Wow, they are ugly. What do you make of this? I have to zip away now.
(They collapse when walked on, but they are stirring up discussion.)
News article link from NY Post

Junior Hooker Chic. There's a lot of that going around these days.

PJ

What happened to the days when we would just let kids be kids? Personally, I wouldn't ever buy them because kids grow so quickly and I think it'd be a total waste of money to have to always buy them as they grow.

I think the line that says that the shoes allow the pre-toddlers to "channel their inner Carrie Bradshaw" says it all. Carrie is one of the characters in "Sex In The City" and as such is certainly a suspect role model, at least in my mind.

Yuck.

Or as I saw someone else put it a few weeks ago, Little Ho Peep.

Julie

ROFL, Julie. All I can say is that I'm glad that the poor baby can't walk.

These shoes are the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. They are totally sick and demented. We have a hard enough time keeping sexual prediators away from children without dressing them up as infants in an inappropriate way. Plus in this day and age with people having a hard time making ends meet, spending $35 on a pair of sexually inappropriate shoes for a baby is stupid. If you are going to spend $35 spend it on something they can truly use.

I view these the same as the kiddie pagents. Turning children in to sex objects for the pedophiles. And give me a break - letting out our their inner Carrie Bradshaw. What kind of sick twisted sales pitch. First Carrie Bradshaw was not pretty(not that everyone has to be pretty), not the best fashion icon and a slut. Not someone I would want my child to emulate.

People will do anything to make a buck. And you have a lot of people out there stupid enough to piss their money away on something totally inappropirate for a child of any age.

THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION - AND A STRONG OPINION AT THAT.

From the entrepreneur side - good angle. Callin' out to Paris, Lindsay and Brit. From an ethical and questionable side, egads. A ped can be attracted to any 'sort' of dressed kid, but these shoes are creepy. Also they are ugly and so tacky. I would want my kid to be a kid. My first reaction was, what kind of crud is this? Too young, pink and tacky material. My husband is open to anything and his response was (after grunt) “stupid people” and he’s into the business side of life.

Though I'm not too passionate about it, but I wouldn't want those on my kid along with two piece wadding outfits or make-up on kids.

Besides weirdos, I'd be worried about the material negatively affecting their walk (we they do decide) I like kids to be dressed ‘cute’. Not like a mini-teen. Children used to be considered minutes adults. We shouldn’t go back to that, even if it is a bit of a joke or for fun fashion (?). (Calling the Cdns ->)Does anyone remember the whole issue flying around LaSenza when they opened up a tween store? For those that don’t know LaSenza is sort of like a Victoria Secret. The tween store sells undergarments and clothing, but when the thought of a little Senza store came out, man the airwaves were busy.

I remember when I was in elementary school (‘80s) and in the school choir. I think it was grade 3 or 4. At xmas time we dressed up. I was in my blue shiny dress and flats and a fellow girl was in pink with over one inch heeled white shoes. Someone's mum criticized that pink girl's mum for allowing her to wear grown up shoes. I can’t remember what was said. I know my mum would have never allowed me to wear heels. I was a tom-boy and totally into my basketball sneakers in junior school. I innocently walked in my friend’s heels once and my mum told me to get that sl*t wear off…..hmmm. My mum (little miss hippy) had sky high black leather boots sooooo.

LOL.

From the flip side, many women don't view their pumps or heels as sexual at all. Just stylish or powerful. I can see how they'd be offended by those who assume a baby wearing these heels as stepping into certain questionable territory. I never would want a life style like Carrie, but I don’t think she is a sl*t.

I don't wear heels. Besides not having the grace, I'm just not into them. Now, we need more cute runners! When I have a kid, I’m looking forward to buying these! I did have an awesome pair of high wedge sandles with black leather … but my dog ate them. ARUGH.

When I was little I had those basic white leather hard bottomed lace up shoes. Those were boring, but good for the feet my doc said. Well, I think the below are cute!

Have a good one everyone!

Nicely put kmar. I'm not a fan of beauty pagents either I think they are outdated and entirely sexist and to exploit your child in that sort manner well, what I have to say is not for public consumption.

Going back to the shoes though, the little girl in the picture would probably only be about 8-9 months old. They can barely say the words high heels let alone be able to wear them.

