So Suri Cruise has been photographed wearing high heels. At age three. As one friend of mine, a downtown nightclub owner, put it, “I’m trying to come up with a good reason for that to happen, but there just isn’t one.” Theoretically, it’s possible that the toddler chose to wear the shoes. But toddlers also choose to eat Play-Doh and shove thumbtacks up their noses. In fact, one of the primary jobs for parents of three-year-olds is to keep their child from doing things that he or she chooses to do.
All of which means that Suri’s parents (or any one of their menagerie of handlers and staff) made the decision to put her in pumps. Which is impressive, considering she has only been able to walk for around a year and a half. But apparently it’s never too early to start introducing girls to outward displays of sexualization, especially when they’re celebrities. In fact, with her trendy black leggings and chic designer coats to accompany those kiddie-heels, Suri already resembles a Rachel Zoe protégé on the track to premature starlet burnout. Just stick an oversized Starbucks cup in her hand and slap some face-swallowing sunglasses on her nose, and she’s Lindsay Lohan for the toddler set. At this rate, Suri could hit the booze-and-arrests phase before her age reaches the double digits. Now that’s precocity!
It’s an interesting time for the X chromosome, with the so-called “Man-cession” leaving boatloads of men out of work and promoting women to the role of primary breadwinner. Meanwhile, the gender balance is slowly but surely shifting in high-powered fields like medicine and law, with women outnumbering men in many colleges and graduate programs.
But just as women are upping the ante in the work force, young women are upping their sexuality, starting at younger and younger ages. Walk into any J. Crew or department store and look at the children’s section: The boys’ racks are full of boat shoes, baggy pants and plaid shirts, while the girls’ section is an explosion of sparkle-adorned tank tops and fitted dresses. This new hypersexuality is a way of life among the tween set: With idols like topless-posing pole-dancing Miley Cyrus and the ever infamous crew of crotch-flashing starlets, it’s hard not to think that learning to be sexy is one of the most important aspects of growing up. Plus it’s one of the fundamental rules of girldom that young ladies will emulate what bigger girls are doing — and as a result, now we have Miley’s nine-year-old sister, Noah, wearing a Halloween costume that can only be described as a dress sliced in half, complete with knee-high platform boots.
So the message for girls and young women is: Look sexy from the day you enter pre-school, but also work hard and study and achieve academic success. You may get speeches about Hillary Clinton from your parents and teachers, but your idol will be Miley Cyrus in booty shorts straddling a pole. (Oh, and by the way, you’ll still earn lower wages than your male co-workers, because you’ve been taught to look pretty and not rock the boat with demands like better maternity policies. But once you leave the office at night, you can sure have fun in those thigh-high spike-heeled boots!)
Suri isn’t a root of social evil or a sign of feminism’s downfall; she is just a child. But watching manicured, professionally-styled toddlers parade in front of paparazzi is dangerous, both for young women and their parents. It reinforces all the pro-sexy messages that girls are already getting full-blast, and puts mothers in an awful position — how do you deny your five-year-old a pair of heels when Lil’ Cruise is already wearing them? If anything, celeb babies in kiddie-heels serve as a metaphor for the way we’re setting women up to treat life: What you stand for doesn’t necessarily matter, as long as you look hot.
New York writer Melissa Lafsky is the founder of Opinionistas.com