That these pics on the Zara kids clothes website are inappropriate

[PenguinBarnotBird]

Looking for summer shoes for DD online this morning and came across these pics which made me feel uncomfortable. Like an attempt at doing high fashion photography for kids clothes. The poses feel inappropriate for kids this young. Also the sandals are fugly but that’s an aside.

@EarringsandLipstick

Some people are just keen to be seen as fabulously permissive and 'cool'.

And 'some people' think viewing every normal manifestation of a child in summer clothes is paedophile fodder is nonsense & offensive.

Not permissive and/or cool - Just "normal".

These are just photo's of kids. They happen to be advertising clothes and shoes. They look like any number of photo's any of us would have of our kids. They need to be in the public domain, as they are doing a job, advertising clothes. If you just have pictures of the clothes, they aren't as helpful as seeing on the person.

And 'some people' think viewing every normal manifestation of a child in summer clothes is paedophile fodder is nonsense & offensive

Agreed. MN is so weird in this aspect. Like the many threads on kids in bikini's. Just don't understand the outrage.

Earrings
I am aware of that, thank you. 🤔
What I meant what the difference between photos like that being taken innocently by family years ago and those photos on the Zara site.

are the male children in a similar pose?

I dont like the photos, i know they are selling a lifestyle #goal or whatever but I think the poses are too "grown up" for the child and that is what doesnt sit well with me.

they are not really representative of natural kid poses from my 80s childhood or my own kids' snaps.

I agree they're a bit weird, especially the moped one, which seems to be shot specifically to show her long legs. But all of them are odd really.

The one where she's sitting on the steps, someone has told her to sit like that with her feet apart and shot it from that angle, from below. She could sit with her feet together and shoot from above and the photo of the clothes would be just as good.

The sportswear one seems OK but the setting is weird, next to the bed in tight clothes.

I think they're all a bit strange and borderline sexualised. It seems like someone has really thought it through so people could complain that they are semi-sexual but it could also be argued that they aren't. Really sneaky and weird.

didnt read before posting - just my gut reaction.

Made me feel a bit ick seeing those photos. DM has photos of me when I was a tot running round in just knickers in the garden but obvs there's nothing sexual in them iykwim.
Different to these as these are posed and a professional photographer has taken them. Seem creepy to me tbh.

Pleasure

Your post addressed to me is incomprehensible.

Here's what you posted, and I replied to.

You mention your DM took photos of you in your knickers, which was innocent.

You compare this to the Zara photos which make you feel 'ick'.

I pointed out there are no photos on the Zara site of children wearing only knickers so I'm not sure what your point is.

It is an adult gaze on childhood which makes it uncomfortable to me. So they give the impression of being candid shots - naturally styled, lit etc, taken by a parent. But only the first one feels like an instinctive children's pose. The second one (which is the one that jars most for me) is the least child like. The child looks maybe 7 or 8 and no child that age I've seen would be hanging out in their bedroom like that. Much more likely to be squatting, rolling about, lying on their front etc. Or why not jumping about outdoors in active wear? And the third one looks slightly more plausible as a holiday vibe.

To me it's not sexualisation or pornification. It's adultification.

I would say they're just casual. Wouldn't see them as being sexualised.

It's a bit weird, not a huge fan of them.

And while pose of first one is more child like, agree the angle is just a plain odd choice. I don't believe it's been done unknowingly. To what end who knows. But front on or from above would make more sense to make shoes focus. From below is strange. Jarring. I think they are supposed to be a bit "edgy"

they are not really representative of natural kid poses from my 80s childhood or my own kids' snaps

I have a photo of my son sitting at the top of some steps in the exact same pose as the first photo. He didn’t know it was being taken.

The Zara website is horrific to navigate

These are the boys.
www.zara.com/uk/en/kids-boy-shoes-l241.html?v1=1676961

Notice bare legs, and legs akimbo.

And other photos with girls.
www.zara.com/uk/en/kids-girl-shoes-l404.html?v1=1675303&ts=1618311368874

If you see something weird in those photos that makes me thing there's something off about you, not the photos.

There will always be a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people in the shadows who find photographs of children enjoyable in an inappropriate way. It's absolutely bonkers to suggest we should make children act or dress in a certain way in order to avoid that.

They are absolutely fine, my 7 year old sits like this completely innocently and why shouldn't she
I agree she should be able to sit like this BUT it's ogling eyes.
When DD was 10 she had shorts on in McDonald's they sat while I went for the food on my return I saw a dirty fucker sitting opposite enjoying her legs and small shorts, she had them closed tightly she felt him watching her.
He left I reported him and DD would never wear shorter shorts again.