I saw a segment about it today on morning TV my first thought was what kind of idiot parent would even think about getting those shoes? Okay so the heels are soft, but kid are developing and even as an adult I despise wearing heels.

Wearing heels is already bad enough for the feet and to get them for a toddler who can barely walk steadily is utterly stupid. The creator was saying that even if your child doesn't wear them they are a great gag gift. Honestly if I were to buy something for a friend with a baby I'd be buying a toy or knitting a blanket or something practical that would be of use.

Asking the child to channel her inner Carrie Bradshaw? First of all the show she was in is titled Sex and the City, so essentially what they are promoting is what the show promoted.

It's one thing to have your daughter play with a Barbie Doll (and I won't even fo into my opinion on them all I will say is that she's another one of the most sexist toys of all time), but turning her into one before she's even old enough to play with them? Well I'll leave you to formulate your own opinion on that question.

In a world full of sick people selling young girls off as sex slaves and looking at pornographic material on said subject do we really need stuff like this to encourage more of it?

*shakes head*

I'm all for cool and trendy things but these are just stupid.

In the most important part of a childs life in terms of motor skills, having something like this on their feet is just plain silly.
Babies need flat thin soles, or no shoes at all in order to learn how to walk properly. I can't believe that a shoe where the heel 'folds' down' is going to provide the proper support to allow a child to learn to walk properly, let alone what it will do to the shape of their feet.

When my kids were learning to walk (and #2 still is in that phase), I went to specialist baby shoe stores to make sure I wasn't going to do something to deform or affect my kids feet/walking... (given several of my friends who had kids earlier than me have now ended up with their children having to see podiatrists because they shoved their feet in 'any old shoe' when they were learning to walk)... I just can't see these shoes being good for a baby's development.

And honestly... gah - they look truly awful.

What is it with this trend to make kids look grown up when they're so young??

How stupid is the maker of these shoes.

A GAG GIFT.

A $35 gag gift. It is one thing to spend a couple of dollars on a gag gift but $35 is that person crazy. No. They are just trying to justifify these disgusting shoes and come up with a reason for people to buy them.

Just coming back in to say...

Carrie Bradshaw was actually not a slut at all, IIRC. She had several boyfriends during the course of the show and certainly wasn't a prude, but I wouldn't call her a slut. I think the remark in the article was simply referencing the fact that Carrie was repeatedly shown to be a shoe-junkie and it was running joke on the show.

Still not someone I want my child to channel, but, you know, just putting it into perspective. <g>

Julie

This is what I think.

Take a look at this picture:



The picture, admittedly a drawing, is a faithful reproduction of a scene from a hugely popular Swedish TV show for kids from the early 1960s. You can see two children here, the child on the left holding a rabbit, the child on the right looking at the other kid and standing in front of a dog.

The kid on the left is a boy, and the kid on the right is a girl.

You can see how incredibly similarly they are dressed. Both have the same kind of t-shirts, though his is striped and hers is red (not pink!). They wear the same kind of sandals. He wears shorts, and she wears - what do you call them in English? Overalls?

Her hair is a little longer than his. It's certainly not much longer. They have identical-length bangs. Both have straight hair, with no adornments or enhancements of any kind.

You may note, too, that the kids' body language is very similar.

This is what kids looked in Sweden when I myself was a young kid. I remember it well. Wasn't it hard to tell the difference between boys and girls? Oh no, we never had any difficulties with that whatsoever.

In the TV show that the picture refers too, two families meet. They live under rather different circumstances. In one of the families there are three boys, one six- or seven-year-old and a pair of eleven-year-old twins. In the other family there are three girls, one six- or seven-year-old and two older sisters, eleven and twelve.

The thing is that the two older boys and the two older girls become best friends. They do everything together. The girls are kind of tomboyish, and the four of them have all sorts of adventures together. Think "Stand By Me", except that two of the kids were girls instead of boys.



The youngest boy and the youngest girl from the Swedish TV show also became friends, but their personalities were more dissimilar, and they didn't do everything together.

