Let 7-Year-Olds Have Their Padded Bikinis

We should let 7-year-olds don skimpy bathing suit tops that give them the impression of having teeny boobs. Seriously, writes Laurie Penny for the Guardian, who would have loved to have a padded bra at that age, "if only to give an extra boost to the wodges of toilet roll I had already begun to stuff into my crop-top." The "moral outrage" foisted upon UK chain Primark for selling the bikinis "is deeply unhelpful to young people negotiating the complex world of adult sexuality," she writes.

In fact, "in countries where children are routinely well fed, a significant minority of 7-year-old girls have already started puberty, and most foster a natural curiosity about bodies." We should promote healthy sexual exploration. Instead, "campaigns to protect girls from 'sexualization' assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women. The 'anti-sexualization' agenda actually serves a culture that shames girls if they have sexual feelings of their own while fetishising them as objects of erotic capital." (More bikini stories.)