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Letting Children be Children

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Since most attention is paid to the sexualisation of clothes for girls, it is important to be especially aware of girls’ physical development. Girls are, on average, reaching puberty at an earlier age now than ever before. In the UK, girls can now expect to reach puberty, defined as the development of breast buds, around their tenth birthday, and, on average, girls have developed more evident breasts by 11.6 years of age.That means that today these developmental stages are reached a year to 18 months sooner than at any time over the past 60 years (Rubin et al, 2009).

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We need to see concerns about the premature sexualisation of children through inappropriate clothing and other products against this backdrop. Professor David Buckingham, in a book to be published in 2011, considers the issue of whether, as well as society being increasingly sexualised, this lowering of the age at which children reach physical and sexual maturity provides a biological driver towards them seeing their

potential as sexual beings at a younger age (Phoenix, 2011).

Sexualised products

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Parents responding to our Call for Evidence told us that they felt that retailers could do more to offer age—appropriate ranges of clothes. They said that they preferred children's clothes to be clearly age—appropriate and not simply scaled—down versions of adult fashion. Figure 6 shows findings from the omnibus survey about views on clothes for children.

Figure 6: Views on clothing styles for children

• 55 per cent of parents surveyed thought that adult style clothes for children in shops encourage children to act older than they are.
• 45 per cent of parents surveyed thought that adult—style clothes for children put pressure on children to conform to a particular body shape and size.
• 48 per cent of the children surveyed agreed with the statement 'It's difficult to find clothes in the shops that I like and that my parents would allow me to wear'.

Source:TNS Omnibus Survey, 2011

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Objections by parents in the Call for Evidence to the scaling down of adult styles often related to elements of design with close associations to adult sexuality, such as short skirts, shoes with heels, the use of suggestive slogans, ‘adult’ or sex industry branding, black lace, diamanté, animal prints and low necklines.We can see how such design details could be found inappropriate.All the retailers we spoke to during the course of the Review were aware of such sensitivities and usually very deliberately steered away from including such details in their own ranges.

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