19°C, clear. Comfortable.

Children are growing up too early. The news story of the season this year: The chattering classes are upset about media forces on young children, padded bras for under 11s, hip-thrusting semi-nude dancing on popular music shows, make-up on pre-teens.

 “children are experiencing too much too young in terms of sexualised images and aggressive advertising“

I speculate that the younger children are not being “sexualised”, they probably don’t know what on earth that means. My current thinking is that it’s a manifestation of consumerism. Child-cosmetics, I have to admit to some dis-comfort here; hence I am interested in the debate. Young girls using cosmetics, painting themselves and looking rather incongruous in their war-paint. It’s lamentable in adult women in my view, but in children, it’s rather disturbing.  They do represent a market, and yes, are probably being targeted by the ad-men. That thought does scare some; see the Pinkstinks website.

It looks to me as if the under 11s are emulating the teenagers, the teenagers are emulating the twenty-somethings, the thirty-somethings are holding onto their youth and the forty-somethings have their arms folded and are tut-tutting at the youngsters.

From their perspective, the under 11s are imitating older children as they always have done. Was it ever thus? I can’t see any way of preventing or restricting it all. Some may be guilty of projecting adult desires onto an age group that can’t possibly know what sexualisation means.
Is there is simply too much money available. That money is like a drug, it’s intoxication is irresistible to most, it does seem to overpower any remnants of idealism that people may hold. As you can guess, I don’t always like western modern capitalism, I have a distaste for any decadence anywhere.
Has feminism been beaten back by consumerism? I have a horrible feeling that it has.
See Pinkstinks.