Single-digit teenagers

My sister told me about her friend who has two daughters, one eight years old and the other five. The mom didn't want to buy her eight year girl old T-shirts that were too short. So what did the tike do? She wore her little sister's T-shirts and raised her arms...so that her midriff would be exposed.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this? Absolutely no one I know would call me conservative (hah!) but I'm frankly a little disgusted with this sexualising of kids these days. It's one thing to occasionally let a little girl wear a peasant top that exposes her cute little belly button. It's quite another when she wants to dress provocatively before her age even reaches two digits. The eight-year-old in question calls herself an eight-year-old teenager. 'Nuff said.

I was somewhat horrified to see these covers for a magazine called Koolkidz. Am I overly conservative to think that children should just be children and not be glamourised like that? What's disturbing is that this magazine is aimed at parents. It's telling parents, "This is how your little darlings should look."

Some parts of it look like the inside of a women's fashion/shopping magazine:
True, most kids will want to look older at some point. Hell, I'd even taken photos in make-up and tube tops with socks to fill out the chest area when I was nine. But a disclaimer here: I was my sister's experimental mannequin for when she was just learning how to put on make-up (and armed with a brand new camera), so I wasn't the one to ask to be made up like a kiddy karaoke contestant.

Tell me you don't think this makes the little model look like a juvenile streetwalker.

Included in the contents of the September 2005 issue of this mag are a DVD review of XXX The Next Level (how's that for encouraging violent entertainment), music review of The Essential Michael Jackson and a restaurant review of L'Aigle d'Or (I quote "The grand dame of classic French dining").

My point is, are the media and retail industry giving out unwholesome signals to parents and kids alike? Ok, dumb question. I guess I'm just disgusted at how increasingly ridiculous it's all getting.