Seems that Ooh, La La! Couture, the clothing designers for Miley Cyrus’s nine-year-old sister Noah and her friend, eight-year-old actress Emily Grace Reaves, is not really designing children’s lingerie, just tutus attached to tank tops. As of this writing the Ooh, La La website was down and all the online videos showing the girls modeling some designs had been designated private. If you haven’t seen them yet, here are some of the images of these girls and their outfits.

Seeing young girls dressing like stereotypical streetwalkers has been disturbing people all over the internet the last few days, which is good. This problem is real. And big. And it goes beyond wondering what these girls’ parents are thinking.

It is a parenting issue. But it’s also a feminist issue. And a public health issue. And a corporate marketing issue.

Hardy Girls Healthy Women posts about the new American Apparel campaign, which asks women and young girls older than 18 to send in photos of their bottoms for judging on the internet:

The sexualization of women and porn-inspired media have infiltrated the everyday culture of the youngest girls. According to the 2007 APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls in Media, the negative impact on girls and women is indisputable: the sexualization and objectification of girls and women in media wreak havoc on our psychological, emotional, cognitive and relational lives.

[American Apparel's] campaign is a perfect example of the insidious ways marketers and media promote sexualization and body obsession as “girl power.” American Apparel is directly and unconscionably undermining girls’ healthy development by equating confidence with looking sexy, winning with being judged on their appearance, and personal value with 15 seconds of fame. The objectification of girls’ and women’s bodies is a real concern in a country where 1 in 4 women is a victim of violence, and sexual harassment is rampant.

(Sign their petition boycotting American Apparel.)

Or spend some time at Sociological Images and discover sexually suggestive teen brands, baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, and the “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt.

I also wrote a post in 2008 about Disney’s Miley Cyrus and and her leap into sexualization with the photo shoot for Vanity Fair. I’ll leave you with the images (and helpful resources follow):
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This morning I had the honor of participating on a panel for the Minnesota Public Health Association, Unhealthy Influences: The Impact of Advertising on the Health of Children. 

If you attended the panel, here’s some information that you might find helpful:

PEM Primer for CCFC Summit (basic background information on Parents for Ethical Marketing)
Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

A few posts on sexualization:
From the makers of Disney My Baby Princess, Sluts! I mean, Struts!
Sitter’s Checklist: Parenting, toy makeovers, and even more! ways to get kids to buy stuff
A sexualized Miley Cyrus? One word: Disney.
Sitter’s Checklist: Sweet Valley High, Bratz, Bimbos, and Who’s to blame

Some things I mentioned:
Retailer rue21 profits from sexualizing girls, thinks you should, too
Sexed-up six-year-olds roaming the streets at night: Must be Halloween
Beauty school parties for preteens

Resources:
The Lolita Effect, or, Yes, Virginia, little girls really are sexualized by the media
Sitter’s Checklist: Kids and food, sexualization, and smoking
Sexualizing Childhood — Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood

An American Girl Doll catalog arrived in our mailbox yesterday. When I called to be removed from their mailing list, I found out our address had been purchased from another company but that the customer service representative could delete our address from all future mailings.

The rep was quite nice on the phone, and I swear I was not looking for trouble. After we had conducted our business, she continued: “Why don’t you give your catalog to a little girl in the neighborhood? Or donate it to your local library? They love to get our catalogs!”

Really? I was skeptical. A call to my local library confirmed this. “You’re right in thinking that’s odd, I don’t know what we’d do with a catalog,” a librarian at Minneapolis’ Central Library told me.

Another Minneapolis librarian told me that they’d probably donate it to a local shelter.

Our copy stayed in our house. While I worked in the kitchen, my seven-year-old read it to me, and I used it as an exercise to help her understand the value of money. For example, instead of paying $44 for the “homemade cookie” accessory pack, we can use what we already have in our own kitchen to make cookies — and figure out what else $44 could buy.

