I'm Still Not Tired - Larkin Callaghan

…for making sure I didn’t actually take a few days off this holiday week!

What a charming little undergarment you were planning on selling to the masses this Black Friday:

[Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald]

Every 7 year-old girl needs a thong (like, I could end the sentence there!), that also broadcasts to the world that they’re diggin’ for gold before they’re even old enough to have a checking account of their own!

The perfect holiday gift for your first grader. The message that baring their buns will be rewarded with a wealthy partner. Cheers!

I’m not sure any additional commentary is needed here, given how disturbing and depraved that sentences is on its own.

So I’ll just link to this: what happens when we sexualize little girls.

Aaand this: how self-image is impacted by what is advertised to us.

Aaand this: some chatter about sexist advertising.

Ok, actually, I can’t just let the sentence speak for itself. Particularly when the story behind the crotchless underwear points out the saleswoman at the store responsible for peddling lingerie to children said “oh, but we cater to teens also.”

I’m not sure how this rectifies this troubling example of capitalism at its finest - if the market demands crotchless underwear for 7 year-olds, the market will get it! Who thought children should be running around the playground wearing a garment whose sole purpose is to provide easy erotic access to a woman’s genitals? Someone thought this would sell based on current trends and representations of girls, and the crotchless panties have taken this issue to an ever more disturbing level.

In the kids, that is. An interesting new study out of UCLA showed that women who experienced intense Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG - morning sickness) had children that were subsequently 3.6 times more likely to suffer from anxiety, bipolar, and depression in adulthood than those who did not experience intense HG suffering.

Causing dehydration and starvation of the fetus, this study supplements other studies that show children of HG-suffering women having greater learning and attention difficulties than other kids.

According to a new Michigan study, children with public health insurance are less likely to receive comprehensive health care than children with private insurance - at a rate of nearly 25%. Public programs cover one-third of American children, often those who are already most vulnerable - including those already sick, minorities, and those in resource-poor and underprivileged communities.

To determine the outcomes, researchers asked parents the following: about their child’s usual source of care, familiarity with a personal doctor/nurse, difficulty of obtaining referrals, access to family centered care and communication between care providers.

I’m re-posting this image from Peggy Orenstein’s blog, with little else to say other than what she’s already articulated: sigh.

We used to let little girls be little girls instead of over-sexualizing them into objects of desire. They played with Legos in clothes that allowed them to be active and move around, instead of in clothes that are too tight, too low, or too inappropriately-labeled, which not only make this kind of appropriate child’s play difficult, but draw the attention of others towards these girls’ bodies instead of to their abilities and developing self. Why do little girls need to wear thongs? Who is looking at their butts, other than their parents? Why send a message to a 6 year-old that her bum doesn’t need to be covered or that the clothes she wears should accentuate or show it off? Normalizing this kind of displayed sexuality at such a young age not only teaches but straight up hits it home to these girls that over-emphasizing the physical aspects of themselves - which will be routinely exploited for the rest of their lives - should be their primary focus. By now we’re all familiar with how this can lead to major body-image issues, depression, substance abuse, and trouble with school, but as a sexual health educator my particular distress here is over the early onset of sexual activity - which can then lead to a higher incidence of those other consequences.

Girls who are sexually active from a very young age are more likely to have unprotected sex. Which means they are more likely to contract a sexually transmitted infection. Perhaps one that affects the health of their future babies (see: herpes, HIV, CMV) their future partners (see: those listed before, and - HPV, gonorrhea) and their future fertility (see: those listed before, and chlamydia - which can make women sterile). Not only that, between the ages of 4 - 10, young girls are in the developmental stage of constructing a sense of self - they are beginning to see that they are distinct and separate and piecing together what that means for themselves. Determining what composes them as individuals, how they will present themselves to the world, what for them is meaningful. If what we’re giving them is that meaning is tied up in how they look in a thong or a push-up bikini, I’m terrified of what they’ll be doing in two decades. Additionally, girls at this age are mimicking what they see in their social circle as appropriate behavior, and aligning with their same-sex parents and mentors. This means that not only is it better for your kid to be dressed appropriately, their friends’ parents need to feel the same. Like everything else, like all you readers know, this requires massive cultural and social norm shifting. So this is just a reminder to start with us.