Age Compression, The Britney Effect, and Protecting Girls

Lizbeth, in Mom & Pop Culture, comments on the current girls' fashion

I know I sound like an old fuddy duddy when I say it, but pre-teen American girls are basically dressing like, hmm, how to put this -- WHORES.  It's not just the micro-minis and the standard half a tank top that disturbs me, but the attitude that comes with it.  Hey, look at me, aren't I the sexiest thing you've ever seen?

Slutwear, the Britney effect, sexualizing preteens--especially girls.  It has been going on for years, and despite the fashionistas saying slut is out, it is all there is on the racks for girls.  Age compression and hyper-consumers. 

This fashion trend -- slutwear or  ho-wear -- has been bemoaned for years. 

Gregg Easterbrook wrote about it in The New Republic in the November 2, 2002 issue, in an article called Lesser Evil, identifying it as "the cheap slut look".

If you haven't been inside a public school lately--an experience my wife and I have often, with three kids in the schools of Montgomery County, Maryland--be advised that high schools, and even middle schools, have become cheesecake central. Current teen girls' fashion includes low-cut tank or spaghetti-strap tops with almost nothing above the bust-line, exposed navels, and short-shorts that show the entire leg. When I was in high school I attended games of the girls' volleyball team just to get a look at legs and dream. Now the halls of public schools are crowded with flashed flesh. How can high school boys stand it?

Godfrey Deeny was widely reported to have declared:  "The slut is out now. She's dead,"

The death hasn't been reported to my local Nordstrom's, where the racks are packed with  lingerie-like tops and  pants so low-cut the zippers  should be measured in microns.

This Australian fashion reporter claimed the death of slutwear in the fall of 2004

If the looks on the catwalk are anything to go by, micro mini-dresses, peekaboo G-strings and love handles erupting out of too-tight hipster jeans and a gravity-defying decolletage soon will become things of the past. The new look is all about covering up. Modesty is back.

In 2004, Michael of The Two Blowhards deconstructed the meaning of the revealing teen fashions:

Has all sense of "appropriateness" gone out the window, do you think? Even last year, there was still a clear distinction between "clothes you'd wear at the beach, or to a party, or skanking around the East Village" and "clothes you'd wear in a respectable part of town." This year, that distinction seems to have vanished. It's very striking, for instance, the way that semi-see-thru white pants -- which last year was beachwear, a daring coverup to put on over your bikini -- are now a standard thing in midtown.

The public/private distinction also seems to be continuing its long, inevitable decline. What with the current semi-transparent, gauzy fabrics -- and with the underwear-as-outwear thing now viewed as an established and classic style -- much of the diff between publicwear and privatewear has evaporated. Hey: if it feels good in the boudoir, why change for dinner?

Abercrombie & Fitch developed a line of thongs for the preteen set in 2002, that offended quite a few people"

The thongs are meant to be "lighthearted and cute," according to an Abercrombie statement, and spokesman Hampton Carney told The Chronicle last week that the underwear is age-appropriate.

"Once you get about 10, you start to care about your underwear, and you start to care about your clothes," he said.

Of course, this is the Hampton Carney who said a couple of months ago that Abercrombie thought Asians would love T-shirts it planned to sell showing stereotyped Asian characters. The shirts were pulled from store shelves shortly thereafter.

Still, maybe young girls will think the thongs are cute. Maybe they'll think they're fun. What do I know? I am not now, nor have I ever been, a young girl.

I am, however, deeply skeptical about the motives of a company that sells a sexualized lifestyle to inflate profits. This is the company whose recent clothing catalog was shrink-wrapped and sold only to those 18 and older. This same company proudly says it "pushes the envelope" of sexuality because that's what the 18- to 22- year-olds who buy its clothes expect.

Robert Needlman wrote an article for the "Ask Dr. Spock" site in 2001:  (he has some good tips on how to counter the preteens' demands)

Preteen Clothing Struggles: Countering the 'Britney Effect' by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P.

