Funny or demeaning? High heels for babies
September 19, 2008 by gayla
Filed under Mommy Extras
One of the fun things of having a baby is seeing all that’s out there being marketed for your little one. Well, maybe not for your little one – they’re really for you but for your little one to wear. After all, does a 3-month-old really care if she is wearing a label pair of snap-up jeans compared to the local thrift shop special?
When my children were babies, I had fun going through the shoe departments looking to see what they had for babies who weren’t walking yet. You could find little running shoes, ballet slippers – I even saw little soft-sided “construction boots.” If they hadn’t been so hideously expensive, I may actually have bought a pair for one of my sons.
Now, there are “heels” for babies. Britta Bacon and Hayden Porter are childhood friends turned took an idea, became business partner, and launched Heelarious, a company that makes and sells soft pre-walking shoes for the little princess, from 0 to 6 months.
It seemed cute and harmless to me – another way to get moms to part with their money, but then I heard a rant on the radio last week about how this was a terrible product and one that was akin to exposing your child to the unsavory things in life. That posting a picture of an infant in these heels was welcoming pedophiles to download the photos. Callers to the radio show even said it was like child abuse because the babies couldn’t use the heels and it would affect their foot and leg development (they were ignoring the fact that these are for babies who can’t walk yet).
So, I looked further into how people felt about this. According to comments left for an article in Seattle, High Heels for Babies, there are others who feel just as strongly about this. There are comments about brass stripper poles being next, and so on. Seriously?
What do you think? I’m still in the camp that they’re a cute waste of money, but if someone has the money to spend, it’s up to them.
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Marijke Durning is a nurse, health writer and fellow blogger here at b5media. She writes the popular pregnancy blog Womb Within and another one on pain, pain management and all things pain-related at Help My Hurt.
Tags: heelarious, baby shoes, high heels, high heels for babies
I think the shoes are funny and more of a reflection of the parents’ sense of humor than anything else. It’s not like the babies that can’t even walk in them are going to get a Narcissitic complex. I have Trumpette socks that look like shoes for my baby girl, and I think they’re awesome… does that mean my baby’s going to be vain?
Okay this is the 2nd most ridiculous thing I have read today.