High heel shoes/provocative clothing

[thejanuarys]

Just been watching Sex Education show on C4 and founder of MN was on. Essentially, consensus is that it is inappropriate for young primary aged girls to wear high heeled shoes/girly-adult clothing. I agree. However, my contention is that it starts before primary age. My four yr old is begging me for princess dresses and disney character high heeled plastic shoes. Other mums I know allow their children to 'play' in these items, providing disney/high street shop versions of make-up, nail varnish etc for girls. And my kid goes to a good nursery! So far I have playfully/skillfully said 'no'. I will continue to do so until she is 14 at least! But it is my/our responsibility to say 'no' to children. Yet, if articulate, intelligent parents are allowing children to dress up, wear make-up and dress in princess dresses, then of course girls will begin to covet them. On the rare occasions I allow my daughter to dress in this way at playdate etc, she is invariably greeted with 'what a lovely/pretty princess' type comments. The shops are to blame (I rarely take my child shopping with me, so temptation/exposure is limited) for being opportunist, but parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for indulging;/allowing their children to be seduced by the disney marketing machine which will lead girls to believe that being 'girly' is as, or more important than being funny, clever, kind, capable. It is way too late at primary school age. I am very concerned because these girls, whose parents do not have the skill to impose boundaries, will be the ones exerting peer pressure on my daughter, making my job a lot harder.

Oh and high heels have nothing to do with orgasm. Men are physically attracted to longer legs as a woman legs are longest when she has reached physical maturity, and is then capable of carrying a child. Ditto a slim waist, shows she is not currently carrying another mans child. Big boobs are representative of feeding a child (am NOT starting a feeding debate here).

My personal bugbear is not those Disney frocks (hideous as they are). My DD loved dressing up and we had a huge box of fancy dress/old dresses/Disney stuff for her and her friends to dive into.

It is the sexualisation (pimping) of our DDs that disturbs me. Clothing for prepubescent girls that shouts innuendo, sauciness and sexual availability is just Wrong imo.

I also have a thing about the music industry pumping out sexually explicit videos which kids as young as 3 seem to be watching (judging by some comments on MN a while back). Of course little girls want to copy what they see Big Girls doing - even if it is with tits and arse hanging out of tiny tops and skirts.

It's the sexualisation that is so damaging imo. It just tells girls their chief value is in looking Up for It. Truly sad.

Surely children should be able to wear clothes like short skirts and short shorts without fear of sexualisation from an adults point of view. That this is the only time that they can be seen as such?

My DD likes to come shopping with me and carry her handbag, that she chose, which is pink that I got from a charity shop. She chose this at just over the age of 1yr. I don't watch any tv channels with adverts as I see the consumerisation of children far scarier than anything clothes come to represent to them.

Until children get into thier secondary schooling and peer pressure to conform with thier peers, they are just wearing clothes, or am i just incredibly naive and coming from another age in time?

I will continue to let my daughter wear short shorts because it's hot and a short skirt because it's hot. I wouldn't let her wear heels because she would fall over and lelli kelly's because it is falling into a consumerist trap and disney is vetoed in this house more for the underlying racist tones and themes than princesses and visions of her ambitions being limited...

I have always been very surprised that the "pink for a girl, blue for a boy" marketing strategy still exists in what I thought were more enlightened times!! The boy/girl divide is still alive and well in most retail outlets, and parents are obviously buying into this. Whilst I agree that we as responsible parents need to be wary of the messages our children are sending to the outside world, it is sometimes difficult to hold the line when certain goods (bras, "sexy" knickers etc) are freely available in the shops as "normal" merchandise. Someone must therefore be buying them, otherwise it wouldn't be in the store's interests to stock them!!

Colditz, I am at your red heels, I'd love some. Meanwhile I make do with purple heels.

I am happy that my dd likes pink and girly stuff, as she also likes quite a lot of other non-girly stuff. She is doing well at school, she sees me making my choices in career, etc and she is absorbing all I can give her, which basically can be summed up as yes you can combine dressing up with being something serious, its all down to what she wants to do.

Meanwhile I must crack on with my finance spreadsheets.

