It’s time for another rant about children and gender! Now that it’s summer, even the littlest ladies are showing off their “bikini bodies” at pools and beaches. I find the sight of baby girls in two-pieces unsettling – not because I think the little darlings should be more covered, but because I think they’re too covered.
There’s no difference between a little girl’s torso and a little boy’s. Baby girls don’t need to cover their non-existant breasts. I’m not arguing in favor of one-pieces, which I know can be a pain in the ass at potty time. I’m arguing against silly tops that prematurely sexualize girls who don’t have secondary sex characteristics. And even one-pieces are suggestive of body parts that haven’t yet developed.
I think a bathing suit bottom is actually the least provocative option when it comes to swimwear for tots. People seem to think it’s cute to jump the gun and dress little girls up like miniature women. I’m sure baby bikinis also serve the same purpose as frilly headbands and… baby bangs: signaling that the child is a girl rather than a boy. As usual, it’s the girls who “require” adornment, since boys are presumably the default. Let all the babies go topless, I say!
I’m uncomfortable with toddlers in bikinis too. Whether we like it or not, bikinis are seen as “sexy” by our culture and little girls–especially ones who have only just learned to walk–should never wear anything even remotely sexy. Hell, MamaSharper didn’t buy me a two-piece until I was in high school. Even then, it was bought under duress, and it was a modest tankini whose top looked more like a sports bra.
Oh my lord, I’m so glad you posted this. Unfortunately, this is hardly a new situation-I was angry about it when our now-21 year old daughter was little. Not only is it absurd to have a tiny suit over a diaper (now there’s a good look for you), it’s sickening-and sick-to sexualize children this way.
This is totally the opposite side of the no-gender baby piece you did the other day. The fact that these suits sell at all says volumes about the poisonous sexual atmosphere in this country. We want to turn little girls into SI swimsuit models, but yet we are so uncomfortable with grown women’s secondary sexual characteristics that we want all non-head hair to be banished from our bodies.
What the hell is wrong with this country?
I’ve noticed that many of the girls and boys at beaches and even playing in sprinklers now wear those bathing t-shirts made out of swimsuit material. The parents who put their children in those outfits are maybe more worried about sun damage than they are about the “sexy” baby problem, but I think it’s a start.
I live in a beach town and am at the beach at least one day out of every weekend that it’s not raining. I see more and more kids running around wearing rash-guard type tops. My 10 year old sis actually wears a rash guard top and shorts at the beach– better for playing in the sand without getting sand in your bottoms, and less sunscreen reapplication. Seems like a win-win: less sun exposure, less sexualization, more appropriate for all the playing kids do at the beach.
I think a swim diaper is a perfectly acceptable option for any baby, but like bluenose sailor said, most of the parents I know are going with wet-suit style outfits for the sun protection.
Baby bikinis are totally gross but what makes me even more uncomfortable is my 9 year old cousin who HAS started to develop wearing a super skimpy bikini. The manufacturer intended the suit to be cute but on someone experiencing early puberty its just inappropriate.
I couldn’t agree more! I hate bikinis on my girls’ friends (9 & 11). I bought my 11 year old a takini that didn’t cover enough of her stomach and after one day said she wasn’t comfortable with the looks and comments. UGH!
I’m also having a hard time with all the teenage female life guards at our pool wearing bikinis. Not sporty takinis but skimpy bikinis in the lifeguard chair. Are you going to save my kids when your worried about your top? My complaints have been ignored. Maybe they’re afraid they’ll have to wear a big mama, skirted suit like mine:)
My boy is almost 2 and owns more swim trunks than regular shorts… he loves water. I dress him in swim trunks and tank tops to play in the water, and if I am lucky enough to have a daughter in the future, I plan to dress her the same way. I haven’t seen the t-shirts made of swimsuit material, but I’m definitely going to have to look for them! Thanks Bluenose Sailor!
For that matter, fuck all the itty bitty bikinis I unavoidably find when shopping for a swimsuit for my 5 y/o stepdaughter. She doesn’t have breasts and shouldn’t be sexualized either. We tend to go with the two-pieces that have a bottom and a matching swim shirt because it gives them better sun protection and just looks like a cute little kid. My stepdaughter chose a boy one this time because she’s very into spiderman, so she has the swim trunks with swim shirt, and my daughter just has the standard toddler suit in purple tie-dye. But most of the time we throw a swim diaper on her and call it good.
What creeps me out even more are the shorts for girls in both their sizes (5 y/o and 18 mos) that say “princess” and “hottie” on the ass. On the ASS. I’m not even kidding. You find these everywhere. I’m sorry but my girls are neither princesses nor hotties, and even if they were, we wouldn’t advertise it on their asses. Is there some pedophile out there designing kids clothes? Why else would you do this?!?
