|
|
Beauty pageants and ‘sexy’ clothes are de rigueur for today’s under-10 set says Eugen Bacon who’d rather see them playing in dirt like their brothers...
Will the real girl/woman please
stand up?
By Eugen Bacon*
When my 9-year-old son shows curiosity in my knee-length trench coat and tries it on, I regard him with bemusement.
Often he also has a fake blaster in each hand, as he re-enacts Matrix Neo-tricks and dodges in slow-mo while wearing that coat.
When he legs into my leather ankle boots or heeled knee-highs, to preen around the living room in them, I fondly smile at him, convinced that he is merely emulating me, his mother.
Now. Surely. If he reached for my make-up kit and drew out a stick of Victoria Jackson lipstick... my panic would be real.
But this is not a story about masculinity and how we teach our sons to be male. It is about what I would do if my son were a daughter who fingered my trench coat and slipped dainty feet into my best boots.
I would grab her hand and take her shopping.
| “Are we cheating girls of childhood?” |
There, we might swap her jeans for hot pants, accessorised with a retro blouse and matching Kate Moss beanie. If she fingered my purse and tried on my makeup, I might encourage her to get a wax, full facial plus hair and some heels.
Enough has not been said about child models and beauty pageants, despite the far too much, far too young outcry over 10-year-old Vogue model, Thylane Blondeau.
Sexualised images of children looking like little Paris Hiltons or Dolly-Parton-meets-Pamela-Anderson hybrids (sans the chest) splash our screens and headlines.
No longer content for little girls to look pretty in pink, now we pose them as seductive kittens on sun-baked divans as the camera flashes away, objectifying its subject and nudging the child to do front arches, back arches and little kissy faces.
Go to a Target store anywhere and look in the children’s clothing section. You will be spoiled for choice in the range of Cherokee shorts, Bermuda stretch pants, tiny black chiffons, body hugger tank-tops and Jennifer Lopez camisoles in the girls’ corner.
The whole world is watching the transformation of little five-year-old Suri Cruise as she moves about (with doting papa Tom or mama Katie) in petite dresses, princess heels and designer coats, while sucking dear dummy and clasping Cuddly Teddy.
Hollywood has gone nuts with a perpetual red carpet for all little girls.
Didn’t take long for child stars like the Olsen twins, Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez to shrug off adorable kiddie looks and adorn Catherine Zeta-Jones femme fatale finesse.
Designer babies or their mothers demonstrate a taste for designer gear personalised with their initials.
Tots in strapless sequins, lacy lavender, shimmering gold, feather trains, accentuated silhouettes and clutch purses compete to be named in Best Dressed 2011.
Even better if the fashion is identifiable as Louis Vuitton, Missoni, Calvin Klein, Givenchy Couture, Valentino... Parents might treat their children in this way to create from an early age the importance of self-image and its perceived affiliation with success.
| “Enough has not been said about child models and beauty pageants” |
Now child models are suddenly the rage.
As we let little boys be boys, running about in dingy trackies and three-for-the-price-of-one T-shirts (60 per cent cotton) with rolled up sleeves, flashing pistols and soaring aeroplanes, we go nuts with celebrities in fashion industry glamour, forcing our girls to totter along in sequin heels and spangled lace, flashing smiles and blowing kisses.
We sexualise them in bite-size bikinis and evening gowns, plunging necklines and big hairdos, flushed cheeks and Botox lips.
Instead of digging themselves up in sand castles on a beach somewhere in Cairns, or tripping to catch butterflies in a botanical garden somewhere in Melbourne, little girls perch with lanky poses, sultry stares and pouted lips, all dolled up and looking many years older somewhere in Noosa, Queenscliff or Woolloomooloo.
You have only to step into a train, bus or tram between 8am and 9am on a weekday during term times to see the calibre of models we have in our school girls.
With genie bra ads and the like on our tellies, boasting ideal cup size, extra lift and pads for a perkier look, and ‘secrets to a sexier you’ flaunted at females every which way they turned, it is no wonder we act as if body image is life and death.
This is a telling realisation on where western society really stands on feminism and equal opportunities to boys and girls.
Perhaps the real question to ask ourselves as parents is an ethical one: what values do we seek to endorse and breed into our girl child?
Are we cheating girls of childhood?
If a daughter of mine fingered my trench coat and slipped her feet into my shoes, I would laugh it off, grab her hand and take her out to the park for some ice-cream and play.
* Eugen Bacon is a computer graduate who writes short stories and articles, and works in communications in a State Government.
|
|
