Now compare this with the push to weigh fashion models. Only one weight allowed!

Didn't we just go through a "news cycle" a few years ago about how our hyper-hormoned pre-adolescents were "developing" at ages far younger than ever before seen? If this is still the case in 2006, perhaps those tiny training bras can have a proper use, after all.

it was called an undershirt.

Read the comments posted on the link. Wow. Ummmmm, kinda says it all.

I'm not sure the point of that fashion sequence, but it doesn't seem to me to be a great big Exploiting Women thing. It looks more like Police State Hates Women, or even Police State Hates Beauty. American Police State, that is.

You sure couldn't print this in the US. It deserves more conversation than just reflexive hostility that anyone might print a photo with a gun held to a woman's head.

Studies that heralded the early puberty of the American pre-teen never mentioned one important fact: puberty ages lowered only as ethnically diverse populations increased. In other words, the age of puberty for caucasian girls remains virtually unchanged over the years. But when you add in more black, hispanic, etc, the age goes down. I do not know if puberty rates have changed for different ethnic groups. The articles on this were very misleading and no, the studies about hormones in the food leading to early puberty were not conclusive.

Six year olds do not need bras. Girls in early puberty do where slightly padded bras (as I believe they did back in my day), but I wouldn't say they are increasing a cup size or anything. They are more for modesty as developing breasts can be very, well er, nipple-y. I think Bratz is revolting. But so is the Gap, and other stores that are marketing thongs and bras to the pre-pre pubescent set. (My ten year old daughter has a classmate that wears thongs on a daily basis. And tells everyone. Of course she's wearing a bra as well.)

Emotionally, I would have benefited greatly from a padded bra when I was a girl. The effect of growing boobs and stiff nipples on my male peers was humiliating and embarrassing. I didn't want to share my breasts with the whole frickin' world. I felt free when I 'discovered' modesty bras at age 28.

I read the Feministing post, and I'm not sure why they think these are for six year olds. I understand that the dolls are marketed starting with young girls, but I also know people with girls in 5th and 6th grade who still love them, and could definitely use a bralette, and who might be more comfortable about having to wear one if it had a tie-in to their dolls.

I'm unclear as to why the Italian Vogue shoot was worthy of being singled out. Sure, those are disturbing images, but are the women in them being objectified any more or less than the women on the 380 other pages in the magazine? Those in EVERY fashion magazine? Is the very presence of heavily armored police the linchpin here? The use of force? I'm certainly not writing in defense of the pictures, but pointing out a single fashion shoot in Vogue as somehow especially sexist or offensive seems clueless to me - potraying women as objects, to be dolled up and posed as cultural guardians like fashion mag editors and designers see fit, is precisely WHAT Vogue does.

I agree with anonymous on this one... These feel like a reflection of what is going on in our culture from an outside observer to me. The police state we've been subjected to and subjected ourselves to through our hysteria. My sister-in-law left the airport and drove recently because she was so furious at the TSA agents insistence that her underwire bra was a threat to national security... they demanded she allow a female agent to remove her top and inspect the bra, at which point she left. This kind of thing is actually happening in the name of national security.

And I do love how they included some images of women in police power, as well.

I'm in agreement with the comment that the Vogue spread does not deserve reflexive condemnation. I ran across the images earlier this morning, and was impressed by how the use of what are obviously waifish caucasian models in positions where one expects to see blacks, Muslims and jack-booted government forces created a juxtaposition that mocks the imagery that has become so common since 9/11.

This is art, not exploitation.

I agree that the whole bralette thing is, well, creepy to say the least. But I can't help but wonder if some of this inappropriate sexualization of children is a bit of a cultural backlash. I mean, officially, we like to claim that children don't become adult until 18 for some things, 21 for others. Speaking historically, this is weird and unnatural. Since we do our damndest not to acknoledge the "real" maturity of our children, at various points, we set the stage by admitting that the assigned ages are fake.

That means that when you say, "Oh, wait, that's too early," whether its for a high school senior having a sex-ed class or a 6 year old getting her first wonderbra, there's a bit of equality there in that officially they're both labelled as "wrong," and "immature." The former definately isn't, the latter is, but we make that distinction much harder than it needs to be. And yes, I've used extremes to make the point. But when it comes to our children's maturity, are we doing the equiv. of our parents when they sat there, cigarette in hand, telling us not to smoke? And how much did that teach us to disregard him when he told us not to do crack as well?

Again, exaggeration, but you get the idea.

And no, for the record, since on Salon you have to bludgen this home sometimes, I don't think that 6 year olds need bras and sparkling thong panties (or whatever), and I'm not defending that. I'm just saying that our behavior in other areas of childhood development might indicate why other people don't see anything wrong with it.