Rachel_in_WY, by “babies” I mean young children; that definitely includes 5 year olds!
I was searching for pictures to go along with this post yesterday and some of the children’s bikinis are outrageous. Like string triangle-tops for toddlers, which are just going to ride up and get stuck under their armpits anyway. It’s all like advertising to the world, “This kid will have tits someday, just soyaknow!”
There is a whole raft of child clothing that is designed to specifically ape grown womens “sexy” clothing. This is supposed to be, “cute” I believe? If I ever have a daughter she’s gonna HATE me is all I have to say about that.
And THIS is why I plan to move to a desert island should I ever have children. They can all just run around nekkid.
This reminds me of something that happened a few weeks ago at dinner at my parents’ house. My brothers and their families were there, which includes 4 nieces and 1 nephew. My brother decided to undress my youngest niece for ice cream time (good idea for a 2 year old) and just leave her in her diaper. His wife got mad, saying it wasn’t appropriate for her to have her chest uncovered in front of her 1.5 year old boy cousin. She actually told her to “cover her boobies” when she saw her. I was flabbergasted.
I can’t help but recall the (admittedly fear-mongering) warnings I’ve seen regarding sexual predators targeting children at the beach or pool… these predators will (the story goes) photograph kids in swimsuits or in the nude, and post these pictures online as spank material for fellow pedophiles. It’s as good an argument as any for the adoption of rash-guard-style swimwear for children!
Having said that, there is something utterly joyful about watching a young kid frolick in the water on a hot day, no matter what the kid is or isn’t wearing! Makes me wish I could go jump in the sprinkler instead of being stuck at work while the sun shines.
They just look so uncomfortable in those types of suits. I also hate when I see a little kid in those platform flip flops or some similar “grown up” type of clothing. Just let them be kids!
I used to love running around without a shirt when I was little though I think it was because I wanted to be like my dad, who went shirtless while working around the house in the summer.
I was incredibly upset when my parents told me I could no longer be topless. I was probably around 4, and I do think that I cried about it.
I think everyone should be able to go topless. NUDE SWIMMING FOR EVERYONE! Okay, maybe not everyone.
But faux-modesty tops for little ones? Eeesh. I only have nephews, so haven’t dealt with that, but I do remember being little, but school-age, maybe 6 or 7 because I know we lived in VA at the time, and it was brutally hot. The whole fam was out in backyard, in the dark, chasing fireflies and running around (I’m sure they were trying to wear us out) and I kept complaining about being sooo hot and sooo sweaty, and my mom or dad one said “well, take your shirt off!” It’s our yard, it’s night, it’s fine.” (We were not a crunchy let’s-get-naked family, either.) And I did. And it was Teh Awesome. Partly because it was SO much cooler, and partly because I felt like I was getting away with something.
I generally don’t care too much about the naughtiness of exposure or language, which is why I walk around by front yard naked every morning and swear at all the people driving by. I get and sympathize with the rage against sexualizing little kids, in a way I can see a logistical case for covering up a little girl’s top: when is the cut-off? When does topless become “topless”? Maybe by sticking their kids in a one-piece (ew baby bikinis, gross) from day one the parents save themselves the mental/emotional strain of trying to demarcate the development of their daughters’ breasts.
I always am shocked when I go to the beach and see very young children wearing bikinis. It’s just inappropriate for a 4 year old to be wearing a bikini so small that my 25 year old self would cringe wearing.They’re children, and thus shouldn’t be sexualized in any manner! It’s not comfortable for them to play in, at the very least! I thankfully don’t have any children in my family/friends orbit to get all bent out of shape for. However, I do recall having a yellow polka dot bikini as a child, my mother thinking it ‘cute’. The first day wearing it, I sat on a bee, had meat tenderizer applied to my bum to draw out the stinger, and cried for hours.
BearDownCBears, I was just about to say the same thing…I would have been mortified if my parents had had to explain to me that it was time to cover my top. Gah, just thinking about it makes me cringe!
I haven’t seen these kiddie rash guard suits that so many of you are talking about, but they sound awesome. Do they make them in adult sizes?
Agree. AGREE AGREE AGREE! Oh Lord, this is one of my favorite subjects. My personal feelings is that little girls shouldn’t have to wear suit tops until they have something to cover. My breasts started to bud a little when I was 9, and I think that’s normal for most girls. Until then, why bother? Covering the area draws attention to the fact that HEY THERE’S A FEMALE HERE and by God she’ll have tatas in a few years, so she should practice looking sexy well in advance!
In Italy, the norm is for young girls to either wear a one piece or just the bikini bottoms. While I was there, I was struck by how much less sexualized the little girls wearing no tops were than the 7 year olds wearing two pieces in the US. The Italian girls looked like what they were — little, androgynous kids who did not give two shits about their boobs, or the place where their boobs would be in a few years. And no one else did either.
