For more than a decade we have been exposing corporates who sexualise and adultify children, mostly girls, to sell products. Back in 2010, we joined psychologists, health professionals and child advocates in condemning Witchery Kids for portraying small children in adult-styled clothing and poses.
We argued that encouraging children to focus on how they look, and posing and styling girls to look and act older than they are, harms children’s natural development and leads to a range of negative physical and mental health outcomes.
Unfortunately, this trend to adultify girls and present them in ways modelled on sexy adult models still persists. Just this week, we were alerted to kids designer clothing brand Caroline Bosmans and its disturbing and sexualising representations of children.
Images depict children who appear to be bruised or otherwise injured, children with their faces obscured, made to look like dolls, who look drugged or in distress, and posed alongside adults in various states of undress, with one in drag.
But children are not miniature adults. Portraying children as though they are mini adults puts children at risk, by blurring the distinction between sexual maturity and immaturity. Author of the Australian research paper Corporate Paedophilia Emma Rush said,
Premature sexualisation also erases the line between who is and is not sexually mature, and as such, may increase the risk of child sexual abuse by undermining the important social norm that children are sexually unavailable.
Caroline Bosmans, an international brand, is stocked in stores around the world, including here in Australia. Don't give them your business.
See also:
Witchery adultifies children in latest kidswear catalogue
Sexed up tween advertising shows fashion needs to grow up- Sydney Morning Herald
Backlash over PeeWee Pumps high heels for babies
‘Pop This’: how the dance industry caters for paedophilic fantasies with underage girls
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