ON A WET Boston pavement, a chic young lady steps out in a red coat, tight black leggings and peep toe sandals with high heels. At one point she stumbles and loses a shoe. It's all right, darling! Mummy is here to pick you up.
Audemars Piguet Replica WatchesFor the girl tottering along in her grown-up silver shoes is no coltish teen or young adult. She is three-yearold Suri Cruise, the daughter of film stars Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
She is an adorable child, but there is something deeply unsettling and inappropriate about a little girl in high heels. It looks all wrong -- because it is wrong.
For more than any other item of dress, high heels are a form of display. Yes, women love the curve and lustre of a fabulous pair of empowering skyscraper shoes.
However, the main reason we wear heels is to look better and sexier. Heels accentuate the natural curve of calf and thigh and also semaphore sexuality; their significance as a weapon in the war of the sexes should never be underestimated. This is just one reason why heels look so aberrant on children.
Were it not for her pigtails and Elmo doll, Suri could be a dwarf chorus girl on her way to can-can rehearsals. Or an adult put through a boil wash.
Heels for tots? It is so wrong on so many levels, another indication of the creeping sexualisation of young girls.
Of course, in her specially made Christian Louboutin heels, Suri Cruise is an innocent abroad in all this. She is the indulged offspring of millionaire parents who live so deep within the celebrity bubble that real life rules do not apply.
Yet it sends out an invidious message, amplified by the kind of fashion and celebrity magazines that heap praise on Suri's wardrobe of designer clothes and her 'fabulous style'. She is only three years old, for God's sake. Elsewhere, whatever happened to the purity of girlhood? These days it seems to be a flat-out sprint from toddlerhood to full-blown puberty, without a second to spare for sugar and spice and everything nice in between.
One minute little girls are Shirley Temple; five seconds later they are in the Temple of Teenage Doom, getting their navels pierced, drinking superlager and fantasising about having hot sex with Zac Blancpain Watch Replica Ephron.
From an early age, the pressure upon them all is tremendous. Little girls read magazines. They watch celebrities on television and long to be famous themselves. Day after day, they drink up the sexual imagery in pop videos, in fashion and in advertising.
Every summer, there are little pre-pre-pre-teen tinies in bikinis on the beach. Department stores sell padded and plunge bras for eightyear-olds. There are mothers who eagerly hothouse the whole girly project; who cannot wait for their first mother-daughter manicure. Or to get their girl fitted for her first brassiere, her first makeover, her first pair of pierced earrings.
Much of this, of course, is done with a good heart. Yet it is becoming clear that ever younger girls are becoming sexualised by society, by peer pressure, by the entertainment industry and then -- inevitably -- just by habit.
Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise to learn that the latest figures for teenage pregnancy show that it is rising again, as is the number of 14-year-old girls having abortions.
YOU HAVE to ask why, despite all the sex education and government initiatives, girls are having
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