I don't think bikinis are in themselves sexualizing on little girls. I had one (I just liked the word, though, when I was that age, and used to run around the beach yelling "bikini bikini bikini"--cool word), and what it mostly shows is how unsexual little girls are. I mean, the point of being prepubescent is that you can run around stark naked and it's not sexual.

But the difference is that bras are pieces of clothing that are for the sole purpose of managing a secondary sex characteristic. Now, there's no particular reason why little girls should cover up their nipples--that's just convention--but the bikini isn't pretending the little girl's body is anything other than it is. But a bra is implying that a little girl's body is already the same as a grown woman's body, when it is not. And a padded bra is implying that there's something wrong with a prepubescent female looking prepubescent. When the far more disturbing idea is that little girls' bodies should, for some reason, be sexually alluring (I can think of no other reason for padded bras--it's not like the kids need support.).

Oh, I am so with Mama Valenti on this one! My daughter will turn 7 next month and the only time she had a bikini was when she was a baby and her top and bottom were a different size. I can't help but think that since bikinis (not unlike padded bras) are usually meant to draw sexual attention, that kids just shouldn't be in them.

And don't get me started on Bratz! I think both the dolls and clothes are just dreadful - and most of the moms I know agree. While I always thought the dolls were creepy (they look like oversexed, collagen-injected Barbies to me), it was a Bratz skirt for girls that really made me hate the brand. Could you imagine a four year old in a black vinyl mini-skirt with a giant set of pink lips on the left butt cheek? How about an off-the-shoulder cut up hot pink t-shirt to match? My then four-year-old begged for it while I stood in horror wondering what combination of pervs and idiots thought those clothes were appropriate for children.

But are bikinis meant to draw sexual attention any more than one-piece bathing suits are? I mean, personally, I don't understand why kids can't just go naked at the beach or in the book, because they're kids, but it seems to me that in general, bathing suits for women are meant to draw sexual attention (unless they're the serious swimmer kind).

Ever gone into that La senza junior store, La Senza Girl??? It's honestly just scary. I was in there and they had thongs, in a juniors store! In Jervi and Zeisler's book the first article attributes part of the problem to how young girls are taught about puberty. Too young they're hearing that they need to sprout into puberty - and that means wearing padded bras. Sad.

The defense seems to be that as girls reach an age where their classmates are developing, they can use these to conceal whether or not they are developing at the same pace.

I find this... stupid, but not directly gross. Almost all of the women I've known who were willing to talk to me about that period of their lives (granted, this gives me sample size problems) were much more interested in concealing the fact that they were developing at all than concealing how different they were in development stage from their classmates.

And I'd have to hope that our hormonal contamination problem hasn't gotten so bad that we're now looking at girls developing at age six (though I've heard some very disturbing reports of girls starting to develop by age 8).

Here's a pic I found of one with underwire type seaming. sick. I agree with EG it's sad kids can't just be kids without adults worrying what parts are covered and what's not. why are a 5 year old girls nipples any more provocative than a boy's? why the need to cover them with a bra or bikini. I also agree with the idea that the bra is an acknowledgement of a maturing body, what is going on that we're making them grow up faster than nature or that they want to grow up so fast.

My son works as a security guard at a mall in the midwest. He told me he saw thongs being marketed to young girls. I wonder if there is a connection between these sexualizing clothes and the ever-growing problem of girls "modeling" on their own web pages for subscribers/perpetrators. My niece sent me a picture of her 6 month old girl in a bikini and I felt sick to my stomach looking at it. Yes, if this was a healthy place to live, our children would be naked in the sun. When I used to take the aformentioned son to a fenced in park for young children when he was a toddler, I would remove his diaper in order to prevent the yeast rashes he was prone to get. This was in Berkley, California where everyone is supposed to be so enlightened...but the other adults looked horrified. Pathetic.

I hate Bratz too. My 7 year old kid loves the dolls, even though I won't let her watch that show anymore. It is far too stupid. It shows a bunch of girls that are more interested in their looks and attracting boys than anything else. I think I would rather that she watched Bride of Chucky than that trash.

One advantage I have heard for two-piece bathing suits for littler girls is that when they are learning to use the toilet, it's much faster to get them off.

You're right Ann, the two piece is handy for quick bathroom trips. I have two girls (5 and 3) and I am very disturbed by the 'grown up' underwear for little girls. A "bra" for a 6 year old is insane. When we stocked up on underwear this year, I had a hard time finding a basic pack of hanes briefs for girls (no tv characters on clothes for us!) that didn't include a "Free" pair of bikini-style underpants. Why in the hell do little girls need bikini underpants?

