First, we are idealizing a certain body type and a certain age. Younger girls must look older to fit into this idealized 18-24 age bracket, and women who have passed this resort to ridiculous and sometimes fatal procedures to appear much younger than they truly are. I turned 30 this year but look several years younger, and I feel pressured to look young and vibrant. This pressure isn't coming from my loved ones, but from media. I can't walk by certain stores at the mall without wishing I could have a 5'10" size 2 frame (with normal-sized feet, like a 7B instead of a 5.5WW). I've seen many articles on the airbrushing and photoshopping that accompanies almost every magazine cover shoot. Curvy Kim Kardashian was airbrushed so her thighs would appear tighter and her hips were trimmed. Rail-thin celebrities (think Cameron Diaz) are enhanced in the chest, so that we all think it's possible to have a 20 inch waist with abs of steel and yet sport a D cup.
Second, pedophiles are already treating children as sexual beings. So why are their own parents??? Doesn't dressing a 6 year-old like she's 18 encourage creepy people to stare at her? We have access to websites that tell us the locations of registered pedophiles within so many miles of an input address. We know registered pedophiles are around, how many haven't been caught yet and remain unregistered? We really don't know who is looking at our children. I know that ideally, a woman (or girl) should be able to wear whatever she wants and walk down a dark alley and be safe. That's simply not the world we live in. Clothing choice creates talk, particularly in high school. Kids are known for being cruel to each other for no good reason (such as picking on a classmate with bad acne or for liking Pokemon). But a girl who is allowed out of the house regularly dressed in very short shorts can get a reputation even though she hasn't done anything. She may suffer abuse from guys who think she's easy. And she may not even understand this until she's older! Some never do, read advice columns.
Third, apparently there's a shortage of models who are old enough to grace the cover of Vogue! (there is great need for a sarcasm font). This nation really got into letting kids be kids. No more working in the mines. No more unsupervised time at home if they're too young. They have some chores to do, maybe get an allowance, go to piano lessons and soccer practice, all that good stuff. But now kids are being shown how be sexy before they even have The Talk with their parents. They're sexting, which technically is distributing child pornography--and we have yet to see exactly how the courts will decide to deal with this.
They are children. They are beautiful, especially to us, their parents, but we must protect them. We have the power of wardrobe veto.
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