So I followed a link that followed a link that had me reading an article about Vicky Secret starting a line of clothing and marketing it to middle school girls.
Read it here. Now in this article I was struck by this paragraph:
'With young teens representing about $335 billion worth of spending power, according to Retail Analyst Hitha Prabhakar, there is money to be made, loyalty to be won, and an entire consumer group to milk and manipulate. Apparently, exploiting young girls with beginner-level lingerie in hopes that they will deliver a lifetime of loyalty to Victoria’s Secret was too big a temptation for Burdfoerfer to refuse - dollar signs overrode decency.'
Okay when was the last time you met a middle schooler who had a job. A paper route, you say? I very much disagree. Most papers in my area are delivered by aging, semi-disabled people. Child labor laws won't let most of them work real jobs, except for a few hours at the age of 14. So that tells me that the target audience doesn't actually have $335 billion dollars at their disposal. They have PARENTS at their disposal. My Saturday morning cartoons and after school sitcoms advertised all sorts of things from jeans to perfume, to breakfast cereals every day of my young life, and you know what happened when I wanted those things? I had to as my mom, and she usually said no. I didn't really have any way around that. But I'm worried that, like my friends who can't even tell their kids to stop interrupting their adult conversation, parents aren't able to tell their children 'No, you can't have grown up underwear.'
I'd like to point out that I'm using a children's fictional animated character as my journal's standard 'Sexy' icon.