Paltrow’s website, Goop, is promoting a range of bikinis for girls as young as four.
The Melissa Odabash bikinis are normally worn by celebrities like Rihanna and Paltrow herself, but the latest range is designed for little girls.
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Wearing a bikini does not sexualise a child. It’s a swimsuit for goodness sake. We wore them when we were little, too.
It is inapporpriate to accuse mothers and little girls of “drawing unecessary attention to their bodies” and therefore sexualising their daughters. What nonsense! That puts the onus on women to cover up – which they shouldn’t have to do, rather than on men to be respectful.
Hi Meghan
Generation Next was simply reporting an issue raised in the media. Of course they are aware that most young children are completely ‘unaware’ of their bodies and will (and often love to) run around naked. Generation Next do not imply that childhood nakedness is somehow inherently sexualising!
For example, when my youngest attends weekly swimming lessons, a large portion of the children hop out of their swimmers and jump under the showers at the side of the pool – Without a care in the world. Parents even arrive armed with shampoo bottles. Children’s bodies or their nakedness is not the issue at all and Generation Next has never implied this.
What is concerning though is the pervasive and ever increasing push for girls to act like junior women. Celebrity/designer outfits and swimmers for kids are another step toward the corporate take-over of childhood. Pressurizing children and their parents into thinking that children need to worry about what and how they look.
Naturally, what a child wears is not simply sexualising. However some clues regarding the sexualisation of children would be:
Is the child presented in an ‘adultified’ fashion?
Do the graphics and stylized content of the image fly in the face of what we know of child development principles of 20th century theorists?
Do the advertised images, slogans or activities assume that children function as adults do?
Does the dress imply that sexual attractiveness ought to be a part of the childhood experience?
Objectification is different to sexualisation and we can discover this by asking – Are the values implicit in the activity or image, encouraging physical appearance as intrinsic to self-esteem and social worth?
The juggle as parents is to discourage body shame but also the over emphasis of the child’s body, as necessary for self-worth.
Unfortunately ‘Sexy is the new uniform’ for girls because skills, values and brains are not celebrated or highly valued. The drip-drip-drip effect on children is what concerns us.