After that, she took her scissors to it and created stories surrounding the cut-out pictures of the the dolls and the dogs and the horses.

Seems an American Girl Doll sales catalog is good for something.

Related: The cutline from the photo accompanying Chris Riemenschneider’s Strib column today about the Mall of America was changed in the online version. The original reads:

Real American girls rest at the MOA’s American Girl store. With luck and a few made-up stories (such as the one about the doll that bit a girl), our author can steer his daughter away from the place.

Precious!

 ♦ ♦ ♦

Run, now, to True/Slant to read Stephen C. Webster’s The Most Offensive Commercial Ever Produced. A beautiful dissection of a current Levi’s commerial in which Walt Whitman and his words are bastardized, Webster exposes the profit-fueled hypocrisy that brings together a poor, abolitionist poet and a company known for numerous fair labor violations.

What would Whitman have written about such a uniquely American company [Levi Strauss]?

Would he have joyously celebrated an institution which left its equal daughters and equal sons to rot in the baking Texas sun?

Would the great poet have rejoiced in the servitude of those not fortunate enough to live on allegedly free soil?

Oh yes, perhaps he would have taken up for a company that stitches $5 of cloth together and resells it for nearly $100.

Or would he have beat his breast in bitter sadness and populist fury at what the “grand, sane, towering, seated Mother” America had wrought on her children?

Read and talk your (older) children through this one. True/Slant, where have you been all my life?

♦ ♦ ♦

Scholastic Corporation continues to hide behind their “book publisher” label and promoting Goosebumps-branded products for Halloween: The televison series will air on Cartoon Network five days a week; Goosebump ”premiums” will be featured at Taco Bell, bookmarks, treat bags and posters will be distributed via AAA to public schools,* and free Goosebump-branded activities will be offered at shopping malls on Saturdays.   

Television’s Cartoon Network? Fast-food restaurant Taco Bell? And shopping malls? I must not be the only one confused, as even the good folks at  Scholastic’s blog need to remind us:

. . . we can’t forget that Goosebumps is all about the THRILL of reading . . . .

Uh-huh.

*Note to Scholastic: Better check school policies. Minneapolis Public Schools prohibits selling to children — and teachers — in school.

♦ ♦ ♦

And finally, Target Australia is selling matching bras and underwear to toddlers: Frightening pressure is putting young girls in bras.

Teen retailer rue21, Inc. does not mince words when it comes to their bottom line:

“Our merchandise is designed to appeal to 11- to 17-year-olds who aspire to be ‘21′ . . . . “

Fifth-graders. Really?

They are preparing for an initial stock offering, so if you’re looking for an investment and have no conscience, have at it.

Screenshot from their delightful website 

As I’ve said before: This isn’t about sex. It’s not about morality or sexual freedom or abstinence or teen pregnancy or any polarizing belief or issue. It’s about kids’ mental and physical health. 

Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

From today’s Star Tribune:

When preteen girls as young as 5 get their first manicure, pedicure or updo at birthday parties held in Twin Cities’ beauty schools, it’s all about making them feel special and beautiful.

Because the best way to indoctrinate (yes, I said indoctrinate) girls into our consumer culture is to a) start her young, b) make sure she feels her value is equated with beauty and c) create an image of female beauty that is impossible to attain so that she continues to spend her money on products that promise to help get her there.

And I guess it works.

Fun!

From MediaPost’s Around the Net in Brand Marketing:

Kids start talking about what they like at age 3 and that’s when you should start marketing to them, Lisa Mancuso, Fisher-Price’s SVP of marketing, tells Vivienne Manning-Schaffel. That’s not to say that mom is out of the equation — of course not, she controls the purse stings — but she doesn’t have a lot of extraneous time or money in this day and age. It’s more efficient to consult with the child and let them make the buying decision in categories that are appropriate, points out Dave Siegel, president of Wonder Group and co-author of Marketing to the New Super Consumer Mom & Kid.

