#commentary writing

“Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer or losing their parents,” reads a statistic from a study on body image by the University of Colorado-Boulder. The same study found that by 1990, the average age that women start dieting was 8. These eight-year-olds are smacked in the face daily by advertising campaigns, celebrities, and fashion models that perpetuate the “ideal” American woman that is seven inches taller and twenty-three pounds lighter than that of the average.

If they’re level-headed or guided by positive parenting enough to look past these initial attacks, then their favorite stores are there to make sure they feel terrible about their changing bodies and pubescent awkwardness. Last week, Abercrombie & Fitch’s store for pre-teens, Abercrombie Kids, began marketing its “Ashley Push-Up Triangle” bikini.

  Sort of messed up.  

  An enraged outcry from concerned parents immediately flooded the comment forums of the news releases and Abercrombie’s “fan page” on Facebook.com with claims that the company was being irresponsible with their influence over tween consumers. And rightly so; the swimsuit in debate is designed for girls age 7-14. If middle school girls aren’t cruel enough, the message that Abercrombie is sending is an unrealistic expectation for girls to have fully developed figures years before the biological norm. A culture with an already warped sense of beauty does not need the arguable most easily influenced demographic of kids worrying about whether or not they will fit into an even sexed up version of a swim suit that less than a quarter of fully grown women feel comfortable wearing.

  Even with campaigns for more realistic body image emerging, a positive self worth for young girls will be impossible with their friends sporting these “Ashley” bikinis, thinking they look SUPER HAWT, and actually just looking super disproportional. 

  Abercrombie posted on their Facebook page on Monday, “We've re-categorized the Ashley swimsuit as padded. We agree with those who say it is best "suited" for girls age 12 and older.”