I think this is just one more part of the trend of sexualizing girls younger and younger. It's disturbing, but the best way to combat it is to NOT BUY THAT CRAP! Then, write the company and tell them why you're not going to cave and buy crap for your kids!

Whew. Thanks for letting me vent.

Here's an actual on-line advertisment for the obviously padded "bralette":
http://www.target.com.au/html/catalogue0496/0496e11.htm

I'm just dumbstruck....this truly sickens me. What a truly loathsome to make girls feel inferior about their bodies and sexualize them at the same time.

From a commercial angle, it's disgusting what these companies are doing. But from a kid's point of view...isn't this basically just like any other kind of dress-up?

I mean, gender roles are such a big deal in our culture and everyone wants to be so grown up. I still remember being six or seven years old with my Hulk Hogan exercise tape and little weights. I remember being a little older than that and seeing some vein-popping rassler on television--Dad watched rassling, you understand--and asking Mom what I'd have to do if I wanted to be like that when I grew up. My exasperated mother responded "Well first, Tommy, you'd have to get a lot of shots..."

I was dead set, for a few years there, on looking really muscular, really powerful, in gym shorts, spandex, und so weiter. I was like 8, maybe 9. No way I'd sexualized that. But I wanted to be a man, dammit, or at least in the process of turning into one.

I was a really macho kid. Pathetically macho. Then when I took the BSRI as a teenager, it showed me as androgynous. Most personality tests I've taken have shown me to have an androgynous or female brain, whatever that means. So maybe I was compensating. Dunno. Somebody might get bored and write a thesis about it one day. Moving on...

I had more options than a culturally indoctrinated girl of the same age, because an 8-year-old boy living into his gender role can be a rassler-bodybuilder or a James Bond type or a scientist--I wanted to be an "exobiologist," having read a little Carl Sagan, which I guess would have made me grow up to become the world's buffest and most underdressed exobiologist--or a doctor or a politician or...

A little girl? Well, maybe she can be most of those things. But if she's waching Bratz, she wants lipstick and boobs and short skirts even if she has no friggin' idea why, exactly, just like I wanted big huge muscles even though I had no idea why. I assure you it wasn't because I wanted to be strong. I wasn't interested in that. I wanted the look, because then I'd be able to be proud of my body.

I don't know how many of you felt the same way as little girls that I felt as a little boy, but I see these padded bras and I remember my little two-pound weights. Childhood androgyny is the obvious and natural thing from an adult point of view, but from a kid's point of view, how can you be androgynous and still be proud and important?

Cheers,

TH

My feelings on two pieces for little kids have always depended on the suit itself. My daughter had one when she was 1 that was very clearly baby oriented. I do get a little icked out by "sexy" bikinis for babies and children, because I want my kids to just enjoy being kids until they're old enough to understand their sexuality and explore it responsibly. not worry about whether they look "sexy" or "manly" enough. The padded bra for a 6 year old though, is just mind boggling to me. My sisters are 1 and 11 and are just now starting to develop... why in the world would need a padded bra before that? Or for that matter, even then? Both of my sisters just use regulat, non padded bralettes and seem to be fine. I despise the bratz dolls anyway, and I won't buy them for my kids, so hopefully my daughter won't want one of these padded bratz bras at any point in the near future.

Yuk.

Yuck.

YUUUUUUUCK.

That has really ruined my morning.

I do really detest most bikinis on young girls. I will not buy them for my daughters.

I see nothing wrong with skin or nakedness. But it seems that the whole POINT of the bikini is to accomplish two things simultaneously:

1) cover up the "sexual" or "private" parts of a woman's body, and

2) Draw attention to those parts at the same time, often while exmpasizing other aspects like hips, legs, etc.

I do not think either of those goals are appropriate for a young girl. I would support them going topless or naked if they wanted, but I would not buy them a string bikini.

I suppose the "surf" ones aren't that bad as they are purely functional. Still, they give me an ick attack when I see them. It just seems wrong.

