US based retailer Pee Wee Pumps has attracted negative attention over their high-heeled shoes for infant girls. The brand describes the shoes as ‘her first fashion statement’. Founder of the company, Michele Holbrook, describes how after not being able to find high heeled shoes for her baby (for some reason) she decided to start manufacturing her own.
Pee Wee Pumps website features various images of babies adorned in pearl necklaces, high heels, lace and feather boas. One image shows a baby girl in red satin with leopard print heels reclining on a couch.
Psychologists, health professionals and child advocates have long argued that our culture is driving childhood out of children, highlighting the ‘Lolita effect’ where girls are growing up too quickly. They describe girls under increasing pressure to be hot, thin and sexy, girls who have been socialized to believe that their worth lies in their sexuality and encouraged to see themselves as objects. There is substantial research indicating that premature sexualisation or ‘adultification’ of children is damaging to children’s natural development and leads to a range of negative physical and mental health outcomes.
One form of sexualisation is the deliberate marketing of adult, sexualized products to children, often to draw attention to adult sexual features girls do not yet possess. This can include clothing and underwear with sexualized slogans, g-strings, padded bras and bikini tops, make up and high heels. Sexualisation blurs the lines between sexual maturity and immaturity and puts girls at risk of exploitation and abuse.
The constant focus on physical appearance and sex appeal from the earliest of ages impacts on girls’ self esteem. As Julie Gale, founder of Kids Free 2 B Kids stated in response to Witchery over their adultifying Witchery Kids clothing line,
“Children do not develop healthy self-esteem if they are encouraged to focus on how they look or what clothes they are wearing.”
It would appear Pee Wee Pumps didn’t get the memo about the harms of sexualisation- or chose to ignore it. Promotional material on their website sums up the phenomenon of adultification as a selling point:
“These days, parents are all about style – not just for themselves, but for their little, ones, too! With companies focusing more and more on fashions for kids, children are quickly becoming trendy little peopledestined to grow up a great fashion sense thanks to their parents.”
How can children and babies develop normally while wearing high heels? How can they learn to walk, run and play freely? Even more so, how can they develop a healthy self-image when they learn from infancy that looking pretty is more important than the ability to move through the world?
Twitter users came out strongly against the store’s high heels for babies as well as their ‘sexually objectifying’ advertising featuring baby girls. Scroll down to view some of the reactions on twitter.
You can contact PeeWee Pumps through their website, Facebook, tweet them at @peeweepumps or email them at info@peeweepumps.com.
Research papers on the sexualisation of children
Emma Rush: The Market is eating our children
Little girls face Lolita effect as they are plagued by teenage worries– Herald Sun
8 Responses
News flash it isn’t children who are being turned into ‘disposable sexualised commodities’ – it is female children and now female babies.
Padded bras; high heels and tiny tiny skirts are not being marketed at boy children or boy babies. Refusing disaggreate precisely which sex is being targetted as males’ disposable sexualised commodities is essential otherwise we women just might realise the tiny gains we real Radical Feminists managed to wrest out of the hands of men have been swiftly eroded because males are once again declaring women; girls and even female babies are males’ disposable/interchangeable sexualised commodities!
Female babies are not dehumanised sexualised commodities for males to voyeuristically leer at and view them as ‘sexually hot objects suitable for male sexual predation!’
I’m avidly waiting for boy babies to be reduced to dehumanised sexualised objects for male consumption but that won’t happen because boy babies are human – only females are non-human according to mens’ Male Supremacist System.
The female owner of Pee Wee Pumps is parroting mens’ lies by endorsing and promoting male belief females aren’t human but only exist to service male sexuality 24/7! Going to root at the issue means focusing on how and why malestream media constantly subjects all women; girls and female babies to female-hating propaganda.
can you say pedophile bait? this is what this product is plain and simple, stop the advertisement and distribution of this mess.
Where is the welfare department? Where is the protection of children? The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has better protection for critters than this society has for children, particularly little girls.
Put these kids in foster homes where they can run, jump, skip, climb trees and be kids, not hookers-in-training.
She couldn’t find high heels for her daughter? Why was she even looking for them? What she SHOULD be looking for is a good therapist for herself!
Bringing up 4 children in the last 18 years, I have observed many parents who want girls, they think they are more “fun” than boys because you can dress them up and show them off like a doll. I’ve also observed how much attention and compliments little girls receive about their clothing jewelry hair and “prettiness” in general. Boys not nearly as much.
Yes, that stuff that pornifies babies and small children does look like equipment for pedophiles. It is also very strange on the parents’ part. Even very small babies aren’t objects; from the outset, they discover more of the world every day and try to test their wee bodies (until that moment when they can finally stand up and walk!!!
On the other hand, I’ve looked at the Witchery clothing line (quickly) and see nothing wrong with their children’s clothing (except that it is probably expensive). There are a few silly items, but overall it is a line that is admirably free of pinkification and infantilisation of children. It is similar to a lot of the children’s clothing available in Europe, in colours that aren’t pastel or garish. I see no princess or military might themes, which I always come up against when I’m looking for clothes for (friends’) children.
Girls need to be little girls not divas or fodder for pedophiles.
No pole dancing and dressing like hookers for preteens, no high heels for babies or girls,
I want little girls to grow up with ALL opportunities at her fingertips,.to have her mind stimulated
and taught to think for herself, to feel strength in her body..to be able to engage in sports and reading,
exploring, discovering…NOT obsessing on her looks or palatability to men
and boys. The stereotyping of gender roles is the problem…not the body a child is born into!
I’m all for nongendered toys and even clothes for young kids..so they can develope into the unique
Beings they are…without stereotypes!!!
Patriarchy lies and whispers
Untruths into your pearly ears,
Listen while it’s golden tongue
Explains that there is naught to fear.
It shows you love
When there are bones,
It shows you doves
When there are drones,
Cloaks itself in shadow shades,
Insists that you be wife or maid
Or whore, then holds you tight
Within your box,
With chains of children, love as locks.
Captures you with ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’
Bra’s for toddlers,
High heeled shoes for babies.
No job, no food, no cash, no home,
Be thin, be young
And never be alone.
Always offering, just beyond your reach,
A better life, the sunset
The walk on sandy beach.
The promise that you’ll be the one
The universe will empower,
If only you can keep the faith,
For just another black eyed hour.
Not for you the rapist comes,
Wife beater chooses other ones,
While you welcome hair pulled pain
And bruises as delightful gain.
The agony of fifty shades
Patriarchy’s whispering blades.
Can choice be real
When lessons learned
Is follow or you will be burned?
Be quiet or you will be beaten,
Your very essence will be eaten,
Your husk spat out, will still be used
Headlines say ‘was not abused’.
You cannot leave,
You cannot stay.
It is not choice
To live this way.
Wonderful how high heels = sexuality. Great work, feminism. (/sarcasm)