Someone is buying all this “trampy” gear for their kids

Colin says:

11:52am | 14/08/12

K-Mart and other cheap outlets cater to their customers. And their customers are bogans. End of story.

M says:

11:53am | 14/08/12

What the jaysus is going on in the attached picture? I thought the 80’s were a long and distant memory?

Stickman says:

11:55am | 14/08/12

Good call.  Whilst I despise the trashy clothes on offer for young girls, we also simply do not buy them for our almost 4 year old.  She routinely comments on something in shops, be it clothes or junk food, whatever, and my usual reply is “Yes but we don’t need it” and I keep walking.  Our girl’s wardrobe is a mixture of shorts, shirt, tracksuit pants and tops, and fairy dresses.  No hotpants, trainer bras or g-strings while our money is used to clothe her.
Supply and demand is exactly right.  If nobody bought this rubbish, it would be dropped like any other product line.  If you don’t like the brand new retail options, check out your local Salvos or Good Sammy’s store.  Recycle, help the environment, save money and find what you’re looking for.  Easy.

david says:

12:34pm | 14/08/12

we sew pretty much everything but jeans. that way you can make exactly what you want.

Kenny says:

12:42pm | 14/08/12

It’s pretty said nowadays how young girls are allowed to wear such skimpy and trashy clothing. Me being a father I don’t agree with this type of clothing and I feel the mothers have a lot to say for allowing their daughters to wear such clothing. Many mothers have gone soft on their daughters and they will suffer later.

AdamC says:

12:56pm | 14/08/12

I can’t say I have seen any skanily-dressed ten year olds around recently. Maybe I am not looking hard enough. Or maybe this is another one of this ridiculous, exagerrated moral panic about child ‘sexualisation’.

Teenage girls, on the other hand, dress sluttier and sluttier each generation. (Except for that mid-nineties grunge interlude, when they just dressed terribly.) I wonder how tart-tacular our girls can go!

Mahhrat says:

12:58pm | 14/08/12

The article is good but it supposes that Target is only just catering to an existing demand, and isn’t part of the massive corporate push to create markets that it can then exploit.

I submit for you consideration the “Tweenie” - that delicate age between 8 and 12.  It only became a word in the last decade or so, and it’s that age that is being hyper-sexualised before their time.

See, there’s been a very big push to make young children (7 and up) fashion conscious.  They do this because parents then buy things to keep their little darlings happy.

Of course, it’s now at the point where you can buy fishnet pants for toddlers (seriously, I saw a size 1 fishnet stocking in KMart last year). 

How is a parent to fight all the signals constantly coming at their children?  You can’t; they’re not always in your control.

Parents should always retain primary responsibility for their children, but expecting each parent - with the wonderful diversity of socioeconomic and education statuses in our country - to accurately navigate every ‘controversial’ buying decision?

It can’t be done.

Sad Sad Reality says:

01:06pm | 14/08/12

Women support the pop industry. The pop industry gives women what they want. Which is apparently the ability to appear as an eternally youthful futuristic prostitute. This trait is then passed down to their daughters.

CatM says:

01:10pm | 14/08/12

Not really impressed with article - shallow understanding. Has it occurred that the poor buy the cheap - yes I know you can go to vinnies but for many people the last of their pride and self respect is bound up with being able to at least buy new clothes for thier kids.  That might sound odd given that the clothes for young girls aren’t thrilling with self respect - but why should the poor be more rational than the middle classes? I know a person (middle class) who bought a leather jacket for a 5 year old!! go figure.

Libby says:

01:12pm | 14/08/12

There are plenty of options available for the tweens that don’t involve an $8 tracksuit at one end or expensive designer garments at the other. Shop around at other discount stores, op shops or even hand-me-downs from a more conservative older child. If your young daughter wants to dress like a slut then maybe she needs to be told she won’t be and that goes for makeup as well. Parents need to start acting like parents and guide their children as opposed to capitulating to their continuous wants. Having travelled quite a bit, and shopped a lot, I have to say in discount stores in places like Singapore and KL you just don’t see the “prostitot” clothing which is becoming all to frequently stocked here. Wake up parents, don’t buy it, don’t let your girls buy it. Thankfully I have three boys and hopefully they won’t ever bring home a Lil Kim clone!!

miloinacup says:

01:27pm | 14/08/12

Kids today are more fashionable than I am at 24.

I will say though, the ‘knicker shorts’ that seem to be all the rage these days are way too risque for my tastes. A girl at stereosonic bent over whilst wearing one and I swear I copped an eyefull of her insides.

CJ says:

01:29pm | 14/08/12

Well somewhere along the way society has dropped the moral ball. Nowhere in the last century have we seen more changes in values. We have gone from a reasonably conservative society to one where everyone confused about what is exceptable. I’m a jeans and t-shirt guy and even that was considered rebellious in James Deans day. Atleast he wasn’t wearing them so low his arse was hanging out of them and the girls didn’t wear their underwear on the outside of their outfits. Call me old fashioned but I don’t think I’m alone.

middleground says:

01:31pm | 14/08/12

I simply don’t buy it. What annoys me is the belittling tone of this article. Yet again a fellow mum passing judgement on other mums. The point of the facebook post to target was not about the quality of dyes, we all know the price tag reflects things like that. How nice for you Tory that you don’t have to deal with the pressures put on young girls & their mums.

