Baby String Bikinis: Cute or Creepy?

Yesterday some friends and fellow mothers got on topic of a trend I find to be very disturbing; baby string bikinis. I'm not talking about the cute two piece bathing suits available for baby girls. I'm talking the itty bitty, held together by strings, barely covering anything, very adult like bikinis available in size NB and up. Now, a lot of people know that I am not a terribly conservative person. I'm the last person that's going to overreact over the shirt formerly available at JCP that said, "I'm too pretty to do my homework so my brother does it for me". I also absolutely adore baby tutus, hair fancies, tights, little Mary Janes, the whole nine. Anything that makes a baby girl ten times cuter than she is naturally, I am all for. But baby string bikinis? Not only are they NOT cute, but they are just down right creepy.

Does this look adorable to you? It doesn't to me. This picture was taken off the "model gallery" section of the Babikini website. I initially didn't want to post a picture of a baby in one of these bikinis on this blog, because I think it's extremely inappropriate to have a baby, or any child under the age of 18 in something so skimpy. But I honestly didn't think the baby bikini was such a big thing, until I saw the pictures featured on the website.

What really gets me, is the "about us" section of the website. They claim that the making of these bathing suits started out as "gag gifts". How does something that start out as a "gag", turn into Lord knows how many parents buying these for their little ones, and allowing them to wear them in public? When you read the "rave reviews", none of the reviews are from actual customers. They are all reviews by different stores that talk about how fast they sell. It's a joke.

The section of the website that upsets me the most is the "model gallery" section. Besides the one picture I chose to share, there are 8 other pictures of babies and little girls wearing their "babikini". Why would any parent be okay with a picture of their vulnerable baby in such a tiny bathing suit on a website that any pervert in the world can access? When I Googled "babikini", it shocked me how many pictures came up of babies sporting their bikinis. It makes me wonder, how many pedophiles do you think have these pictures saved onto their computers and phones? But I'm not going to go on a tangent about parents that are handing out free child porn via Google, that is an entirely different subject that I really do not wish to dive into at the moment.

All in all, I am far from being considered a prude. But at what point are parents going to be able to tell the difference between cute, and too far? Two piece bathing suits for babies? Absolutely cute. String bikinis for babies? Absolutely creepy.