Admittedly, I am 45 and come from a time where kids were not afforded their every whim. In fact, if I close my eyes, I can still see and even hear my mother give me the lecture on why I did not need a curling iron at 12. A decision I felt was completely irrational on her part and yet I still did not get one.
Today, anything seems to go. We have shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and little girls like Suri Holmes have been photographed wearing pumps. So the question I ask is “how young is too young to wear heels?”
Certainly the pundits have pontificated on whether the use of high heels would cause a young girl health issues whether is be developmental or injury. I know they do because daily there is some article written about how bad high heels are for grown women of which I simply reply so is global warming, Twinkies, and bad relationships but none of those are going away anytime soon. And while I think there should be some consideration as to the well-being of a child and prevention of any toddler getting hurt, I think maybe we need to dig a little deeper. What is the message we are giving to young girls? Ok don’t blast me yet…I am not a stiff conservative but think for a minute. We have some very strong issues in this country in this country. Unlike my days, Seventeen Magazine is not the only game in town. In fact today’s girls are bombarded with a plethora of subliminal messages from advertisers and the fashion world…you can’t be too thin, too pretty or even too sexy. The models are 14 going on 25 and very few women of today’s teenage pool are represented by these girls.
We already know that these tall tales that we continue to reverberate to our young women are resulting in low self-esteem, starvation and exploitation. Young teenage women are constantly confronted on another way to up the ante on the get sexy gamble often being bankrupt emotionally before they even get to adulthood. So what happens when we send the same messages to toddlers and young girls. Do we really expect a better outcome?
Before anyone goes shooting out of a cannon…I, too, wore my mother’s heels around the house and relished being a princess for Halloween where I slipped into my beautiful pink plastic pumps but these were rarities and certainly not the norm. As I am now the mother of three almost grown children, I can understand more clearly the words my mother spoke so long ago. What is the rush? There is a lot to be said when the day finally comes and it is appropriate to wear heels as a right of passage. Heels can wait but can the emotional stability of our future woman?
Kisses Bellas,
Deborah Stilettos
www.Facebook.com/DeborahStilettos
