t told them that SOME people would be willing to pay $20 to put their 10-year old girls in ‘padded’ bikini’s. 
If you really want to play the ‘shame on you’ game, find the folks that have already bought these for their little girls. 

1 comment:

  1. Children's clothing has been a miniature of adults' clothing since we first moved beyond wrapping dead animal pelts around ourselves.

    In short, clothing companies think we should be okay with padded, push-up bras for little girls because we're okay with them for adult women. Granted, there is a huge difference in regards to sexuality between a 12-year-old and a 22-year-old, but frankly it shouldn't be any more acceptable to tell the older female her endowment is inadequate.

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