Not even a month has passed since the furor over the indecent display of a 10 year-old in Vogue Paris and the fashion industry in France is under fire again - this time for a lingerie designer whose website is full of pictures of scantily clad girls as young as four sporting makeup, beehive hairdos and a new line of age-inappropriate underwear.
The Daily Mail is reporting that the new lingerie line, known as "loungerie" because it combines underwear with loungewear, is called the Jours Apres Lunes line. The designer has a long background in designing lingerie for adults and has a "femme" collection for the over-tween set, but this new line is taking aim at children ages four to 12, and features a range of very adult-looking panties, bras, camisoles and lace-edged t-shirts.
Even more disturbing than the line itself is how the line is marketed on the website, with little girls wearing skimpy underwear who are heavily made-up with bright pink and red lipstick, their hair in Amy Winehouse-style beehives, and toting Jackie-O sunglasses.
"What’s disturbing about Jours Après Lunes is not just the fact that it’s lingerie for people who probably shouldn’t be old enough to even know what lingerie is, but the photographs on their website," writes Fashionista's Dhani Mau, who broke the story. "The little 'filles' are styled like grown women with Amy Winehouse hair, sunglasses and pearls and there are a few instances of Thylane Blondeau-esque seductive gazing and reclining poses."
Thylane Blondeau was the 10 year-old child featured in provocative clothing and poses in the most recent edition of Vogue Paris, the same magazine that came under fire last Christmas for featuring girls as young as six in similar seductive poses. Both photo spreads were produced by guest editor Tom Ford, who is close friends with photographer Terry Richardson, a man known for exploiting underage girls.
Mau also questions Jours Apres Lunes' "femme" line for slightly older girls which features an older model posing in underwear and cuddling a teddy bear. "She’s made to look like a child, while the actual children are made to look like adults."
The American fashion industry is reacting with outrage.
'It's cute when a little girl dresses up in her mom's clothing and jewelry and high heels. These pictures are not cute. It's entirely inappropriate to put a 4-year-old in a bouffant like she's Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman," said Marilisa Racco, author of Le Snob Lingeries to the NY Daily News.
"It's inappropriate to sexualize children. A pearl-encrusted triangle bra on a little girl does not sit well with me."
Experts say the early sexualization of girls can do immeasurable harm to their self-esteem.
"This kind of marketing does sexualize young girls, it does serve as a model that inspires very young girls to think that minimizing what they wear and revealing as much of their body as possible is appropriate, and 'fashionable' and 'cool,' and that this is the way that they should think of themselves," wrote Paul Miller, associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University in Phoenix, in an email to ABCNews.com.
"The cultural message goes beyond 'lingerie' but to girls' self-image, body image, and what it takes to build a 'good' image of one's self," he said.
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