Sarah says:

01:34pm | 14/08/12

My nearly three year old has an older brother, hence she wears an aweful lot of blue and green hand me downs. I also buy her trousers etc from the boys section of most DDS because they a. fit better, b. aren’t hot pink and c. aren’t leggings. I team these with nice cardigans, t-shirts and long sleeved tops from Target etc. It’s not hard to dress a gild modestly and no, she doesn’t look like a boy!

Jen says:

01:50pm | 14/08/12

I’m going to have to be the voice of dissent here. I grew up in the 70’s and I have pictures of myself - and my peers - in cut off shorts far shorter than that. It’s what we did. We put on shorts and went and played in the mud.  No one took the time to state we looked like hookers, because it never *occured* to anyone back then to consider little girls in that light.

I say this as the mother of two children, one of them a 7 year old girl. She likes wearing leopard skin print… because she can pretend she’s a cat. When she puts on my high heels and makeup she’s a ballerina, not a corner walker.  My point here is that if you look at an innocent child dressed in short shorts and call them slutty/trampy/hookerish.. doesn’t this mean that YOU are the one with the problem?

Society needs to realise that paedophiles make up such a small percentage of our communities. Not nearly enough to tell our children that the way they dress is sexual, and therefore sexualise them.

Not a shameful parent says:

02:00pm | 14/08/12

How would the parents feel if I began taking pictures of their `tartilly` dressed kids? Rightly outraged and probably violent I`d say. Whilst I am not the sort to actually do it I may just start pretending to do so, to get the point across. Even a legal 16YO should not be encouraging second looks but parents have started to lose control by then and it`s these tweenies and younger when we should be encouraging modest dressing. This can reduce the desire to follow the so called `entertainers` wanting the quick SlutBuck.

Eliana Truscott says:

02:22pm | 14/08/12

With boys (I have three of them) it is a different issue - just about everything promotes violence and aggression.  Does every piece of boy’s clothing have to include a skull?  If it’s not that it’s a skater, biker or surfie theme.  A lot of it seems imported (like all the baseball wear, not really a major sport in Oz).  I don’t know who they are polling about clothing for the 2-7 year group.  My boys would be voting for trains, cars, ships, planes, fire engines, police, and heavy machinery.  Nice job retailers, you make little boys look like bikies or layabouts, and little girls like hookers.

Tigger says:

02:29pm | 14/08/12

Well then, you’d better Pound the Alarm!

Dominic Beirne says:

03:16pm | 14/08/12

Tors, great piece.  Retailers, of all sizes, are reacting to the market.  Have they helped shape it? Yes.  Are they solely responsible? No.  DDS is the primary channel for licensed product sales - think Bratz, Barbie, Bob the Builder etc - and it is these products that make up the volume elements of the retail sales.  Tors your assessment on the numbers was right, unfortunately.  The main issued to be addressed though is that of product safety not age/style suitability.

The products sourced from international supply chains can have any and every chemical under the sun used in their manufacture.  For example in children’s footwear in this country we know that phtholates are present.  These chemicals are carcinogenic, leach through the skin and, I understand, they continuously build up in the body.  The higher the chemical residue the cheaper the product is to make, formaldehyde anyone to soften blankets?

It is time we started paying closer attention to the supply chains and chemical residues in products on the shelf here.  Lets see some regulation, similar to the EU, to eliminate dangerous chemicals in our textiles, clothing and footwear.  Then when we have that lets worry about age appropriate wear.

scumbag says:

04:47pm | 14/08/12

Yeah well, I do get a fair bit of kids clothing. It’s mostly cotton. But it’s in bags. From Vinnies. Very handy for Mum when she’s greasing the 39 Vauxhall. Course, while I’m there, I usually look round in the men’s suits display salon.  I’m the proud owner now of a double breasted pin stripe number, turned up cuffs, (no threpenny bits, I checked) complete with rope belt left by the previous owner who, I was informed at the desk, had shit himself and died in the suit at the alter, just before saying ‘I do’, but the suit was laundered anyway he said.  And a nice white/grey shirt with wide collar, and a matching tie, a Scottish one with a lassie and an embroided tartan skirt which you could lift up, to show her knickers. Also got a nice pair of sandshoes to complete the ensemble. Not a suitable pair of socks in the tray though. Well, who needs socks anyways. Picked up some cotton WWII Army surplus underpants at the disposals store too. The lot came to $26.50, all up, plus bus fares. Bloke can’t complain eh? Anyways, just sayin’,

NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

08:56pm | 14/08/12

Hi Tory,

The way how we all choose to dress up as a society says a lot about our culture, up bringing and socio economic backgrounds, right? Lets all face it also that K -MART tends to target a lot of families for affordable every day clothing, school wear and some much more!  Then “would there be any questions regarding the popularity and affordability of the wide range of labels available especially for families on a tight budget” including mostly others who have also become dedicated and loyal customers, over time?

However for the very young children dressing in a this sexual way, seems to send all the wrong signals.  Because I truly wonder where our society is heading when it comes to norms?  And when do we say that these kids just happen to be far too young for these outfits? Of course ultimately parents have the ultimate say and the power in the way their children are dressed.  But with all the popular music videos and the marketing strategies of certain establishments, dictating and tending to put a certain kind of pressure on parents’ purse strings and how their money is spent, eventually.

I would like to state that this could be the actual power of advertising at work, in most products we purchase in our every day lives.  Which happens to be fine!  I am also certain that we have all become accustomed to “sex sells” strategy., almost with everything we consume these days.  However, I just wanted to ask if we can easily say the same thing for our very young and impressionable children?  Kind regards to your editors.