Abercrombie Padded Bikini Top For 8-Year-Olds Angers Parents (VIDEO)

File this under unsurprising: Abercrombie & Fitch, of all wholesome places, now purveys padded bikini tops for 8-year-old girls.

ABC News took a look at the latest in tween swimwear, which had Babble.com bloggers up in arms, writing, "The push up bra is, effectively, a sex tool, designed to push the breasts up and out, putting them front and center where they're more accessible to the eye (and everything else). How is this okay for a second-grader?"

However, Abercrombie isn't the first to be under fire for selling such things. Last year, British department store Primark pulled padded bikini tops for girls aged 7 from its shelves after complaints from child protection groups. The UK chain donated all money made from sales to charity.

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Comments

[ClayMan88]

12:05 PM on 04/12/2011

They also make thongs for children and not only that but they advertise them with the words wink wink in the description. So they are out right saying yes these are made for children to attract pedophiles. These things shouldn't be made for children. Who ever came up with the idea for these cloths and the people who signed off on them should all be locked up because they are obviously pedophiles.

[Bill J4321]

05:00 PM on 04/04/2011

I wonder what the reaction would have been if Abercrombie had come out with a padded speedo for 8 year old boys?

[Bill J4321]

04:56 PM on 04/04/2011

I just love it when people pass the buck for raising their children to Abercrombie & Fitch or other companies.

Because it is just so odd.

The government is cutting billions of dollars in educational funding for your children's education. Your children's schools are falling apart. Literally & figuratively. There's extreme violence in the hallways of schools all over the country. Test score results continue to see the decline of our children's level of education. Children are brining guns to school. To kill each other.

Let's go protest a bikini?

[notwaff]

04:10 PM on 03/31/2011

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Responding to Outrage, Abercrombie Pulls Padded Bikinis For 7-Year-Olds Off Shelf

http://www.breitbart.tv/responding-to-outrage-abercrombie-pulls-padded-bikinis-for-7-year-olds-off-shelf/

-----
(of course they'll continue to sell to girls 12 and up, but younger - yippie)

[Theresa Ruth Howard]

01:39 PM on 03/30/2011

And you wonder why we have issues.
What I think is crazy I that in the video the narrator says "Tweens spend 24 million dollars a year" I love how it makes it sound like these children are earning this money, driving themselves to that mall and going shopping while telling their parents to just be patient, "We'll get ice cream when we are done if your good". "Tweens" are not spending this money, their parents are allowing them to. Somewhere I think that parents think this is somehow "cute" and that it is an expression of their "femininity" which I find very telling about where women's heads are. When you start to tell your daughter that her body and her image, and the augmentation of it is the root of her femininity, there is a problem, not with the kid but with the mother.
It's not cute to dress your 4 year old like a stripper. 6 year olds are not supposed to be worried about being hot! 8 Year olds shouldn't be pushing whatever they might have up!!

I find it interesting that more and more celebrity and pseudo- celebrity parents are falling prey to this. Perhaps it's the fishbowl effect of the ubiquitous paparazzi that makes them feel like they, and by extension their children must always be camera ready. Suri Cruise running around in sub-degree weather in ballroom heels is just ridiculous, it's not cute it's crazy.

[SageSpencer]

01:36 AM on 03/30/2011

And the sexualization of children continues...

[JadedNY]

10:18 PM on 03/29/2011

I'm glad some parents are raising a ruckus. The sad part is all the parents who buy the bikini top for their 8-year-olds. Plus, this was probably designed and sold after doing market research, meaning they already talked to enough parents who said they would buy it for their little girls.

[Pauline Delton]

10:18 PM on 03/29/2011

(P.S. And yes, I realize the article doesn't mention the gov't getting involved...I'm just pointing out that we have some power here :) )

[Pauline Delton]

10:16 PM on 03/29/2011

So, regardless of how people are feeling about this, it's really another chance for people to use the power of their choices when it comes to buying something. DON'T buy it. I don't need the government telling me what I can and cannot buy, thank you very much, so even if I have a problem with this, I'd rather let people make their own decisions for their kids versus the gov't stepping in to dictate what *I* am allowed to buy for clothing. In a sense, a padded bikini top could be considered *safer* than non-padded. Any woman who's worn a thin shirt, bathing suit, etc, can probably remember a time when perkiness was an embarrassment. 7 year olds aren't usually developed enough to have anything to "push up" (or out, or together, etc), so really all the padding does is add thickness. Just trying to debate the other side.

[Niasia]

02:02 PM on 03/29/2011

IMO mo child the age of 8 needs a two piece. Cute as a baby but by 4 it becomes one piece until they are old enough. Simple as that. With all the perverts and wierdos wondering around why would you want your child exposed like that?

[AntiSocialSailor]

02:20 PM on 03/29/2011

Be sure to make them wear shoes too. Lotta perverts out there who like kids' feet. And long pants. Don't forget the long pants. Lots of weirdos like little girls' legs.

