Nursery School Stilettos?

The fashion industry has caused plenty of pain (which we’ve written about extensively) for women from the pressure to be thin, to painfully tight jeans, to frumpy plus size options, to inequality in the apparel workplace. Now it seems the fashion business has targeted young girls. No, we are not talking body image issues for once but actual physical pain. For example, the pain that comes from squishing your foot into a hot new pair of heels despite the inevitable blisters and lower back pain that will ensue. These are things that a child should never have to feel let alone a toddler. Unfortunately, as you can see from the photo above, the country’s’ most fashionable and famous 3 year old, Suri Cruz, is setting a new trend, high heels. For us, wearing heels may add a much needed few inches, but toddlers are supposed to be vertically challenged. For us, a pair of sexy stilettos will arch our backs accentuating our chests and our lovely behinds, but what exactly is a 3 year old accentuating?

Several years ago, one of our writers was designing for an intimates company who among other categories manufactured girls underwear. When the company requested the designers create a small line of thongs for girls 4 to 6X the design staff vehemently opposed the concept. Thongs for little girls, holy inappropriate, right? Well, apparently not! Because a few seasons later, after begrudgingly creating a line, buyers from stores across the country began placing orders. Our writer soon found out, thongs were not the beginning of the sexualization of young girls, but rather a reaction to it. You see, the retailers were requesting low-rise thongs because the children already had a wardrobe of tight fitting low-rise jeans. Apparently, droves of mothers were now looking for compatible under garments that would show no pantie lines and sit low, on the not yet developed hips, of their young children.

High heels, thongs, low-rise jeans, what’s next for our little girls? Being a woman is painful enough, why would we willfully push our children into it? Oh yeah, as if there is not enough wrong with that photo, rumor is that 3 year old is sporting $1,100 custom made Louboutins.