Lambs dressed up as mutton

BB says:

06:08pm | 01/10/09

This article is absolute nonsense. Childhood play is mostly about learning to be an adult in a gradual way - whether it is playing with dolls or playing cops and robbers. Girls have been dressing up and pretending to be women for thousands of years.

Girls were probably far more sexualised hundreds of years ago than now.  Marriage at 13 or 14 was common - even royalty married in their mid teens.

Laura says:

10:20am | 01/10/09

How can the problem “be at stake”...end of paragraph 5 and
How is something “more prettier”. ....last paragraph.  Sarah there were more see if you can find them.

Sean Carmody says:

09:32am | 01/10/09

Reading this makes me feel somewhat relieved that my kids are all boys. And now you’ve got me picturing Tom Cruise in heels…a disturbing image!

Sailor Gal says:

08:58am | 01/10/09

Children learn by play, they learn how to be members of an adult society by mimicking, so you have cubby houses, dolls and mum’s dress ups.  So you are worried about heels on a child, if you don’t create the market then the manufacturers won’t make them.  Buy the alternative and don’t fall for the pester power.  The best thing you can ever do for your child is learn to say no and more importantly stick to it.  The people sexualising children are adults.

What you do, what you say, and how you present yourself as a parent has more influence over your child than anything else will on the planet.  How am I so sure? This has come from my own experience with reseach with adolescents as well as my general experience with meeting some of my little darlings parents when I used to teach.  The amount of times I have met children’s parents and said, well that explains it !

Oh and I reckon Esther you are wrong on that one.  Stilettos are the western equivalent of foot binding, to restrict movement, and the nice side effect of giving a nice wobble and a thrust out behind to maintain balance when women walk.  These women subliminally present themselves as vulnerable and therefore catchable and availabe to the primitave hunter mind not orgasmic.
Unless of course you have a foot fettish.

Gandalf says:

08:54am | 01/10/09

My chiropractor reckons that high heels have probably paid for a large portion of his mortgage.

Pixie says:

08:04am | 01/10/09

Good on you Lyndsay, you will have great children in the future…responsible unselfish and loving as you do not have a game handset stuck to your head or a purse full of money to pay away the wrong…God help us in the future with the types of kids today…..as for high heels out shopping for a 3 year old, no concern for safety here…oh well, I guess she can play with her pole dancing doll whilst she is getting her broken ankle repaired

Lyndsay says:

01:22am | 01/10/09

By 21st Century standards, my two pre-schoolers are feral - no techno games, no pay tv, no maccas, no weekly paid for activities. They spend their time playing in the backyard and would happily sleep out there if I moved their beds. I dread when they start school and learn that all the above exist. But for now, they’re simply doing what kids need to do.

jed says:

11:27pm | 30/09/09

hey bronx,

is anyone forcing you to wear them?

bronxgirl says:

03:12pm | 30/09/09

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to get used to wearing high heels at a young age. I’m 33 and my feet hurt every time i wear high heels to the races. perhaps if i had started wearing them at 3 i would be accustomed by now!!!

Kel says:

02:13pm | 30/09/09

I agree completely with this article,
I’m 24, and remember Captain Planet and Power Rangers very well, and I loved that the girl characters in those shows were part of all the action & causes, rather than being just about fashion accessories.

Sophie says:

01:32pm | 30/09/09

Sarah I thought it was well written and I agree completely, kids should be kids, I did not even start carrying a handbag until I turned 18 and suddenly I had keys, phone, wallet to carry around.  Irrespective of what others say the fact is heels on developing feet are a poor choice, dress up is one thing, walking the streets is another.

esther says:

12:42pm | 30/09/09

children oversexed is exactly what high heels on a three year old is.

high heels have been around since the dawn of time and were once worn by women and, shamelessly, by men as depicted in eqyptian tombs and were later (1500s) used by men to keep their feet in stirrups, then in the courts (“to be well heeled”) and from that to reflect opulence (as, to a degree, the still do).

however, the stiletto was designed to recreate the shape your feet make when you orgasm.  that is why they are ‘sexy’ and that is one of many many reasons they are totally inappropriate for such young feet.

Laura McDonald says:

10:52am | 30/09/09

I totally get it.  My little cousin is seven going on 18, i’m 22 and quite frankly its scary. Watching the disney channel the other evening with her I asked ‘why do you love selena Gomez’ she replies ‘because she’s prettier than Hannah Montanna and has hair like mine’. wtf? my idol at 7 was the pink power ranger with the blonde hair, just because i wanted to be blonde, I guess over the last 15 years all this what i have/dont have has only extropolated inj the media and in as a result in young kids minds - but who is to blame - the media or the parent .

