STOP dressing your LITTLE GIRLS like WOMEN!

It has been a year since my last blog.  I caught myself biting off more than I could chew.  People said this would happen to me; but, after all, I am stubborn and must learn for myself.  I took a one-year sabbatical, and to my dismay I discovered a culture within my own world that I have been blind to.  I have spent the last three years or so teaching young girls and women how to be aware of their surroundings---be safe.  What I never saw coming was the realization of how blind I have been to things.  I go about my day-to-day business helping others protect themselves; I pay very close attention to my surroundings in regards to predators (the bad guys).  You know the predators I am talking about:  the ones lurking in spooky alleys and stairwells.  However, over the past years (more like last week), I discovered there is a different type of predator.  It's called Clothing Stores and Mommies.

 

I have a young daughter, under the age of 10.  She is very active in basketball.  She needed new basketball pants, like the Nike or Adidas type.  I drop my girls off at school and then took off for an exciting day of shopping (please insert sarcasm on the word exciting, as I despise shopping!) I pull into the familiar chain store that I know has Nike or Adidas-type apparel.  I walk in and head straight for the girls department, after all, I am shopping for a young girl.  When I reached my destination, I also reached a state of horror, anger and sadness.  I did not find the common snaps-on-the-sides Nike pants.  Instead, I found racks beyond racks of YOGA-style pants!  Along with yoga pants there were sports bras and tight-fitting "athletic" tanks. 

 

PLEASE tell me why there is ZERO sports apparel in a LITTLE GIRLS department?!  PLEASE tell me WHY there are countless racks of YOGA PANTS and SPORTS BRAS in a 6-10 year old GIRLS department?!?!  Let me tell you WHY----because someone is BUYING them!  It's called Supply & Demand!  I am ALL about being healthy (as I sit here with a bag of cheese-puffs), but COME ON!  Tight fitting yoga pants on a 10-YEAR-OLD?!  PLEASE stop putting this image into your innocent daughter’s brain that YOGA PANTS are "sexy."  Why, instead of CLOTHING to make ourselves feel like we are contributing to our good health, we actually try putting down the Grande Latte's and Cheese Puffs!  Why don't we start simply cooking healthier and teach our children what a family dinner is?  NO!  That would require too much effort!  Instead, let's give them the impression that they either 1) all they have to do is where Yoga pants because they are tight fitting and hold everything together, or 2) that clothing is all they need to be sexy.  I'd like to know WHY 10-year-old little girls want to feel SEXY in the first place?! What about their INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVITY?  Now THAT is an attractive quality in young woman!  Yoga pants leave LITTLE to the imagination---especially for perpetrators!  Oh, let me guess?  I'm totally wrong---Yoga pants ARE sports attire?!  Sure they are---to an adult!  Please stop putting in the heads of very young girls that they must be obsessed with working out.  YES, they need activity---hitting the gym three times a week is a HORRIBLE thing to stress to a child!

 

Yes, I have yoga pants.  No, I do not where them in public (this rear was not made for yoga pants).  Yes, my children see me in them.  I am a mother of two who loves for things to not jiggle while I bounce around my house singing to the radio and playing air guitar; but they do not need to hear that!  All they need to know is that they are mom's comfy pants (and that they can have when they become a mommy!)  I do not dress my children in long dresses and turtleneck sweaters every day.  I allow them to dress themselves.  I let them be who they want to be.  I totally DIG the purple polka-dot socks with orange cargo shorts and a green and silver plaid shirt.  If that is what makes them feel great, then so be it.  However, if those cargo shorts were Daisy Dukes and the plaid shirt only had but one button---I'd come unglued like a caged lioness that’d just seen steak for the first time! 

 

All parents know that time flies.  Your babies are born, then the next thing you know they are starting college.  Time flies fast enough without your help.  When you are dressing your child as an adult mother would dress---very tight fitting yoga pants, and anything with spandex, you are instilling in her an unrealistic image.  You are unintentionally telling her she needs to dress and feel sexy.  You are making your daughter eye-candy for a predator and you are pressing fast-forward on her innocent years of life. 

 

Needless to say, I shop in the boys section for my little girls’ basketball attire.