From bikini clad Bratz dolls to tween pole dancing kits; baby high heels and padded training bras, it’s becoming increasingly obvious as the consumer goods become more scandalous and mindsets of young girls less endearing, that we live in a society in which sex sells – even to 8 year olds.

Growing up in the early nineties as a little girl, I remember afternoons making mud pies in the backyard and trying on plastic strings of pearls. The closest I got to anything grotesquely grownup would be watching the Simpsons and not getting the jokes. I didn’t know what a diet was or wanted to go on one until I was well into my teens, and makeup was strictly forbidden until high school.

Walking around the local shopping centers these days, we find not only stores like Supre targeting young girls with their over sexualized hipster miniskirts marketed as cool, but mothers bringing their barely there daughters in to get pedicures on their tiny haviana thonged feet – in whose mind does one feel the necessity to paint the toenails of a little girl bright red if not to attract the admiration and unwanted attention of those who should not be looking at a fourth grader’s feet in the first place?

Mothers are not to blame however, as they are brainwashed by consumerist culture to embrace this new club of sexying up their daughters. Who would want their child to wear denim overalls and sneakers when the other girls are donning skinny jeans?

But there is a fine line between cute and unsuitable – and there is definitely a line to be drawn when nurturing the attitude and connection daughters have with these fetishism items.

Rather than trying to emulate the ‘look at me’ stance and fashion of the bratz doll and actually pretending to be a stripper when dancing around that plastic pole, a clear distinction should be taught between what is real and what is not, so that when they are old enough to choose to wear those high heels, paint their nails a bright red, they do so with pride and elegance; and when they choose to throw away the Supre tops and wear those denim overalls, they do so as a mature young lady with the knowledge that her sexual identity doesn’t define her.