@PhDork, I did the same thing in steamy South Florida when I was five. My parents did not give a hoot what the neighbors thought.
I was from a “crunchy let’s-get-naked family” (hi Mom!) where there was no embarassment about, say, walking naked downstairs to the laundry room if you needed to get your clean underwear out of the dryer. But we were fairly modest in public–definitely I began covering up long before my breasts started developing at age 9.
I agree with Have.At.It that it’s really DOIN IT RONG to perceive undeveloped girls’ chests in a sexual way–on the other hand, there is a cut-off and I think it starts fairly early on in elementary school. I don’t think you could really let a second or third grader run around topless in public without being on thin ice, socio-culturally speaking. Also, I suspect a girl that age who didn’t wear a shirt would get some pretty harsh feedback from her peers, and that’s a strong influence on kids’ behavior.
Mary – wow, that stunned me. My daughter is 21 months old, she does not have ‘boobies’ and she is always down to her diaper when it comes to messy food.
And don’t get me started on the bikini thing it’s crazy. I remember running around my parents garden in just knickers in the summer when I was at least seven.
And the T-shirt style tops are awesome. You can find them at any surf shop as they were originally designed as rash guards to protect your torso from waxy, sandy, salty surfboards as you paddle out to the breaks. I think they’re popular enough now that even non-surf shops carry them. Most have SPF protection now too. I wear mine with mismatched bikini bottoms, and I could care less about the clashing.
@BeckySharper: Agreed. The kid is more likely to tell you when it’s time to cover up-school and being around their peers will make them body-conscious, for good or ill. Finding an attractive, age-appropriate suit helps. If you can find one. *sigh*
What makes me uncomfortable about toddlers in bikini’s is when the toddler is clearly uncomfortable with being in a bikini.
Case and point: we have a kids swim club at our gym at the pool on our roof. The group fitness manager’s kids are part of the club. Yesterday, I saw her 4yo daughter in her bikini, walking thru the lobby to the elevator with her mother and older brother. This little girl’s shoulder’s were hunched over, her hands clasped around her stomach, and her eyes focused on the ground. She clearly felt exposed. The mom stopped to chat with a co-worker, and I said to the girl, “Why do you look so sad?” She said, “This swimsuit shows off my fat baby belly.” I gasped. Mom chimed in, “Well, she’s not fat, just a little pudgy around the middle,” then turned to her daughter and with a mock-baby voice declared, “That’s why we’re going to the pool, right? To get fit and healthy and get flat abs!” The girl looked mortified.
@Ceejee: Massive parenting FAIL.
“People seem to think it’s cute to jump the gun and dress little girls up like miniature women.”
What’s interesting to me is that this is true of little boys, too. Who doesn’t ooh and aah over an adorable little boy all gussied up in his itty-bitty blue blazer and tie? I mean, I know I do. What makes it different is that when we do this to little girls, we tend to do it in ways that sexualize them, such as two-piece bathing suits, or miniskirts.
My head, it spins with the ramifications.
I remember *being* a kid and thinking that those other little girls in bikinis had it rough because how could they possibly run around and play in those things. If you’re interested, I just posted on a Swedish city that instated a new “rule” that if men don’t have to wear tops to swimming pools, neither do women!
God, ceejee, between that story and mary’s…I fear for the little girls of the nation. I suppose I can hope that they’ll grow up to use the internets and find feminism.
My jaw just dropped, Ceejee. Even though I know such terrible parenting is tragically commonplace.
Same with your anecdote, Mary. Ugh, what is wrong with people?
Little boys dressed up as mini men are cute because actual men don’t typically dress to accentuate their goodies. They look handsome but not porny when they dress up. Little boys’ shoes aren’t all that different from grown mens’ shoes – they’re basically all flat and most are functional. I want to scream when I see a tiny girl hobbling around in high heels.
I personally really love my younger siblings’s swimsuits – my brother and sister are 7 and 5, respectively – and my stepmom has always dressed them in these wetsuit-like swim suits. My brother has graduated to swim trunks, but my sister still wears hers. They both consisted of a cap-sleeved top and mid-thigh length shorts, all made out of wetsuit material. Good for potty time, keeps the sun off, and are suitably gender neutral.
This reminds me of part of one of my favorite Dar Williams songs, “When I Was a Boy”:
I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, “Get your shirt,”
I said “No way, it’s the last time I’m not breaking any law.”
And now I’m in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more
More that’s tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me
That can’t help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat
I had 1 of those two piece deals as a kid.But funnily enough,when I hit puberty my mom flipped out and would only let me wear 1 pieces.Even now at 21 she dislikes my 2 piece diving suit.
It was OK to show off what I didn’t have but not OK to show off what I do have when I’m more that capable of protecting my self.CRAZY!