You're shopping for school clothes, and your 12-year-old daughter picks out a skimpy top emblazoned "Hottie" and hip-hugging pants that leave at least two inches of skin north and south of her navel exposed to the wind (not to mention the stares of passers-by). You protest, but she insists: If she doesn't have these clothes, she'll look awful, the other kids will tease her, she'll feel like a nerd.

In January 2003, Laura Vanderkam had this to say about the edgy fashions:

Indeed, for many girls trapped in the limited world of teendom, provocative fashion has become a way to show that they're risk-takers — self-confident young women not afraid to make a statement.

But it's a shame to channel all that daring into clothes. Girls deserve real opportunities to explore untamed corners of the world, try new activities that test their physical limits and see how much they're capable of — beyond the confines of the mall. Positive risk-taking helps teens develop a self-confidence that lasts longer than any chic outfit. But too often, parents and other adults find it easier to let fashion fill the void.

Now the retailers are pushing sexualized clothes down to the grammar-school set:

Moms who thought they wouldn't have tugs of war over fashion until their daughters were teenagers now find themselves talking to 7-year-olds about modesty and overexposure.

"The styles, once you get beyond a size 6, it's all just teenage clothes," said Allison Marshall, a St. Petersburg mother of girls ages 7 and 8. "The shorts are super short, and the T-shirts all have writing on them, like "hottie' or "cutie.'

   "I don't understand who wants to dress their child that way when they are 6 or 7."

But the marketers understand that parents today are not willing to exert parental influence over their children

"They're ten going on thirty," laughs Kim Millman, director of Girlfriends LA, a clothing and accessory company that sells to teens and preteens via catalog and the Internet. "When the kids want it, they want it. They're very vocal. I think the idea of Moms picking out pinafores isn't happening anymore."....

Those sentiments are what Eric Brown of the Center for a New American Dream terms a "Boomer Backlash." The children raised by Depression-era parents, who understood the value of thrift and saved for a rainy day, are now reluctant to deny their own children much of anything, even if they have to go into debt or give up family time to pay for it. Brown's non-profit organization, dedicated to "responsible consumption" through less materialistic lifestyles, recently polled 400 parents and found that:

 

• Almost a third were working longer hours to pay for things kids felt they needed.

   

• More than half of all parents admitted buying a product they disapproved of because the child wanted it "to fit in with their friends."

   

• Almost half of those surveyed said their children began asking for brand name products by age five.

"We're seeing that it's breeding this generation of hyper-consumers," says Brown. "Madison Avenue spent two billion last year directly marketing to kids. It's really hard for parents to combat that influence."

Madison Avenue is betting its money on parents like Anne, who isn't about to try fighting a trip to the mall.

Sex sells and age compression:

The industry even has a name for its    strategy of getting tweens to buy sexy stuff. It’s called “age compression,” pushing  adult products and teen attitude on younger and younger kids.                      

The kids may not get the innuendo; but  what they know is that sexy is “cool.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's  special report on selling to preteens included an interview with Shari Graydon:

Graydon: A lot of the complaints today you hear from parents are about how the media is encouraging their kids to grow up really fast, that they’re exposed to sexually explicit television shows, that sitcoms like Friends have all sorts of sexual innuendo. Yet these clothing products, and the fact that parents are buying these products, suggests that it’s not really all about the media. There is a certain complicity from parents as well.

Mesley: Why are so many companies making such sexualized clothing for little girls?

Graydon: Because there’s a market. That’s what they would say… We know that kids of any age tend to aspire to be older. They want to be seen as more mature, more sophisticated. And so when pop stars are dressing in a certain way, the audience for those pop stars will aspire to dress like them as well.

Most of the mall-based retailers, from my visual inspection, are falling over themselves to market inappropriate clothing to preteens.  I had pretty good luck with Lands' End. 

Children's Wear Digest, caters to parents who don't want their tween dressing like a teen. The slogan on the 15-million catalogs it mails annually reads: "Dressing Kids Like Kids."