This disgusts me.
The excuse the companies are making that these "bralettes" help hide the developing breasts of shy girls going through puberty just doesn't wash when they're marketing them to six year olds. There's no need for a six year old girl to wear a support garment for breasts she doesn't have.
Will young girls want them? Probably. Just like they want to wear makeup (you'll note they market "play" makeup kits to little girls, too). But why do they want these things? Because that's what's marketed to them. It's not like young girls have some sort of natural affinity for the color pink, after all. Society seems bent on teaching girls almost from birth that their primary function is to look pretty--"pretty" meaning sexually attractive more often than not. And yet at the same time, people are screaming about what sluts today's girls are, dating by the 5th grade and getting pregnant before they're in high school. Gee, do you suppose there's a connection there?
Nah, let's blame the feminist movement.

Does anyone have a link or contact email for these companies so we can flood them with emails calling them as pedophiles and demanding they stop marketing streetwalker chic to babies?

I have pictures of myself in a bikini at age two and it's just funny to me. I had a huge little kid belly and stick legs. The bikini top spent most of its time up by the tops of my arms. I went on my backyard slip n slide with it. I also ran around naked a lot of the time. I think that things for little kids are only sexual when adults look at them that way. I can promise you that the kids aren't thinking like that at all. They're just playing dress up, like I did with my mom's heels and necklaces and old dresses and lipstick. It doesn't mean that I was sexualized in any way, just that I was imitating, which is an essential part of being human. We learn how to be women/men by copying the women/men we see. The little girls who want these things are just looking at examples of womanhood around them (which is increasingly composed of media images) and go from there.

That being said, I wouldn't buy any future daughters I may have bras before they need them.

there are underwires in at least two of the bras in that photo.

wow.

i wonder why these would get purchased. is it the mother thinking she's ashamed of her daughter's nipples, or is it the daughter wanting to be like mommy the clotheshorse?

if it's the former, you know, there will always be jonbenet ramsay's mom. but i worry if it's the latter. one of the cutest pictures from my childhood shows me at six and my younger sister at four. we were wearing just shorts, standing there like we were damn proud of our enormous baby-fat stomachs.

man, i hope six-year-old girls today aren't obsessed with their looks already.

TH- I think there is a difference between the commercialization of these padded bras and little girls emptying the tissue box into their shirts to look more like mommy or big sister. I think it's the commercialization of the Bratz lifestyle- boys R fun! Skool is for fashion! Dress sexy! that is more threatening then a bra with some stuffing in it.

I have a 6 year old niece who is a self-proclaimed "girly girl" and she loves herself some Bratz toys. She also poses for pictures like she's a fashionista and dances like she's on CMT. She's playacting, sure, but she's acting out something that she doesn't understand yet, and that's healthy for her. But to have that type of behavior promoted the way it is here- a pre-stuffed fantasy chest you can wear every day. I think there is a difference. The message isn't "this is playing grown-up". The message is "this SHOULD BE YOU." Now. At 6. She's not coming up with it on her own- she's modeling her behavior after what is being marketed towards her.

Lilianna, I think I get your point. And the actual bras aside, the "discreet" quote is pretty damn creepy.

Cheers,

TH

So, I'm curious. Which is better for little girls: the bikini that might be "sexy" but looks like mom's swimsuit more-or-less and involves the minimum of fabric necessary to meet approved conventions of coverage for females in the US; a boy's suit which presently consists of long loose shorts and looks like dad's swimsuit more-or-less but involves a great deal of extraneous fabric and raises cross-gender issues; or running about stark naked which is unexceptable at must public semi-public pools and could also be interpreted as "sexy".

Discuss.

Kaethe, I see absolutely nothing sexual or weird about little girls in bikinis, but I do question the functionality of any ill-fitting swimsuit designed for other people's bodies. I wouldn't want to go swimming in a public pool in trunks that kept ending up around my ankles. And really, this goes beyond staying-in-place issues to just plain design issues--I remember my mother and her partner had to sew their own swimsuits because none of them had leglines that were flattering on most middle-aged women. So I question the value of bikinis designed to highlight not-yet-existent breasts.

In theory, there's no reason why little girls shouldn't be able to wear trunks. In practice, most of them wouldn't want to, and I can't say I blame them. I mean, there would have been no reason "in theory" why I couldn't have worn a girl's one-piecer, either, but there's no way in hell I would have put one on.