My DD likes girlie 'pretty' dressing up shoes AND she likes to dress as a clone trooper and Darth Vadar too. I have no issue with either of these things. For me, it's very simple, I don't like children dressing in adult style clothing so I choose not to dress them like that.

DD 13 has been bought up with disney, had disney princess outfits and the odd plastic high heeled shoes to play in. She is an intelligent girl who can think for herself, doesn't need me banning the stuff. It a phase she went through. Her favorite princess was Jasmine and Jessie from toy story. She is a 13 year old now who is a bit of a tomboy living in skinny jeans and MCR tshirt and doesn't give a fig about makeup and high heels. She spends her spare time helping out at intergrated SN playscheme.

I must be lucky because neither of my girls like Barbie they think she is crap. My youngest dd doesn't like pink but it is a struggle to buy other colours sometimes without resorting to dull beige and kahkis which imo are too dreary.

I tell my kids that I much prefer the Japanese animated films which carry relevant, clear, moral messages than any Disney film.

Don't go into disney stores absolute overpriced tat imo.

As for adult clothing on little girls who the hell buys it? I certainly don't. I have never had to buy inappropriate underwear for my children, there is plenty of decent stuff about.

God, she just wants to play dressing up...........a princess dress and plastic shoes is hardly provocative....why do people make something out of nothing.

My DS used to love dressing up in his spiderman outfit but hey it wasnt like I was gonna let him climb walls and leap between buildings!! Why cant kids be kids ..let her dress up without it becoming a major feminist issue!

Don't go into disney stores absolute overpriced tat imo.
If you haven't been ion there how do you know. A lot of it is very good quality. MY DC's have used the swim towels week in week out for over 10 years.

The more i think of this the more i can't get over the hypocrasy behind it. People want their children to be independent thinkers etc, the impose their own dodgy political ideals on them from birth.

If you feel that strongly why are you confusing your children with letting them do it on play dates? Surely showing them to not copy whatever their friends di would better?

I haven't read the whole thing so apologies if someone has already said this. There's a lot of grey space between feminine clothes and provocative ones. Dressing a prepubescent or pubescent girl provocatively is IMO pretty disgusting - clothes meant to signal sexual availability shouldn't be worn by a child who is not old enough to be sexually available.

OTOH raising a girl to be ordinarily feminine does no harm at all. I say this as someone who got my brother's hand-me-downs, was dressed frumpily and never encouraged to look pretty or feminine (indeed got mocked for it by brothers and even father) and as such grew up with MASSIVE issues around being female/feminine.

Everyone's different of course, but if you put a blanket ban on anything girly or feminine you might end up with a kid who thinks, like I did, that there's this magic 'club' that most females seem to belong to, but for some reason they're not allowed to join - presumably because there's something wrong with them.

I think we need to be pragmatic. Some aspects of femininity are pretty oppressive to our gender, but on the other hand it's hard to lead a normal life without fitting in at least basically with the way most people do things. Obviously that doesn't mean dressing little girls like tarts but a bit of dressing-up and girly roleplay is just part of modelling being an adult woman. As much as being an adult woman can be a minefield of pressures and unattainable ideals, not even having the vocabulary of normative femininity is in my experience just as painful.

haven't finished reading the thread, but wanted to say" squeakytoy - you think it is impossible to dance in flat shoes? really ? Do you want to try telling that to a ballet dancer?! (and I speak as a former ballet dancer)

yes, ballroom dancers wear heels. nothing to do with the movement, and all to do with the look. it is perfectly possible to dance in flat shoes (and I have done so many times, as well as with bare feet), why on earth would it not be?!

OTheHugeManatee, that was what I was trying to get at (and you did much more eloquently), by making such a big deal about not bothering with 'girls' stuff, it made it seem so desirable to me (and Colditz, I did laugh about the brown cord dungarees and Lily Savage make-up, we must have taken parallel trajectories after the gender neutral clothing!)

I did ballroom dancing between the ages of 4 and 9 and latin as a teenager and loved my sparkly shoes, with a small heel. Sorry, I don't think I could have danced without a small heel. Ballet is NOT the same as ballroom . Also had anyone tried tap dancing in bare feet or without a heel- Morris Dancing, Clog Dancing...

