Dressing Your Child Like A Slut

Joanne Jacobs pointed me to Glamour Babes.

Mostly it's birthday parties at Club Libby Lu. A girl turns 6 and she wants the Tween Idol makeover for herself and her friends, complete with makeup, punky hair and a pink headset like Britney Spears might wear onstage. All the girls get to borrow party costumes. Many choose low-slung pants and sequined spandex tops cropped just under where their breasts would be, if they had any. Sometimes, the girls are so small their pants legs drag under their sneakers.

At least the author,  Libby Copeland, has her brain on straight.

Is this business of pretend headsets and pants so low the waistbands of little girls' underwear shows -- is this business a girl's fantasy or is it a marketer's fantasy? Would little girls be as satisfied to dress up like 19th-century frontier women? Would they be content to play clowns?

Club Libby Lu sells the particular fantasy of a culture that has given itself over to klieg lights and red carpets, to cheap celebrity and expensive childhoods, to girls who dress like women and women who act like girls.

How is this different from playing dressup at home?  It is the difference in framing, in presuppositions.  You have to pay to have fun.  It is appropriate for a pre-teen, even a pre-schooler, to be a sexualized object. 

At home, a little girl playing with makeup (and many of them do), can go from eye-shadow to being a brave heroine -- all in the blink of an eye.  She is not constrained by the setting of a store emphasizing one way of being, one role.  The dress-up supplies aren't limited (if the mother is smart) to dresses and tiaras -- there should be capes and weapons and armor too. 

See Age Compression.
See A Call for Parental Firmness
See Entitlement Culture and Unspeakable Rudeness
See Consumerism and Parenting
See Humility and Privilege
See Creating Entitled Children
See

(previous posts on children with entitlement issues,
Feministe's KEIs: a book on entitled kids,
I'm not a lousy parent, you are a too-needy kid; 
the enduring lure of Gunny Therapy and why it doesn't work;   
pushing kids into adult behavior in the pre-teen  years;

What I've Written on OverIndulgent/Progressive Parents
Pandering to Children I
Pandering To Children II
Typology of Annoying Mommies (Laughing so's I don't KILL you)

Summary: How to Raise a Thug

British Thug In Training

Anti-Brat Prescription

Gotta Be Cool Mothering

Competitive Parenting

The Epidemic

Loss of Latency: Premature Adolescence

WellMeaning: How We Mess Up Our Kids

Comments

[Tigerpawhs]

I absolutely agree with your concern over Libby Lu. I'm outraged at how our little girls are becoming sexual adults - at age 6!!

[Liz]

Mamacita has a great rant on this subject:

Parents who want their daughters to look like sluts.

[Children's Bedroom Furniture]

These are quite challenging times we're living in when it comes to raising a little girl. My 4 year old daughter Jaiden is very much into singing and looks up to and is already attracted to the spectacle of scantily clad divas that roam our air waves. We are encouraging her singing ability however, we're concerned about the portrayal that we see in the media and if it is ultimately a healthy image for her to admire?

Is there anyone else out there who can relate?