I think it might not be a bad idea to take a step back from all this and wonder if we might be putting the blame in the wrong place. The truth is that if someone looks at a little girl in the wrong way and she's wearing a bikini, the issue is not the little girl or her bikini--it's the creep looking at the little girl in the wrong way. I belong to the school of thought that says that women should be able to wear what they want without worrying about what "message" they send to predatory men (who attack women of all dress types anyway), and while kids are more vulnerable, the same logic should probably apply. Pedophiles always say the kids are teasing them, but there is no way that a sexually healthy adult can be "teased" by a child. So my thought would be to let the girls wear bikinis if they otherwise would--don't dress your kids as if the pedophiles' inner logic had any integrity to it. At the same time, we can and should be more vigorous about the entirely separate but very serious problem of dealing with these predatory men, but these are two separate issues as far as I'm concerned.

The issue of the more widespread cultural sexualization of little girls' bodies is another matter entirely, of course.

Cheers,

TH

Lilianna and Tom both pretty much nailed the point I was trying to make (and did a somewhat better job than I did, I think.) Little girls (and little boys too) generally want to emulate grown-ups, and to be perceived as more "grown up" than they are. Tell a child they look older than their chronological age, and it's a compliment. Not so for an adult!
Dressing up and pretending is part of a child's learning process--it's normal, healthy, and harmless, primarily because it's just "dressing up." It's when it ceases to be "dressing up" and becomes part of a child's day-to-day identity that it becomes disturbing. And that's why I find this product objectionable. They're not marketing these "baby bras" to blossoming preteens who actually need them, or as part of dress-up kits alongside nurse or princess costumes--they're marketing them as undergarments that the child would presumably wear on a daily basis.
As Lilianna said (far more succinctly than me!)
"The message isn't "this is playing grown-up". The message is "this SHOULD BE YOU." Now. At 6."
And as I said before, I think it's a wee bit hypocritical to bombard children with images and products telling them they need to look grown-up and sexy, and then act horrified and outraged when they emulate other grown-up, sexy behaviors--like sex.

Not surprisingly, we at Goingbraless are apalled.

From a marketing point of view it makes sense, don't expect bra manufacturers to have a social conscience. If you look at the herstory of the bra (for instance see our website), you will note that they realised that marketing to kids was a smart move early on. It teaches kids to be 'grown up', which isn't smart anyway.

Unfortunately it also teaches them that there is something wrong with the upper part of their bodies and that they need to be covered up, and when something eventually does grow there, that it needs to be jacked up.

Ultimately it teaches women that they are inherently flawed and weak, and can can only live in society bundled up and supported.

Liberty, at
http://goingbraless.net/Forum/index.php

Oh cripes, the obligatory braless set creeps me out practically as much as the Bratz ethos and bras for small children.

Going braless is extremely uncomfortable for large-breasted women. Fortunately, now there are comfy stretchy bras that are supportive without being confining or harmful.

On a point of clarification, we are NOT an "obligatory braless" group - I don't think that would be consistent with feminist thinking which recognises and validates diversity. We are merely a support group for women who ask 'Do I have to?'. Being an evidence based best practice organisation, our analysis of the literature returns the answer - no, there is no biological evidence to support the wearing of a bra. Being also transformational, we support optimising every woman's quality of life and self image.

On a point of information we have not found evidence to support the viewpoint expressed here that 'going braless is extremely uncomfortable for large-breasted women'. If anything the evidence supports the opposite conclusion - that the larger the breast the more hazardous the bra, which lifts the breasts off the chest wall, losing its natural support and transfers the weight by a pulley mechanism to the shoulders which is potentially dangerous.

Our group contains many large-breasted women who have derived relief of symptoms from abandoning bras. This conforms data from the Bristol breast centre study on women seeking breast reduction.

Which having said, every woman's personal experience is uniquely valid, and therefore there may be exceptions out there. Nobody has to conform one way or the other.

Why not come and chat about it with us?

Hello there,
I was just at Old Navy buying a bathing suit for my five year old when I noticed that on the rack several of them had padded breasts. I was shocked! When I checked out the size (age) on the tag, the suits that were padded started at 10 years old. I think this is completely wrong - I do think this sexualises young girls, many of whom will not have even hit puberty, and I believe the other thing it does is tell young girls that their bodies aren't good enough - what breasts they do or don't have are not good enough. This appalls me! I am trying to bring up two strong girls and at times I feel overwhelmed with all the body messages out there. My 7 year old is quite tall and big for her age and wears an Old Navy 10 - the thought of her in one of those padded suits is appalling! I have written to Old Navy voicing my concerns and disappointment and now I am commenting on this site - but I want to get the message out there further! Any suggestions!
Thanks!