Finally, teenage mothers and their daughters can dress alike.

I'm surprised it doesn't say "Porn Star" across the crotch and "Juicy" on the butt.

It's absurd and stupid that any place would make a string bikini for a baby. But, really, the horrid bit is that there are parents who buy them and dress their kids in them.

Caught somewhere between disgusted and depressed...
"Mom, does this diaper make me look fat?"

Hey, I caught this last month @ Old Navy:

[blog.jaredharley.com]

It bothers the crap out of me. Absolutely disgusting!

Part of me thinks, "God help us all."

The other part thinks about parents who let their kid run around the beach butt naked...so I guess a string bikini is an improvement over that? ...I guess?

Oh whatever. I wore a bikini when I was a little kid, and that was in the earrrrly 80s! I think you're all overreacting here a bit.

And no, I wasn't white trash. Just want to clear that up.

WTF?! Why is a 12 month old even in water except for bathing purposes anyway? Goddammit.

@phrygian: Good point.

The only way that they'll stop making this nonsense is if people stop buying it.

In reference to jaredharley's image,

I think it's interesting that those weird, pseudo-wetsuit beach shirts have come into style for boys, as have the longer board shorts. As the girls are getting less and less covered, the boys are more and more covered up.

This was a problem for me and my mother even 20 years ago. I was a big kid, and was wearing "juniors" (teenage girl) size clothing by the time I was about 8. Problem was, nothing in the juniors section would fit my school's dress code: knee-length or longer skirts with no slits. And the shirts were pretty revealing (although not as bad as today's). I ended up bouncing back and forth between the largest things available in the Sears "girls" section, and the old-lady clothes in the rest of the store.

I feel for the girls (and their mothers) who are trying to find age-appropriate clothing. I think I need to learn to sew before I have kids.

Why don't more parents refuse to buy this crap?

it claims that parents are resorting to sewing their children's clothes themselves because they can't find non-slutty duds for their elementary school kids. Is this true?

I can believe it. I really don't understand how parents can let their little girls look like sluts from an early age. I have a niece and luckily my sister-in-law doesn't allow her to wear this stupid shit.

This is perfect! My niece turns 1 on July 12th... Gap Kids here I come!

I looked on the Old Navy Website, the bikinis don't look so bad, but I don't see anything I'd call a "crocheted string bikini." I wore bikinis when I was itty too; they're not practical, though, they don't stay on very well.

I do agree that the little hooker line is big, but I don't think it's *impossible* to find something decent. Getting your kid to agree to something decent, though ...

Ugh. Great. This just makes me think of what influences like Disney live-action shows and Nick's Drake and Josh and that other show with Brittany's sister are doing to things. Yes, they're not the cause, but they sure aren't helping.

Just buy your girls tee shirts online with witty, age appropriate phrases. I honestly can't stand the sluttification of young girls anymore.

@pinkbunnyslippers:

Sorry, have to disagree here. The issue is that we continue to sexualize our children at an increasingly younger age. I have a 5 year old and two year old twins. My wife and I looked hard to find a non-bikini swimsuit for the five year old. Putting infants in one is ridiculous.

And then we wonder why kids are having sex earlier. WE ARE SEXUALIZING THEM AT A YOUNGER AGE.

As to parents sewing clothes because they can't find any? Go to Target. Great clothes, great price. Not all of it is slutty.

/she won't be wearing a bikini at age 12, either.

@pinkbunnyslippers: Maybe, but only because it's being viewed in the wider context of childrens' clothing becoming smaller and more like clothing for adults in general.

@MEG MARCO: I don't know about parents sewing clothes but my sister knows several grown women who now shop in the children's section of clothing stores.

Not surprising. I see girls where I work all the time under the age of 13, sometimes as low as 6 or 7, dressed like the sluttiest of sluts.

So, presumably someone sells a bikini-sized diaper that fits under this thing without showing? This is just crazy.

Somewhere in the world, a pedophile just got his wings.

And what the heck is the bikini top supposed to be holding up on a baby anyway? I think they're trying to get people to spend more money by buying individual pieces or something.

I've got a 9 yr old daughter. It's very hard to find jeans that aren't low rise, shirts that will cover her waist, and skirts that barely cover her behind!

She's NINE!!! WTF are they thinking!?

As the mom of 11 year old, I can laugh and cry at the string bikini. I will confirm that the baby slut look has been alive and well for years. (I have a 20 year old as well)

I will comment that if your younger child is wearing a 2 piece, it makes those "potty runs" that much easier. Because until you have pulled all the parts of a wet one piece back on a squirming child in a really tiny stall, you don't know what Summer fun truly is!