Heel turns anyone? Also there is a reason why dance trainers have a heel! Of course dance is to do with the look. If you are dancing for your own amusement or exercise around the house of course it doesn't matter what you look like (though I do have dance trainers for that purpose because I find them more comfortable) but if you are going on the stage or for exams you have to meet certain criteria.

My children are young enough that it it is still simple for me.

My present rules are: Try not to be sexist. Don't blindly conform to gender roles, or blindly rebel against them, because the latter is simply creating new gender roles in place of the old ones.

In practice, this means that when I buy things, although I am aware of whether they are conventionally viewed as boys' only/girls' only or unisex, I try not to factor it into my decision. So, now house is a sea of blue plastic, pink plastic, green plastic, wood, et cetera. Pink is just a colour. It should neither be imposed on girls nor denied to boys.

Parents make their own choices in these matters. Some chilren go through different phases. You can do what we did - bought some bed time books about daddy at home, mummy thebanker or mummy the window cleaner - they were quite funny to read to them but I think they served a purpose.

However the best example you can give is mummy out there ourearning most men and having huge fun in a porfessional career. Nothing will do better at ensuring your daughter takes her rightful place in the world rather than just in the kitchen or the bed of a man, than if she sees you excelling at your career and enjoying it.

Exactly Xenia - I agree with your general point. It doesn't matter what gender stereotyped or not clothing, toys, films and TV they watch it's the examples and messages they get from their parents which really matter.

As the parent of two boys, it really pops out at me how the first thing that many of us do when seeing a little girl is to comment on her clothes, her hair her looks. This happens way way way more than it does with boys, and it starts really early. No wonder girls want to dress up as Princesses - it gets them Loads of positive attention.

I do wonder whether there is and insidiuous message that this is the most overridingly important trait for a girl to have. There are pressures on boys to be sporty and strong, but I think that has changed a little over my lifetime, so that creativity and sensitivity are valued, whereas the whole "Girl Power" thing has just resulted in girls feeling the ultimate way to express their power is through how they look, and later, their sexuality.

Some of us make sure we don't make those messages to girls though and I have two in their early 20s now and they doing pretty well. However life could be pretty boring without the high heels and all the other stuff as well as money, career, children. Why not have everything? It can be more fun to look good, remain slim and wear high heels whilst also having a great career than getting your weight up from 9 to 18 stone and looking pretty dire or staying slim and looking bad. Obviously it depends on your principles and your inclinations though.

I wasn't girlie (maybe because i had brother and male cousins) but i am now. I like nice nails, perfume, make up... Before this i 've done the punk look, the goth look, the hippy look, lived in jeans and trainers etc. Most people i know did the same.

You don't have to decide at age 2 what you are going to do the rest of your life (dress style, career style, ). People keep changing.

PMSL that you think I don't know that ballet is not the same as ballroom, Insomnia.

It is perfectly possible to dance ballroom without heels - I have done so on many occasions (boht formal and informal). I have also taken exams while not using the strictly correct footwear (I had an exemption, and managed ot argue that they marked purely on the technique of what I was doing)

It is not possible to do so and be marked highly in a competition, as you need ot meet a set of criteria - if you want to debate why wearing heels is one of the criteria (and please do not cite cultural origin - that is only a part of it) then please go ahead. but to argue (as it was, earlier on the thread) that it is impossible ot dance, at all without heels is ridiculous.

I have danced a number of different styles, in a variety of footwear, from barefoot right up to stiletto-style. and yes, I have danced tap dance without heels - again perfectly possible.

as an aside, my mother (a former long-distance runner) was hard to beat in a sprint(ish) when she was wearing heels, so heels do not necessarily mean sitting nicely and doing nothing...

I agree, Flaming. Despite everything, the feminist agenda seems to have resulted in nothing more than higher-than-ever heels and a paranoia about ageing! How empowering is THAT? And some studies have shown that the example of stressed-out working mothers is now more likely to result in girls NOT wanting demanding careers because they have experienced the impact of their parents' long working hours on their lives.