[Pilatunes]

01:59 PM on 03/29/2011

Hey, they made those 6 year olds dance around like strippers (you know, the one's dancing to Beyonce's 'Single Lady'). From there, this seems like a predictable progression.

[Drew2U]

01:05 PM on 03/29/2011

I don't understand-- what parent in their right mind would put a child in a bikini in the first place? Then to complain about padding on the top--a little hypocritical, maybe?

[AntiSocialSailor]

01:28 PM on 03/29/2011

It's totally hypocritical, but a natural result of the sick conflation of nudity and sexuality that goes on in this country. Most of Europe would only laugh at us. I'll bet they don't have this discussion at all in most European countries.
But we have a problem here. If your only other choice is a one-piece swimsuit or some sort of full outfit, what do you do? Little girls have no business with bikini tops, padded or unpadded, until they are regularly wearing a bra.

[hellameangirl]

01:52 PM on 03/29/2011

Agreed.

[novabird]

01:00 PM on 03/29/2011

For those who are defending this and saying it is just innocent, harmless fun for tots, I don't know what to say to you.

The rampant sexualization of little girls takes away their innocence, their childhoods, and their life possibilities as they are subtly indoctrinated to prepare themselves for being sexual objects. Parents need to keep children free of the pressures of sex as long as possible. It is difficult enough for 12-14 year olds when their hormones start going wild. Why dump this sexualization on little girls long before they are ready?

[AntiSocialSailor]

02:05 PM on 03/29/2011

What sexualizes little girls and prepares them for being sexual objects? Continually reminding them that their bodies should always be hidden away and only taken out for bathing, dressing and sexual activity. Then, since hiding is too hard to do all the time, sell them on the idea of wrapping themselves in packages of cloth calculated to entice.

Where are women least free and seen as mostly just sexual objects? The same ones where they are forced to dress the most conservatively and where they would never dream of going topless on a beach. Ask the women of Afghanistan or Iran or some of the other fundamentalist religious countries in Africa and the M.E. how hyper-modesty and conservatism works in preventing them from being looked upon as nothing more than baby factories and sex objects.

Then ask a modern European woman, who probably went topless on the beach until she was 10 or more, if she feels like no more than a sex object.

I suspect the answers may surprise you.

As long as American prudes continue to insist that the degree of nudity displayed is commensurate with the degree of sexual provocation exercised, corporations will continue to sell girls and women clothing that is meant to provoke.

[AntiSocialSailor]

12:55 PM on 03/29/2011

Why does a 8 and younger little girl wear a bikini top in the first place? Padded or unpadded, it only sexualizes what is, by definition, not sexual. Is it inappropriate for a 2 year old to go topless in America? 5 year old? Why start insisting on a bikini top (which is a sexually oriented garment even without padding) at age 8. Prepubescent breasts are no more sexual organs than feet are. If you who are up in arms about this because of the padded aspect, you should re-think, and object to, the whole idea of a bikini top for an 8 year old the same way you'd object to spiked heels or a sexy bodice on her. If you're worried about the molester getting his jollies off on prepubescent breasts, you should also make your kids wear shoes as I'm sure there are also foot fetishists roaming loose on the beach.
Little girls have no business wearing bikini tops at the beach until they have breasts. Even then it's stupid and gratuitously sexualizing, but that's just me.

[Laurene Vandever]

12:41 PM on 03/29/2011

You know, years ago having a photo with a kid dressed up in a provocative way was considered 'child porn - but today it is called 'fashion'??

The world has gone SICK!

[AntiSocialSailor]

01:20 PM on 03/29/2011

That is not true. Years ago, a kid had to be engaged in some sort of sexual activity for it to be child porn. Depictions of nude minors were legal. Remember the movie "Pretty Baby". Today, that would be considered child porn. A NY man was recently charged with child porn for photoshopping the faces of teenagers onto the bodies of adult actresses. That's how ridiculous the hysteria has become in the U.S..
Thanks to the sensationalized media and fearmongering, now mere nudity (in America) is considered child porn. Sexy garments for children is one of the unintended consequences of America's prudishness and its erroneous conflation of nudity and sexuality. Like spiked heels, bikini tops only serve to sexualize what is not inherently sexual (legs and 8 y.o. non-breasts)

[hellameangirl]

01:36 PM on 03/29/2011

EXACTLY!! Thank you. Nude children is innocent and natural. Its when we doll them up and shame their natural bodies we are sexualizing them. I've been to beaches all over Europe and Asia and children are usually nude or mostly nude, and its not 'sick'. Americans MAKE it sick.

[Niasia]

02:00 PM on 03/29/2011

spot on...my mom STILL has a photo of me in the nude in an album (grrr) but no one thought anything of it. Now to be nude is so risque and that is sad.