I started this blog to document our lives for our families. I don't intend it to be a soapbox where I preach about right and wrong. But I had to write this extremely long post.
Every Saturday morning I look forward to breakfast with my beautiful two year old daughter. I love watching the news until 9:00 and after that a cartoon comes on. Every time it comes on my daughter says "I want to watch this, mom." I admit that I kind of like watching it with her. I even get the theme song in my head. Of the course, with that comes the dozens of commercials pushing toys, shoes, games, etc. The shoe commercials are mostly, if not all, for Skechers.
Let me say this now, I love Skechers and have had many pairs. Their slip-on shoes got me through most of my pregnancy because my feet wouldn't fit into my other shoes (and I didn't have to bend over to tie them). However, I saw something that made me do a double take. They are now advertising for Shape Ups FOR GIRLS! The pair I saw starts at the tiny size of 2.
Is our society taking things too far? I once saw that a company made gym equipment for children. Miniature treadmills and many other things in vibrant colors. It was on the news a few years ago but they interviewed someone and said that children should be getting the majority of their exercise by playing outside. That interview always stuck with me. We are pushing too hard and these shoes are geared toward girls at an age where the only thing they should be worrying about is which swing they are going to choose.
As parents we need to teach our kids healthy habits not buy them shoes that have uneven soles to tone legs that don't need to be toned. Girls have a hard enough time during and after puberty. Our bodies go through so many changes. We get made fun of for having boobs, not having boobs, having curves, not having curves. I had a "friend" tell one of my other friends (behind my back of course) that my boobs wouldn't be so big if I wasn't so fat. Nice. Especially considering that I wasn't fat. I was within a healthy weight range for my height. I tell myself that now but at the time, it hurt and it caused a lot of emotional issues for me, ones that still creep up from time to time. Why do we want to start body issues in our daughters? I never want my daughter to hear the things that I heard. I know I can't protect her from every comment but I will be doing everything I can to make sure she knows that God made her and nothing he makes is imperfect.
So, Skechers, it is my opinion that when you are marketing something with the word "girls" in the title maybe you should stick to sparkles, lights and designs. Just a thought.