It’s all unnecessarily ‘legs akimbo’ isn’t it. It feels deliberately set up so that there is nothing anyone can point to exactly as being overtly sexualised, whilst simultaneously being clearly adult poses.
I think that, ultimately the poses are not childlike. If it’s ‘sportswear’ then why not pictures of the child running around or on a swing?

The one where she's sitting on the steps, someone has told her to sit like that with her feet apart and shot it from that angle, from below. She could sit with her feet together and shoot from above and the photo of the clothes would be just as good.

Or, she plonked herself down on the step without a thought and they took photos.

This could have been any of my childhood photos.

[quote Lweji]These are the boys.
www.zara.com/uk/en/kids-boy-shoes-l241.html?v1=1676961

Notice bare legs, and legs akimbo.

And other photos with girls.
www.zara.com/uk/en/kids-girl-shoes-l404.html?v1=1675303&ts=1618311368874[/quote]
I think you've just highlighted that the photos the OP raised concern about are rather different. The boys seem to be active and are shown being bored in loose clothing, one with his arms folded grumpily. The girls are more passive and more adult looking.

In other photos on the site the girls are standing upright and more covered and unremarkable-looking. The three shots highlighted by the OP are more artful and edgy and I can't help noticing that in the first two the child's crotch is central, which is where the eye tends to go when first looking at a photo. The first one of the girl on the steps is a classic upskirt shot that adult celebrities are nervous of. I notice there is another on the site of a little girl sitting on a kerb with a cat but they've given her a prop (a bag) to conceal her underwear.

There's a whole team involved in shoots like these. A photographer, assistant, possibly an art director, a stylist, someone who does hair and make-up, a parent or guardian, often someone from an ad agency too. And during the shoot dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different shots are taken of the child in that outfit, in a number of different poses. So these shots were carefully selected and then cropped so that the girls crotches are in the centre of the image (pix 1 and 2)

I know women who were sexualised and sexually abused at a young age and still struggle as a result. I can't forget what I know or unsee what I see and I find the implication that anyone who 'sees' this is 'conservative' or a perv really insulting.

There's a whole team involved in shoots like these. A photographer, assistant, possibly an art director, a stylist, someone who does hair and make-up, a parent or guardian, often someone from an ad agency too

Do keep up. You’re talking pre pandemic, not now. A lot of photographers are shooting at home using their families.

There will always be a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people in the shadows who find photographs of children enjoyable in an inappropriate way.
I'm sorry to break this to you (and anyone else expressing a similar opinion) but it's not a tiny, tiny, tiny number AT ALL. It's also a bit of a misnomer that everyone who has sexual desires about children is a shadowy figure on the dark web only engaging in the most heinous types of abusive images. Lots of people who go on to offend start with a bit of a passing interest that develops over time. Normalising images that are a 'bit off' but difficult to directly complain about is all slowly contributing to the problem.

It's absolutely bonkers to suggest we should make children act or dress in a certain way in order to avoid that.
I totally agree with that, let children be children and it's up to us to protect them from these people by sensible precautions. As I said above, the truth (whether people want to accept it or not) is that people with some level of sexual thoughts about children are pretty much everywhere, so there would be no way to fully protect them from their gaze without totally curtailing their freedom.

That said, imagine you were involved in the process of these images getting to this website. It's not the normal, kids running about, someone takes a snap for the family album, they just happen to look like this, not much thought goes into it. You have to select the kid from the agency books, you happen to select one who is at the younger end of the range these clothes are marketed to. Then you do this photo shoot and dress them like this and ask them to pose like this. From all the images snapped, you and an editorial team choose these particular ones. Very different scenario IMO.

It depends how you interpit them, to me it's kids modelling clothes aimed at children their own age. Kids are now aware of the posing and pouting, due to their parents that they all do it nowadays, so why stop at catalogues. I don't think it's sexuslising kids, kids posing that's it

Yes, the one boy shot that I could see in your link had "legs akimbo," true, BUT you couldn't see between them and the child wasn't smiling at the camera - he seemed interested in whatever active thing he was doing. Subtly different.

All three are a bit crotch focussed to my eye.

I also thought the same

If you see something weird in those photos that makes me thing there's something off about you, not the photos.
Well that's your opinion. I didn't look at these photos and think, 'oh there's a girl with her legs open, that's obviously sexual'. I interpreted them in their wider context which is how some people think about things. Other people call this overthinking.

I thought 'oh, these look kind of like photos I've seen of adult models (the poses, the lighting, the angles)

Then, 'if an adult woman were posed like that it would be sexy, they would be using her sexuality to sell these clothes'

Then 'Wow, I wonder WHY, out all the possible ways they could have shot these photos, they made the very conscious decision to do it in a way that mimicks adult fashion photography. I don't really know how I feel about that, but at best it seems unnecessary, there's a small-to-moderate possibility it might normalize the sexualization of kids, and I guess at worst it's cynical exploitation to sell clothes'