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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Mum in the City / Battle of the bralette

A padded “bralette”...  contours for 8 to 10-year-olds.
A padded “bralette”…  contours for 8 to 10-year-olds.
THE Boob Fairy is yet to visit, but her arrival is eagerly anticipated.

My eight-year-old girl has embraced the idea of being a “tween” and, despite being years away from puberty, she just can’t wait to become a teenager and all that comes with that.

She was born a fashionista and the latest tween, teenage, and indeed adult, fashion is where she wants to be. I get this. I was much the same, but back in my day there was much less opportunity to indulge the inner diva or indeed adult fashion and imagery.

Fashion marketing and social culture was less focused on the tween and kids seemed to stay kids for a bit longer. Not so now.

On a recent shopping trip where shoes and underwear were on the agenda, my little girl went all Imelda Marcos on me when she discovered that serious high heels are available for girls her age.

“They look soooo good, I’ve got to have them,” she pleaded.

I tried to hold the line. Heels aren’t appropriate for children with developing backs, I said. There are safety issues, I insisted, but she had plenty of counter arguments.

“Mum, I do acrobatics and ice skating, I think I can balance,” she insisted.  “I have really good core strength, so really my back won’t be a problem.

“Seriously, mum, do you think they would make them for girls my age if they weren’t appropriate!”  That was her definitive argument.

The situation wasn’t helped when another mum confessed to us that she had bought the same heels for her little girl the day before. Peer pressure – it’s unstoppable.

To cut a long story short, my girl is now the proud possessor of a pair of purple suede high heels that she calls ”my precious, my precious”.  They are to be kept for “special occasions”, but she carts them around in her bag to show her friends and drool over.

After shoes we moved on to underwear, which is usually not a drama.  A while ago my girl had convinced me to purchase a crop top to wear under her acrobatics leotards and other sports wear. Totally unnecessary as her chest is as flat as the Hay Plain, but the other girls, 13 and older, that she does sport with have them. I figured this was pretty harmless.

However, padded “bralettes” are a different matter.  Here we’re talking contours for size 8 to 10-year-olds. My girl was desperate to get one but there I did draw the line, despite much pleading – “Please, mummy, please!”

Not until the Boob Fairy comes, I ruled.

The Boob Fairy is a hangover from an earlier time in our home when both my kids wanted to know where breasts came from and I was determined to duck any conversations that were too biologically specific in nature.

There’s a time and place for everything, but some things are better left for discussion when the kids are just a bit older. So I spun a tale of the Boob Fairy who sprinkles magic dust – with obviously varied results.

A few years later my girl still believes in the Boob Fairy and she’s waiting for that fairy to arrive, totally believing in the magic that is growing up. However she’s also already worrying whether her bum is too big and whether boys will like her if she’s really tall.

I’m not too fazed by this. But I do wonder whether the daily tidal wave of advertising and other commercially driven imagery that emphasises fashion, body image and indeed female sexuality at ever younger ages isn’t encroaching too far on the boundaries of childhood.

Maybe we ought to let our little girls be little girls for just a bit longer and not have them dragged into the teenage years and adulthood quite so fast.  

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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