Baby booty

Michelle Malkin alerts NRO readers about trash for tots, courtesy of a fashion line by Beyonce:

One of the children wears sparkly, killer high heels (more pint-size Pussycat Doll than Dorothy from The Wizard of the Oz) and another slouches, gangsta gal-style, with a neon pink boa, leopard-skin fedora and stilettos. An even younger model is a toddler-aged Beyonce Mini-Me with huge hair, skinny jeans, spike-heeled leather boots, and attitude to match.

Abercrombie & Fitch prompted an outrage a few years ago with its line of thongs for elementary school girls and pedophilia-chic catalogues. And, of course, Calvin Klein started it all with 15-year-old Brooke Shields purring that “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” But the House of Dereon photo spread sinks even lower. It’s sick and it’s wrong, and it’s not social conservatives who first said so. Fashion and celebrity websites have been buzzing with outrage over the past week.

“Pimp my kid,” decried one blogger. “Dereon Girls ad too adult,” concluded another. Gossip king Perez Hilton polled readers on whether the ad was appropriate. The overwhelming consensus: Hell, no.

The creepiness factor is heightened by the fact that women were responsible for marketing this child exploitation. I’d ask: “Where was Beyonce’s mother to tell her daughter to wipe all the gunk off the Dereon models’ faces?” But Beyonce’s mother — who has helped manage the “Bootylicious” singer’s career from childhood — is her eager and willing partner in crime.

Sad to say, I don't think these attitudes are confined to ghetto aspirants. Chatting recently with Helen Alvare, she noted that she's considered making a "no cleavage before 9am" rule in her classrooms, and has been stunned to see what the other mothers in her daughter's Catholic school push their daughters to wear. Indeed, her priest insists that quite often the mothers are worse that the daughters.

[FYI, the Derion line is found here. I couldn't get past the music for a snapshot. Enter at your own risk.]