I never did understand what the lyrics in “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd meant. Did they really want to have sex with the person they are singing to (“We can do it till we both wake up”), or did they mean they wanted to sexually glorify her? While I’m leaning toward the former, I think Submarine Kids might have had the latter in mind when designing their latest repulsive swimsuit ad.
The images of the kids in it—around the age of my five-year-old daughter, perhaps a tiny bit older—are simply grotesque and nothing short of disturbing. They exhibit thick layers of obnoxious makeup and bright, jarring wigs as they provocatively pose, wearing little bikinis in an actual advertisement not in a pornographic magazine for pedophiles, but for actual swimwear for kids.
For those of you who’ve read The Hunger Games series, these images appear to be miniature people from The Capitol, rather than children. In fact, a couple of the images look as if they could be adults—especially in the way they’ve been instructed to pose—rather than children. And as one person in advertising noted, every decision in advertising is on purpose, in mind to accomplish something. Just what is that something here?
I had to wonder whom, exactly, they are trying to sell to, since parents must be offended by this horrible sexualization of young girls—right? Most of the people I’ve shown this ad to (and believe me, Submarine Kids, I’ve been passing it around) are very offended, and knowing that the media and their schools and peers will be sexualizing them soon enough, find it repulsive that a children’s clothing company would also stoop to this level. Others comment that it’s lazy advertising, trying to make kids sexy—and that unfortunately sex sells.
But it doesn’t sell to parents of their own children! To quote Bobby from Supernatural, “Ya idjuts.”
But some parents have actually expressed their own rationalizations for the article, calling it “hip” and “contemporary.” One of the sickest forms of rationalization that they’ve been using in order to justify their continued purchases from the company is the idea that parents who do see perversion in these ads are not looking out for their children, but actually looking at the children as if they are perverts themselves.
Again, with the Supernatural quote.
I wonder if they would think the same things if it were their daughters in the ads? With shows like Toddlers and Tiaras on television highlighting these despicable parents who exploit their children, I suppose they might enjoy the attention, even if it’s at the cost of their own children’s childhoods. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that these parents are as bad as those who molest, beat, or starve their kids to death—but they’re not many degrees higher on the evolutionary chain, either. Where’s your protective instinct, parents? Did you lose it somewhere between your cave-people days and America’s Next Top Model?
For those of us who can see how wrong these advertisements are, we can at least voice our complaints to the company. Click here to see a sample letter and for information on how to contact Submarine Kids.