Padded bras for 7-year-olds?

What happened
Teacher and parent groups in the U.K. blasted British supermarket giant Tesco for selling a padded bra in the department selling clothes for 7 and 8 year olds. "There is already too much pressure on children to appear grown up,” said a spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers. (London Telegraph) A Tesco spokesman said the bra wasn’t inappropriate, because it was “designed for girls at that self-conscious age when they are just developing.” (Daily Mail)

What the commentators said
It’s difficult not to be “appalled,” said the Alpha Mummy blog. “How can we condemn the early and gratuitous sexualisation of children, particularly girls, and then have our biggest supermarket producing what they term 'pocket-money products' to get little kids to buy bras.”

A bra is one thing, said Radar Online, but these are “pre-tween miracle bras, which retail for £4 ($8).” Maybe this makes sense in a nation that gave the world Miss Bimbo, the virtual world where kids could practice getting breast implants, crash dieting, and whoring it up with billionaire sugar daddies.” It appears that the U.K. is rapidly leaving the U.S. in the dust “in sexualizing its youth.”

And Tesco isn't helping reverse the trend, said the Vital Signs blog. Let’s not forget that this is the same company that, a couple of years ago, put a “a pole-dancing kit in the toy section of its website. Striptease training for kids?” Tesco pulled that product, but only after parents and teachers complained.

“Excuse me—pole dancing outfit!!?” said the Working Mum blog. Maybe this is the start of the “backlash on the provocative clothes for little girls” parents have been waiting for.

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Comment on this article

Recent comments | 1 total

Kristen | Thursday, July 3, 2008, 1:10 pm

Unfortunately, Tesco is selling bras in the children\'s department because children are starting puberty earlier and earlier. It is not all that unusual for an eight year old girl to begin developing breasts, and these young girls feel more comfortable and \"covered\" in bras with a bit of padding (the illustration above is obviously a stock shot of a woman\'s bra). Instead of lambasting bra manufacturers and retailers, we should take a look at the unnatural environmental influences that are affecting children\'s development in such a dramatic way.