Sexy Kids’ Underwear Under Fire In Australia
June 15th, 2007
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
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Here’s yet another example of how consumers aren’t determining a market — but people marketing goods are imposing something on young people that cuts short what was once considered an era of innocence called “childhood”:
CHILD experts say marketing racy underwear to girls as young as eight is sexualising children and robbing them of their childhood.
Psychologists and parents have urged companies to consider the impact of selling lingerie especially designed for eight to 16-year-olds.
Kylie Minogue’s range of underwear is the latest “tween” product to come under fire.
The “tween” market is a big one in westernized countries. There was a time when the teen culture was limited to just that. But aspects of it have been pushed towards younger kids as people marketing goods and media products now consider “tweens” a market perceived as almost the same as teens — but composed of people who are smaller and have higher voices. Once they were just considered kids. MORE:
The Holeproof Love Kylie Princess range includes bras and high-cut briefs trimmed with glitter, and is aimed at eight to 16-year-olds and sold at Target stores.
Adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg was critical of Minogue for lending her name to the racy range.
“I’m really disappointed that she is associating herself with what represents, in my view, this ongoing campaign to erode childhood,” Dr Carr-Gregg said. “I think what this is going to do is tarnish her image.”
Kylie joins other brands and franchises already developing the girls’ lingerie market such as Bratz, Barbie and My Little Pony.
Australian Childhood Foundation CEO Dr Joe Tucci said companies were not thinking enough about the implications of marketing such products to young girls.
“It’s not helpful for children’s development to be exposed to essentially adult concepts at such a young age, especially when kids aren’t developmentally able to understand what it all means,” he said.
Dr Tucci said he had seen an increase in children as young as 10 showing problems with sexual behaviour.
“These are kids who are quite young, who are engaging in behaviour that is sexual and sometimes harmful to other kids,” he said.
Parenting educator Michael Grose said children were being forced to grow up too fast.
This highlights a development seen in many westernized countries. It’s often said that the audience or market DEMAND certain things. In fact, it’s the people peddling a given product — whether it’s music with graphically racy lyrics that were once considered XXX, films containing increasingly bloody and inventive murders, video games where young people can take the roles as criminals (and rob or kill others), etc. — who make the decisions on goods and programming.
They decide by what is offered and how it’s offered whether it’s “cool” or not. Their DECISIONS are what create the socialization.
Cigarette smoking and drug use in movies? What audience members demand to see that before a movie is shot? Films or music containing an f-word for every other word? In some films and music the case can be made that it’s part of the artistic piece; but in others, it’s merely thrown in. When did audience members DEMAND that kind of language is used or they would not go to see a film? And if you cut those words out of many good films, wouldn’t they still be good films?
This becomes the culture in which young people grow up — and all they know as the norm. THEY didn’t create it; marketers and programmers did.
So the makers of provocative undies for kids will likely make a big financial killing just as people making CDS filled with graphically sexual words, descriptions of sex acts, and racially taboo words do all the time.
There was a time when the lyrics to Guns ‘N Roses song “Used To Love Her” (but I had to kill her) was considered shocking. Now it’s as shocking as Old McDonald Had A Farm.
Young young kids are NOT demanding this. It’s being imposed on them. And the marketers’ financial killing, in a perhaps unintentional race to come up with who can lower the bar even further, has collateral damage — the extermination of the years of innocence…which seemingly are becoming younger and fewer with each passing day.
And it’s uncool to shed a tear over that…
This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Corporations, Moral Decline, Children, Society, Sexuality, Entertainment, Movies, Music, Business. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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