Now this whole dress-a-toddler-like-a-sex-object trend COULDN'T POSSIBLY have shown up because whores like Paris get publicity instead of prison, and Bratz toys surely aren't telling kids to dress as skimpy as the dolls (can you fucking believe they have Baby Bratz)? How about the poledancing toy for 5-8y/o girls released last year.

Its actually kind of funny. Boys' toys have gotten suckier. Nerf guns are all fruity and lame because "Guns are bad", our awesome micromachines military collections have been replaced with sea rescue and firetrucks, and the whole world goes apeshit because Lego (for the first time in history) made pieces for the starwars sets that actually resembled a gun... AND THEN we go and fuck it up for the girls too with that crap... So our daughters are slutty strap-on wearing whores by age 5, and our sons are turning gay from the lack of manliness in their lives. We're all doomed.

@pinkbunnyslippers: I had one too but they weren't like these. These are miniature versions of what you see in SI. I had pink with bright flowers and ruffles... more of a two piece than a bikini. You can't find the stuff we used to wear anymore.

We're this far in the thread without anyone mentioning the SNL commercial for Huggies thongs?

@missbrooke06: LOL I guess you're right - I wasn't parading around in a Maria Sharapova getup when I was 2. "Two piece" is more appropos than "bikini" I suppose.

My 20 month old has a 2 piece, but it's not a bikini by any means. The top piece touches the bottom piece when she's got it on. It just happens to make diaper changes easier when the suit is wet.

As for other things... she wears a lot of her brother's cast off shorts, because many of the shorts available for her are way, way too short.

@kenposan: So what you're saying is that when my mom put me into a little two piece bathing suit with big flowers and ruffles on it, she was "sexualizing" me? Maybe the times were different back then...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating toddlers walking around in thongs. In fact, I cringe when I see teenage girls dressing like hoochies.

Take a look at the Coppertone baby. She's running around in underwear!!

A couple of good bits of media on this subject are a book by Celia Rivenbark called, "Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old Like a Skank", and the film, "Little Miss Sunshine". I don't do much shopping for my little girls, but I hear it is hard to find clothes that don't have prominent logos and/or aren't in bad taste for the age group.

@Thrust: So if little girls play with guns, does that turn them into lesbians?

there is a difference between letting a kid run around in underwear vs. putting a bikini on it. all babies love to take their shirts off and run around in as little clothing as possible (or maybe that's just my friends' kids...), whereas a bikini is a bathing suit not designed to be comfortable for a woman but to make her look sexy.

the coppertone baby is just doing what tons of little kids do.

i was a child of the 80s and always had a one-piece. there are pictures of me in diapers in the pool, too.
in addition, a neighbor's granddaughter would never wear a shirt in the summertime. this was when she was about 8, and she looked pretty asexual. what's wrong with that?

@joemono: I don't know... We must obtain a government research grant so we may explore this possible method of manufacturing lesbians. Quick, to the RonJeremymobile!

Tho seriously... Between Emo's, Goths, and Metro's, not many boys are acting like BOYS anymore, and dressing more and more like girls USED TO before this slutphase.

I guess I must be a super slut because my parents and I used to travel to the Caribbean a lot when I was really young. I have these 2 pictures of me when I was like 3 years old wearing 2 of the smallest little bikinis imaginable. I think it was pretty cute actually. I think on a really small child it's okay, but once you start getting to the tweens its a bit weird. And by no means did I dress like a slut at all as a child... it was all stretch pants and oversized shirts for me (yay, 80s/90s!). Its just a bathing suit! I'd rather see a kid in a small bathing suit than topless in a diaper or underwear honestly. At least the fabric is made for that purpose.

I gu

@bleedingheartlib: I've been swimming since I've been in the womb. What's wrong with letting a baby swim?

Two thoughts:

* shouldn't the bikini top have falsies built in? I believe in empowerment but sometimes tykes need a little bit of help. And wadded up tissue makes a MESS in the pool.

* to be gender-neutral, shouldn't there be boys - what - thongs? Tarzan loincloths? (have no idea what properly sexualized, fashionable two-year-old boys should be wearing...)

I guess, following tyke fashion trends, five years from now, boys will be wearing male burkas, and girls will be wearing... Floss?

[/sarcasm]

In answer to your question, for my niece's Bat Mitzvah my sister had to buy two of the same dress and sew them together in order to make an outfit modest enough for synagogue. All the formal outfits they found were strapless, low-cut, etc.

Q: What's the one thing you don't want to say in Victoria's Secret?

A: Where are the children's sizes?