"The customers we have want kids to look like kids as long as possible," said Tracy Schneider, marketing manager. By offering styles in classic and trendy fabrics, such as animal prints and '60s flower designs, CWD offers choices for parents and kids to compromise on.

A new blog, Echo Boom, will track the marketers and Gen Y

I am both disturbed and fascinated at the impact marketing is having on our children. As a generation raised almost exclusively on the internet, they are savvier, more adept at using technology and have rightfully come to expect that everything is literally right at their fingertips, just one click away from an answer, a friend, or a purchase. Leaving the obvious question – just what are or rather what will be the effects?

She thinks the tween marketers are like predators.

Here's the readiing list:

• The Great Tween Buying Machine : Capturing Your Share of the Multi-Billion-Dollar Tween Market by David Siegel, Timothy Coffey, Gregory Livingston
• BRANDchild: Insights into the Minds of Today's Global Kids: Understanding Their Relationship with Brands by Martin Lindstrom
• Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer's Guide to a Kid's Heart by Gene Del Vecchio
• What Kids Buy and Why : The Psychology of Marketing to Kids by Daniel Acuff
•   Born to Buy : The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture by Juliet B. Schor
• The Kids Market: Myths and Realities by James U. McNeal
• Kids As Customers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children by James U. McNeal

 

 

Comments

[Lisa]

For me, the most revealing part of this was that the parents were backing down because the kids felt they "needed" the slinky clothes. Sounds like a missed opportunity to talk to a young girl about resisting pressure and being her own person, not controlled by what other kids (girls AND boys) think of her, or what the media tells her.

I've never been so glad that our school requires uniform shirts -- the families order from Land's End, which makes all of their shirts with the school logo. I notice much less competition between girls about how they look, and even on "free dress days" they don't show up in skimpy or inappropriate things.

As for the boys, I wish there were a way to prevent them from bullying their parents into letting them play rated M games, such as Grand Theft Auto. I've had parents come in and complain about their boys' video game usage, apparently not realizing that THEY were the ones allowing their kids access to those games and that it was a CHOICE. There's much less we can do about this tendency, since it's not something applicable to the school day. The clothing, at least, we can have a say in.

Sigh...

[Madeleine Spence]

Speaking from a teen point of view (I'm 17), surprisingly I have to say that I agree. I hate seeing lardy girls walking around with saddlebags exposed. However, when I walk around town, I also see a lot of adults walking around like this. This is the main reason that modesty is coming back in: because teen girls don't want to be looking like their moms. So, sad as it is that embryos are dressing as teens, you also have the classic case of mutton dressed as lamb. Great example.

[Mandy]

These days the line between adulthood and childhood are practically invisible. I have a 13-year-old cousin who visits me every week and I'm so tired of seeing her come in with makeup applied by the pound, low cut spagghetti strap tank tops that expose her whole stomach, and skirts so short that if she so much as sneezes her panties are exposed. She thinks she looks older and mature, when in reality, she really just looks like a 13-year-old whore. It's bad when I see my cousin dress like this, it's even worse when I see little 7 year olds dressed like this. Hip huggers, tube tops, and thongs DO NOT belong on children! It's as simple as that. Parents are letting their kids dress like a pedophile's wet dream. I don't give a crap what the stores sell, parents should have enough sense not to let their children dress like this. If parents stop buying the clothes, the stores will stop selling them. It really is all about the parents. My parents are pretty old school. I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16. I wasn't allowed to wear padded bras and thongs. When I went out I was asked a dozen questions as to my whereabouts. My cousin's parents on the other hand, couldn't give a flying shit. This is probably why their daughter dresses like a tramp and posts little glitter signs on her website that read "playboy girl." Then the parents sit back and wonder why their constantly fearing that their little girl's corpse will be found in a dumpster one day. Seriously, kids should enjoy being kids. They have their whole lives to be adults, but they're only kids once. And trust me, when you're an adult, you'll be wishing you were a kid again.