The father of the three boys was a widower. He had a daughter too, a nineteen-year-old girl, Malin. Malin was very much a girl:



Malin did not seem to have a job, and she did not appear to go to any sort of school or college. Instead, she had assumed the role of her father's housewife and her brother's Mom. She cooked, cleaned and took care of the house, and she looked after her brothers. When she had some time for herself, she liked to swim and lie in the sun and look for a nice man. We were shown how Malin fell in love with a guy, and after a while she got married. The next season, Malin and her husband had a little daughter. The thing is that Malin went straight from being the housewife and mother of her father's family to being the wife, housewife and mother of her own family.

In short: In that TV show from the early and mid 1960s, the children were free to be themselves, to be as tomboyish or tender as they pleased. They were never told that they were not sufficiently girlish or not sufficiently boyish. They were not given super-feminine or super-masculine clothes or toys, because that sort of thing just barely existed back then.

But when they grew up their options were limited. Why did nineteen-year-old Malin stay in her father's home and take care of the household and her brothers? She did it because she had to. She did it because her father couldn't do it. And why couldn't he do it? Because he was not expected to. A father wasn't really allowed to be a "housewife" and a "mother" back then. Have you ever wondered why there are so many evil stepmothers in the classic fairy tales? It's because these fairy tales have their roots in a time when a father was not allowed to take care of his children by himself. If his wife died, he had to remarry quickly or leave his children with other other people. Today in Sweden and probably in most of the West, if a father becomes a widower, it is pretty much taken for granted that he will take care of his house and his children himself - and he can most certainly do so if he wants to.

To summarize, today men or women have so many more options than they used to. Men can do "womanly" things and women can do "manly" things. But maybe just because of that, people may feel increasingly scared that traditional gender roles will be erased. To counteract that, many children are given an almost ridiculously "gender-role enhancing" upbringing. Babies are dressed up in pink satin and lace or in black and white romper suits adorned with skulls. And tiny toddlers who haven't even learnt to walk can be made to wear high heels to remind them that they are girls. Because it is more important that they learn to be feminine than that they learn to walk.

A few days ago, there was an article in Time, Newsweek or the New York Times which claimed that the gender gap is windening. Men are becoming more masculine and women more feminine. Men and women are increasingly inhabiting their own separate universes. I don't think that is a good thing. And I think that the hysterical aspirations to be excessively masculine or excessively feminine are things that are bound to have negative repercussions on society.







[img]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/252/455830622_c2fc675794.jpg?v=0[/img]

Ann

I haven't heard of that being a trend in my area at least. I know with my kids, I'm doing the same thing with my daughter as I did with my son. I let their preferences guide what I buy for them. My daughter, for instance, has been obsessed with the color pink, lately. <sigh> Personally, I can't stand the color, but when I buy clothes for her, I do buy some clothes that are pink. She likes dolls and stuffed animals. She likes to color and paint. On the other hand, she also likes legos and building blocks, so we get those for her as well. For the most part, the toys she plays with are the same ones that our son played with when he was 2.

As for those insane shoes, I'd never have considered getting things like those for her when she was little. Right now, both of our kids wear comfortable sandles (flats!!!) and tennis shoes. When they were learning to walk, they went barefoot most of the time. Our son was walking at 9 months and our daughter at 10 months, btw. I've always thought those cutesy shoes people like to put their kids are insane and bad for their feet.

Tara

My kids tend/ed to stay bare/sock footed - or sleepers depending on the time of year.

I have a hard enough finding shorts for my almost 7yo DD that are remotely long enough. A bunch of her shorts are either boys [denim, khaki] or size 4 or so which still fit and are actually still long enough [of course, my almost 5yo is about to need them too...]

There's no way any of my younger kids are getting something even remotely like that.

Carol

Letting aside that's ridiculous to buy a *baby* highheels, those pink shoes are ugly!!

We complain about girls and in general kids, being precocius but sometimes is the parent's fault.
I can't understand why someone would dress their little daughter as a teen or as a young woman and encourage them to behave as adults. Your taking away from them their childhood, a time when you're free to be yourself and play.

A couple of years ago I saw a little girl, she might have been 7 or 8, with a tank top -showing her navel- with a hip level jean. A year ago I saw another girl around the same age with these long nylon socks (not sure if it's pantyhose in english)with a miniskirt, shoes with 3 o 4cm heels.

I see those things and I'm like

I just read that you can also buy padded brassieres for 7 year olds at Old Navy. What is the matter with this culture ?