OK, little kids in two-piece swimsuits aren't terrible - they're kids! But why bother making *that* one instead of a cute one with coverage & ruffles - they're kids! I don't think anyone's too concerned about a baby in a 2-piece, but it's that they *keep* wearing the bikinis, and other incredibly immodest items as they grow up.

And I played with toy guns as a child...

I'd like to join the others saying they don't blame the Gap.

Responsibility for this falls clearly on the parents.

This isn't really a modesty issue, but when I worked retail, we had baby sized Lugs, or whatever those shoes were that were really trendy a few years ago. These were infant shoes that ran something like $30 to $60 -- for something that the kid was going to grow out of in a matter of months. It was undeniably a stupid status thing, but it still baffled me when people would actually buy the things for kids that weren't even walking yet.

@pinkbunnyslippers: Yep. And does anyone remember the freaking Coppertone girl?

I've never looked at a two-year-old in a bathing suit and thought, "What a slut!" It sounds like the real problem here is adults who insist on placing weird grown-up expectations and sexualization on kids.

How can a 12 month old possibly look like a 'slut?' It's bathing suit, for chrissakes. I had one just like it when I was two, in the seventies.

I dont really see the big deal. I would say that if you saw that on a 1-yr-old and thought for a second she was sexualized by wearing that, then the problem is in the eye of the beholder. I dont agree with what teens and "tweens" are wearing, and yes that is very sexualized these days - but please - that is more coverage than what the baby boys are wearing to the pool.

If anything i think the problem is that a little girl of that age shouldn't have to be wearing any type of top.

@design_chick: Babies are like fecal teabags. People who can't control elimination really shouldn't be using public swimming pools.

@Raanne: Exactly! No top, and there should be a little dog pulling down the bottoms. ;)

@spanky: Because I'm sure that no adults or other children ever pee in the pool. In that case, there shouldn't be pools at all! I feel bad for your kids. Hopefully you won't keep them in a cage.

@ldt: I agree with your statement about the adults with this viewpoint having the problem...

@design_chick:

I am not talking about urine. I am talking about feces.

The fact is that babies shit in their pants, and if they happen to be in a pool when they do so, it ends up in the pool.

Swimming in water contaminated with untreated sewage puts everyone at risk, especially other people's children. Your decision to expose others to that is selfish and inconsiderate.

Swim diapers can reduce fecal contamination, and certainly make it less visible. However, they do not eliminate the risks.

BTW, your assumptions are sloppy, and just make you look stupid and irrational.

What about safety issues? A one-year-old isn't a newborn, but I wouldn't put any string-clothing on her.

From what I hear its way worse in Japan, although its pretty bad in the USA. A couple years ago at target I caught high heels (I mean pretty high, like 2 inches at least) in childrens sizes 10 and 11, which is like.. really small and almost baby sized. Almost all young girls (aka about 5 and up) I see are wearing high heels that are made in their sizes or desire to wear them. Almost every kid I know has at least one pair of high heels some have a lot more.

What puzzles me is that in the USA kids are getting bigger and bigger and childrens clothes are getting smaller and skimpier and skimpier every year.

The smaller and smaller clothes seem to only affect girls though, the problem is, is that a lot of girls go through an awkward stage at about ages 9-12 where they really don't make any clothes to fit them either way, so your either stuck packing them into too small kids clothes, or stuck with a kid who is wearing super loose adult clothes, neither which look right. You can buy the plus-sized childrens clothes at sears (yes, sears has a plus-sized children's department) but that can be really demeaning to children who are rather normal sized and are just at an awkward in-between age, no kid wants to shop in the plus-sizes department. Juniors clothes usually don't start fitting until about age 12 or a little older and when I was younger I just skipped right over the Juniors mainly cause I didn't like any of the clothes.

If you have a kid that is even just a little bit overweight it gets even harder than this. I see tons of kids and teens walking around here with their stomachs and legs bulging out of too small clothes yet trying to walk in high heels at the same time, but I am not going to go any further with that thought. Head to the local mall in the summer and you will see what I mean.

Oh and parents buy these clothes because... they are the only clothes the retail stores sell!!! Sewing might be a good option because at least you could make bigger clothes patterend on whats in style so that you don't have a kid that hates their clothes.

Swimsuits aren't all bad nowadays, its a pretty standard design and they make two-piece styled swimsuits that cover a lot more of the body than what used to be covered in the 80s when I was a kid. I was stuck with mainly one-piece swimsuits as a kid. I would imagine these would be a disaster for toddlers that need a diaper change!

There are many more alternatives to swimsuits today for both adults and children. Sure you have the standard bikini and one piece ones but they also have adult swimsuits that look just like a dress so you can cover your whole chest area and stomach and kids swimsuits that also cover most of the chest area and stomach.