Jade says:

10:39am | 30/09/09

I am 22 and I remember when I was little and used to wear plastic princess heels and use my Mums make up and dress up like an adult.  Its what little girls do to have fun. Play dress-ups.  Childhood is changing though (not through making them older than they are) when i was little, we didnt have computers, xboxs, Nintendo DS’.  We were outside from sun up to sun down riding bikes playing houses or what ever.  The technical age we live in has changed how kids grow up.  The comments before hand are right about how kids mimmick aldults to!

Grant says:

10:10am | 30/09/09

At least your not as bad as some of the other commentators. 

But I’m still calling you out on moral panic shenanigans!!!  get a grip.

It is the individual parental responsibility on what their children are wearing.

And I do not agree their is a sexualisation of children at a younger age.

In the 1600s the minimum legal age for consent and marriage in England was 12.  Parliament raised the minimum age for marriage (and the age of consent) to 16 in 1885.  50 years ago you would be married at 16-17 with 2 children by 19.

We are living in a great time where women have full equal rights and the choice about how they look themselves and their children, don’t let the wowsers who don’t use evidence in their arguments convince you otherwise.

D says:

09:46am | 30/09/09

I don’t see make up and dress ups as a bad thing for a young girl.  The older girls in the nieghbourhood use to do my hair and put make up on me when I was young, like I was a doll they could practice on.  It was fun for all of us.  My little girl likes to paint her face, and she isn’t that fussy if it is face paint or make up - she sees it all the same way.  Her Mummy doesn’t spend hours making up her face so she doesn’t consider it any more than another thing to play with.

It is how adults present something that determines context - an adult sexualise something, children don’t know the concepts.  My daughter doesn’t like some things purely because her father made an offhand comment that he didn’t like it.  She is afraid of some things soely because she knows I am.  That is what affects our children - the empahsis their parents put on something and the reasons why. 

Little girls will wear their mother’s shoes, to play at being Mummy.  They wear the jewellry, the clothes, the bags, because it is fun to play at being a grown up.  Before you can judge if a parent is doing the wrong thing you have to know more than what you see in a passing picture.  Assuming a parent is trying to make a child grow up before their time based on a picture is doing any parent a disservice - you shouldn’t judge because a child is wearing shoes you deem unsuitable.

Liz says:

09:21am | 30/09/09

It’s not children we need to remind to enjoy childhood its parents.Children naturally enjoy themselves if they have the opportunities,it’s parents who need to take more responsibility for their welfare, appropriate dress and activities and what they watch and are involved in.

Zein says:

09:17am | 30/09/09

Seriously!?!?!?!?!
Get over it…
I used to wear cute little heels when I was younger and the last time I checked I grew up perfectly comfortable in myself and not emotionally or physically challenged.

acker says:

08:31am | 30/09/09

And just to blur childhood from adulthood in society a little bit more

We now have French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Movie Directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen (who already has a dubious past)...........coming out wanting California to drop paedophile charges on Roman Polanski.

Not only do we have sicko paedophiles in society, they also have a powerful fan club.

We really are a sick society that is too easilly led by some people often in the name of art, into plunging our children to quickly into a very adult world.

goto says:

07:02am | 30/09/09

SAY SOMETHING NEW.
You have a privileged position writing here.
Add to the argument, because this is just mindless, Sarah - it’s nothing that hasn’t been said 100 other times in other forums.

DG says:

06:37am | 30/09/09

Great article. I’m just not sure that the pic fits, after all Katie is wearing flat shoes while Suri is in heels. And a child carrying a bag because her mum is, is hardly a modern phenomenon nor, in my opinion, is it an example growing up prematurely.

The reason that we don’t teach children that they need to accept the inner beauty is because the majority of the female half of society (and an increasing proportion of the male half) dont beleive it’s possible (you only need to look at their behaviour to see the truth)

The number of times I have been out and about with female friends and heard them complain about their partner not dressing well enough, or justifying their painful high heels because they ’ make me feel beautiful’ defies belief.

These people, apparently, are sincere in their belief that a person is a disappointment or is not beautiful unless they wear the right clothes, make-up or hair style.

Think about that the next time you put on a pair of high heels that are terrible for your feet, legs and back. Why do they make you feel beautiful? Why aren’t you beautiful without them? Why don’t you go out each and every day without make up? Why do you donate to clinique at all? I mean if you genuinely beleive that there is such a thing as inner beauty you’ll throw away the fascade and live out your days demonstrating to children that it’s OK to be themselves.

So long as such a large proportion of our population seem to think that it’s an embarrassment to be seen without their make-up or having done their hair - children are never going to believe it’s OK.

It’s well and good to tell kids whatever you want them to believe, but the reality is that children are better at mimicking the adults in their life than they are at following instructions. If you swear like a trooper, so too will your kids, if you demonstrate the need to hide behind make-up it wont be long before the kids accept that a person’s not beautiful or worthwhile unless they are dressed-up and made-up. It doesn’t take the smartest kid to realise that it applies to themselves as well.