Gimme an...ew.

A small girl came to make a Shrinky Dink at the Science Center today. She had her hair in pigtails, tied with frilly red white and blue ribbons. She was wearing tiny blue bicycle shorts and a tight red tank top that only covered the top half of her body.

She was six.

She proceeded to tell me that she was a cheerleader and did a cheer for me.

This is not the first time I have encountered a highly inappropriately dressed small child who was dressed that way for a cheerleading practice/competition. For competitions, they are also wearing overly heavy makeup, usually.

I was a cheerleader for Pop Warner football as a nine year old. I am not sure if Pop Warner is just a particularly wholesome organization, but every team wore sweaters (polo shirt sif it was warm) and respectable length skirts. For competition, heavy make up was against the rules.

Why are we dressing our little girls up like hookers and sending them out to shake their barely-out-of-diapers booties? There's nothing alluring about a small child acting like an oversexed adult, so why do it? I, for one, am disgusted by it.