Let girls wear Primark's padded bikinis | Laurie Penny | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk‏

I started the article with a wee drop of wariness. But it turns out to be spot on in my opinion.
I don't like the moralising at all, but the wider issue is that of sexuality - both male and female.
The treatment of women with regards to their sexuality is terrible, as moralisers like the daily mail are the first to gossip about the way a woman looks - too fat, too thin, too tired, too this that and the other. The sexualisation of women starts young and is not caused by padded bras. I heard them referred to yesterday as the "paedophile pound" which is stupid. Are these 'offending' clothes produced for paedophiles or young girls who are surrounded by pictures of what beauty is or should be?
Men get it too, but girls get it worse. And from both sides. Women tend to gossip with real spite about women far more than men do about them in my opinion and experience.
Beauty and looks are so commercialised from such a young age that it's the pressure these people, girls in this case, to look a certain way that bring these clothes about.
Many feminists, too many in my view, see sex as the exploitation of women and therefore something to be shunned. I know, see and read many feminists talking up sex as a problem, but I disagree. The point is not that sex is evil, I'm rather partial to it myself. But rather, it's how people deal with it. How happy they are in their own skins and how much courage and mental strength they have. That's the decisive factor.

"Padded bras for preteens are not the problem. The problem is a culture of prosthetic, commodified female sexual performance, a culture which morally posturing politicians appear to deem perfectly acceptable as long as it is not 'premature'. By assuming that sexuality can only ever be imposed upon girl children, campaigns to 'let girls be girls' ignore the fact that late capitalism refuses to let women be women - at any age"
agreed