Lingerie for Little Girls

About two weeks ago I saw this newscast about a Colorado children's clothing store called "Kids N Teen" that sold crotchless thong panties designed for young girls. While the offending items were removed after complaints, the store owner tried to defend their actions by saying that about 25% of their inventory is marketed to teenagers. Erin French, the woman who discovered the inappropriate underwear, says the thongs didn't fall into this 25%, as it was "sized to fit seven year old girls." What is perhaps the most disturbing fact of this story is that, according to French, "this is a baby store. This is a children's store. You have 2T sized items in your store and then there's thong panties." Why a store would try to market leopard-print thongs to seven year old girls is beyond me, but to make it  crotchless is absolutely abhorrent. This kind of item prematurely sexualizes young girls to a disgusting degree.

These thongs, though less disturbing than the previous example, were marketed to tween girls by K-Mart retailers. By placing the slogan "I [heart] Rich Boys" on sexy thongs, this underwear condones girls' use of their bodies to attract the men in their lives. And by specifying that girls' should use their sexuality to attract only rich boys, they are encouraging a sort of prostitution, or at the very least, gold-digging. These thongs are a regression into traditional anti-feminist beliefs that women's only reliable source of power are their bodies and that women should rely on wealthy men to take care of them.