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