The New York Times style section has run a piece reporting on the budding fashionistas of the pre-tween set.
Teaching little girls to ape women’s fashion strikes me as a remarkably poor idea — not because of some critique of capitalist, consumer culture, but because modern fashion is so oriented toward often-vulgar displays of flesh or attitude that are doubly inappropriate when exhibited by little girls. As the piece notes:
To the delight – or consternation – of their elders, the conventional sugar-and-spice girls’ style formula is laced these days with sass, the clothes not so much sexy as candidly provocative in their mimicry of grown-up fare.
Who, exactly, is “delighted” at the prospect of little girls prancing around in “sassy” and “provocative” clothes? And are they the kind of people one would really want around her children?