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Category: Personal • Steelykid!
Posted on: July 1, 2009 6:40 PM, by Chad Orzel
Whoever came up with the idea of making little string bikinis in infant sizes should be beaten to death with Barbie dolls.
Seriously. The world does not need 6-9 month size versions of the useless "swimwear" that gets modeled in Sports Illustrated. We barely need the adult versions.
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Comments
"We barely need the adult versions". Ouch. As in - Why bother? Only an obsessed society needs em anyway.
Posted by: Gray Gaffer | July 1, 2009 7:11 PM
Speaking as the parent of a daughter, it only gets worse from here. Unless you want to dress your prepubescent girl like a street walker...You can go just about anywhere and buy reasonable clothes for boys, but it's much harder to find reasonable stuff for girls. I bought most of my daughter's clothes mail order after she outgrew the little kid sizes.
Posted by: Sherri | July 1, 2009 8:52 PM
Boys cloths all the way until ... I don't remember. But a long long time.
Another amazing thing (living here in Minnesota) is that you can't easily get a warm coat or a wool sweater for a girl at a place like Target or Penny's (where you can afford it) but for boys, it is much easier. The boys clothes work fine for the girls.
Posted by: Greg Laden | July 1, 2009 9:00 PM
Well, if you are taking the baby for a beach or a swiming pool, and the temperature is around 40C, even on shadows, very humid, I guess there is not many alternatives, other than simply letting the child naked, except for the down part. But I never seen child so young using that because they cannot manage their urine or feces. Usualy, people make them wear only diapers, or they will sufer terribly with the heat...
Posted by: Daniel de França MTd2 | July 2, 2009 1:00 AM
I had to read that twice. String bikinis for infants? Do they sell a matching string diaper?
Of course, I'm so lucky as to live in Europe, where infants and toddlers run around on the beach naked. And yes, little accidents occasionally happen, and the parents or childminders just clean up.
In fact, the open air shower on the beach (to get rid of sand and salty water after seabathing) is often used by naked children until 6-7 years old.
Before everybody freaks out about skin cancer risk, let me note that the only member of my family to ever get red in the sun despite rigorous sunscreen application is my beloved, milkyskinned husband. The children share my mediterrenean complexion.
Posted by: estraven | July 2, 2009 4:59 AM
I second Sherri's comment and add my own useless spluttering below:
Wait until you see the clothing choices available for elementary school girls: one wonders when pedophiles and human traffickers got all those girls' garment industry design jobs. (We'll not even get into the wardrobe options for pre-teen and teenaged girls -- though I can't say it gets worse, because I've seen what they market to 7 and 8 year old girls -- it's pretty much the same streetwalker chic.)
Fortunately, my teenage daughter prefers jeans, tee shirts (full length!) with obscure band logos, and dying her hair hot pink.
Posted by: Anna K. | July 2, 2009 8:04 AM
The whole idea of swimwear for kids who are still in diapers makes no sense to me. Just pop 'em into a swim diaper and let 'em go, I say. And if you live somewhere where infant nudity is socially acceptable (or are in the privacy of your own yard), skip the diaper. It's just easier that way.
Posted by: Tim Eisele | July 2, 2009 8:34 AM
My boss's daughter swims in a full-length suit (looks like a scuba suit, actually, with short sleeves and legs). It's about the cutest thing you'll ever see, and accommodates a diaper quite well. As an added bonus, it protects from the sun, so you have to rub sunscreen onto a smaller surface area of squirmy baby.
Posted by: Dr. Kate | July 2, 2009 9:22 AM
Three words: Land's End Clearance
The swimsuits and clothes are reasonably well made, and devoid of hoochie, even for preteens.
Posted by: Julianne | July 2, 2009 4:19 PM
This is not a new phenomenon. There's a picture of me at age two splashing in the Gulf of Mexico in an orange string bikini... So naturally I'm inclined to see it as fairly harmless. How is it worse than naked or diapers only? It's probably easier to get kids into/out of when wet than a one-piece.
I guess if bikinis are coded as "sexy" then that's the wrong message to send out, but are they really, still? Seems to me that the very fact that little kids wear them means that the two-piece, like the sleeveless and legless one piece before it, has become unshocking generic swimwear.
Posted by: Mary | July 6, 2009 1:51 PM