From Amy Jussel’s interview with Jean Kilboune, as they discuss Miley Cyrus’ pole dance at the Teen Choice Awards:

First of all, sexual images aren’t meant to sell our children (or us!) on sex, they’re intended to sell us on shopping. . . . marketing insecurities for profit is nothing new, marketing provocative sayings on childrens’ clothes, skimpy thongs, padded pushup bras, Barbie bustiers and Bratz dolls with cocktails and hot tubs for pre-pubescent kids IS new.

And a Wal-Mart ad, via Claire Mysko: 

Girl version with Mom voiceover: “I can’t go to school with her. I can’t introduce her to new friends.” Cut to girl nervously asking “Can I sit here?” to a group of girls sitting together at lunch. “Sure, I like your top!” one of them answers. “Or tell everyone how amazing she is. But I can give her what she needs to feel good about herself without breaking my budget. All she has to do is be herself.” Cut to smiling girls walking arm-in-arm down the hallway.

My daughter has a passion for fashion.

You may recall that my bespeckled seven-year-old once told me that she would have a Bratz-themed party when I died.

She’s always been a bit more, well, girly than my older daughter. She wants to paint her fingernails. She wants to wear makeup. She wants her clothes to be “cute.”

I thought that a few more years with me as her mother would knock some sense into her. But recently I’ve realized that I’ve got a real problem on my hands.

First, she announced that she wanted to be a fashion designer when she grew up. And she began designing. Matching girl and pet outfits. And accessories.

A darling outfit! With lips everywhere! Titled — in case you can’t read it – “Boy Attraction Fashion!”

Blink. Blink. 

Look what the universe did to you, a friend of mine commented.

She’s always drawn strict distinctions between what boys are like and what girls are like. Recently she told me that she isn’t “100 percent girl” because she likes to be active.

Instead of exploding, I calmly asked her to clarify. We ended up having a long discussion about gender traits. To illustrate, I drew a line along a sheet of paper with “boy” on one end and “girl” on the other. Then I gave her some words and asked her to write them in the appropriate spot on the spectrum.

In the center — halfway between boy and girl, she placed smart, responsible, and funny.

Phew.

By boy she wrote fast, strong and active.

And by girl she wrote fashion and beauty. Beauty, she said, meant that you are beautiful.

Then she mentioned that there was one other characteristic you had if you were “100 percent” girl:

One-hundred percent girls are mean.

She has also told me, while looking in the mirror, that she thinks she is fat.

WHOSE DAUGHTER IS THIS?

Pretty strong evidence, I’d say, for a wider cultural influence than what is provided in the home. She very rarely sees commercial television. We don’t have cable. There are no women’s magazines — and affiliated ads — in our house.

Some of these tendencies are, of course, hard wired. It’s part of who she is. And these certainly aren’t the only thoughts that define her. But how, in this day and age, can she really believe these things?

And how can I help her see that these media-driven female stereotypes are, well, bullshit?

Before it’s too late?

Crossposted from The Responsible Marketing Blog by Patrick Beyers.

I have no problem with the sale of sexy lingerie. It’s, well, sexy.

But it’s a bit jarring to see a product on Amazon called Girls Spider Web Sexy Tights Hosiery Leg Wear from a risque lingerie company called PrettySinful next to the picture of the little girl, above.

One Amazon customer reviewer sums it up nicely:

Are you crazy?
Should ANY product featuring an 11-12 year old girl be named “Sexy”? I think this product is inappropriate.
~Jerry Ozbun

Another reviewer sums it up, not-so-nicely:

Perfect gift for all the slaves you could go visit in Thailand
You guys know about that right? The international and domestic childhood sexual slavery rings? That’s your target demographic, right? Or, do you guys promote a ‘look but don’t touch’ attitude?

Also, I wish I could punch you.

~Dennis J. McAneny

Maybe PrettySinful should stick to products for grownups. Or, at the very least, consider renaming their products for girls.

In the meantime, what action, if any, should Amazon take?