...that you post this article, complete with its JonBenet Ramsey reference, on the same day Cary Tennis spews his "junior-high cheerleader in crotchless panties" fantasy all over some poor woman who had the temerity to write him about her boyfriend (NOT some stranger advice-columnist) not wanting to talk dirty to her. Will Broadsheet report on this as well as the similarly-offensive Forbes article?

is that the editor of Cookie is saying the new tween fashion represents a "loss of innocence." The one issue of Cookie I saw (can't stomach a second) had a high-priced fashion spread featuring two elementary schoolers, a boy and a girl, in Paris enacting a romance. It was totally weird and sexualized--just like JonBenet, but with a higher class sensibility.

Maybe she means it in a good way?

... just the other day, after getting new pink tennis shoes for school: "Mama, I just can't wait to show Emily (her friend down the street) my new shoes! I'll have nicer shoes than her and I'll be so popular!"

She's going into first grade.

Just about made my blood run cold.

I cannot figure out where she is getting this from. We don't have cable TV. She watches a few Public Broadcasting shows, we read books from the library. Maybe from other girls at day care who have older siblings? I really don't know. She only goes to day care a few hours a week.

We talked about her shoes, about how being a good friend to someone was more important than new shoes. I hope it sunk in. From talking to her, it turns out she really didn't understand what "popular" meant, other than having nice new clothes.

How I wish we had school uniforms. I wore them for a year in high school as an exchange student in England. What a relief it was to get out of the never-ending fashion game and put on the same thing that everyone else had. I loved it, and I'll never forget how liberating the feeling was. I was finally free to be myself and not my clothes.

If Pilar Guzman thinks preschool fashionistas are "sad," then she should really change out the fashion editor of her magazine. Cookie's fashion pages invariably show clothes that are unaffordable and impractical (unless you have unlimited funds and a staff to care for your clothes, at which point I suppose it is your choice to buy them).

I love my daughter, but I think it is preposterous to spend $100 for a sweater that is dry clean only for a little kid. They are, by their very nature, messy and fast growing.

If you can get past the fashion pages (and I do, by skipping them altogether), I think Cookie has some redeeming qualities, namely their cooking section (they tend to have chefs providing recipes that incorporate foods like zucchini that kids might not otherwise eat) and their books/tv/movies/toys reviews.

it's sad but random acts of fashion have been popular since teenagers have been getting together. Every limit you can put in place be it school uniforms, school dress codes etc. will be pushed for both good and ill. Even the fashion of values is used to divide groups of kids.

Is there a solution? the only one I can think of is incorporating kids into your lives be it as parent, uncle/aunt (virtual or otherwise) or mentor. by living a live with fashion in it's proper place, you show kids balance. And balance wins. don't know how or why but it does most of the time.

...it's about the adults. Fashion folks who invent fads and push them in the kiddie media...and parents who can't say "no."

"Money money money money, money (x6)

Some people got to have it

Some people really need it

Listen to me y'all, do things, do things, do bad things with it

You wanna do things, do things, do things, good things with it

Talk about cash money, money

Talk about cash money- dollar bills, yall

For the love of money

People will steal from their mother

For the love of money

People will rob their own brother

For the love of money

People can't even walk the street

Because they never know who in the world they're gonna beat

For that lean, mean, mean green

Almighty dollar, money..."

There are several other verses, some about what women will do for money. They'll have to re-cut the song with a stanza about tarting-up the nation's children for filthy lucre.

And, to think, it was disco like this that drove me to Vivaldi and Bach as a teen...

When I was in school (back in the covered-wagon days), if you didn't have Levis or Wranglers, you weren't cool. Or if you had K-Mart specials for sneakers instead of Pro-Kids or Converse. So styles (and the expense of "cool" clothing) may have changed but the sentiments and peer pressure has not. (Though it may have become more intense, I can't judge, having no kids.)

However, what seems to have changed is that some parents today really are invested (and investing) in what will make their kids cool. Back then, my folks said, "Just wear them. They're just sneakers." But my peers and those of the next-younger generation of parents who heard such comments in their youth are now saying to themselves, "I won't do that to my kids!" And so they are spending through the nose to ensure their kids have every cool item they want. It's the parent-as-best-friend syndrome. And it's creepy not just because of the JonBenet factor but because it suggests a fracturization of parenting.

given that cookie is a slang term for vulva or for a yummy girl/ woman. It's not vulgar, but it is an unfortunate name for this magazine.

When I was a kid in the early early 80s, there was definitely concern over clothes. Ironically, it was the poor minority kids who were most concerned at a younger age. In the 1st grade, the biggest insults were: 1) You're on welfare (true of about half the kids I went to school with), 2) You've got cheap shoes (less often the case), and even more bizarrely (tellingly?), 3) You saw your daddy naked. Jordache, Sergeo Valente, and the holy grail: Gloria Vanderbilt jeans were de rigeur for the poor kids. The middle and upper middle class kids wore Osh Kosh and seemed less concerned about these things. By the 4th grade the additional big insults included were 1) You or a loved one has AIDS, and 2) You or a loved one is addicted to crack. But You're on Welfare and You have cheap clothes didn't go away.

My recollection is that the serious clothes horse competition between middle and upper class kids didn't start until the 5th grade. Reebok hightops, Converse sneakers, Benneton, (early) Gap and Banana Republic, Calvin Klein.

What's scary is that I remember this so very clearly. Point is, it's been this way for at least 25 years. $60 was A LOT of money to spend on a poorly made Benneton sweatershirt for an 11 year old in 1986. And yet they opened a store in my neighborhood which catered to the middle school set. And I spent an awful lot of time trying unsuccessfully to talk my mom into getting me one.