My neighbors have two teen boys and a seven-year-old little girl. The little girl came to visit me in my yard last week wearing only swimsuit bottoms. Yesterday, she was in her yard wearing the same bottoms, no top. (They do not have a privacy fence, and you can see into their back yard from the street.) I’ve seen toddler girls who have worn only bottoms, but this girl seems a little old for that.
Obviously, being in your yard or neighborhood is a little different than going to a restaurant or store, but her attire (or lack thereof) concerns me. I live in a small town, but child molestation happens here, too. That’s my main concern.
I don’t have a problem with nudity. Hell, the whole family can jump naked on their trampoline and I wouldn’t care, though I wouldn’t volunteer to be spotter. I’m just concerned about her security.
Would you let your young daughter go topless outdoors? At what age should a little girl stop going topless?
I think 7 is at the very tip-top end of it being okay to go around topless, in this day and age. In this situation, I’d probably go out and buy the girl a complete bathing suit and present it to her parent(s) and tell them that someone gave it to me or I’d had it laying around the house going unused. Hopefully that gives them the hint without embarrassing them or being too awkward.
I have a two year old and a six year old who frequently run out in the backyard naked. My wife gets annoyed about it, but I don’t really care. We have a fenced in yard that isn’t easy to see into, and any peeping pedophile isn’t going to be able to harm them just by looking anyway (and they’re never unsupervised).
I spent a lot of years in parts of the world where nudity in young children was commonplace and unremarkable, so it doesn’t seem weird to me. It’s actually the paranoia about it that seems weird to me.
Agree that 7 is top top age at which I’d be comfortable with it. Fortunately, with my oldest daughter (now almost 12), that’s about the age when self-consciousness started to take care of itself.
Exactly what I was going to say. I was a tomboy & played mostly with boys, all of us running around topless. At around seven, I suddenly felt self-conscience about it, and put on a shirt. (Didn’t go topless again till many years later when…lol)
I agree - I think she’s just on the cusp. It’d probably make me feel a little uncomfortable, but I come from a fairly tight-assed family where “that’s just not done.” (I’m channeling my mother.) I try not to be tight-assed myself, but walking up to non-family members like that seems a little…odd.
I would put the age at 6. I don’t really care personally, as I generally think parts is parts. But pedophiles give me the heebie-jeebies. Mind you, they’d still obsess with the child fully-clothed, but I’d rather not help them take their fantasies further.
What I find offensive is girls young enough to not even have buds wearing bikini tops - there’s nothing that needs to be covered and nothing that needs to be kept in place, so WTF? It’s female, therefore it must be covered as much as possible?
She is 7! if she is comfortable with it then it is everyone else that has the problem.
And Alice the Goon I think that is a particularly ill-advised response. It is back-door criticism and I would see through it in an instant and would most certainly take offence.
To the OP, if you have a problem with it speak to the parents as an adult. Though I personally think you are over-reacting and can’t really fathom why it makes you uncomfortable.
I can agree with you on that, but for a lot of Americans, covering nonexistent breasts is a demonstration of two things: modesty and gender designation. I think it’s a little silly, as small children are small children and are not yet sexual beings in the adult sense of the word.
As for the limit for toplessness, I would target it around the time that she starts growing breast buds-- as soon as it’s apparent that she is starting puberty, it’s time to start following the same modesty rules as Mom. Pedophiles shouldn’t be a concern in this, as the norm for child molestation is going to be someone who is already in close contact with the family, if not a family member; being covered in public wouldn’t prevent someone from that group from seeing their target in less than covered states of dress.
To repeat, what a family does in its own yard is that family’s business. I don’t have a problem with adults or children going nude in their own property. The point is, their yard is not private. And she left her yard and came over to visit me. I have a friendly relationship with the family, but they barely know me.
Some years back, a little girl here was raped and murdered by a pedophile, (a neighbor–he smothered her with a pillow and stuffed her in a golf bag, then went out to help search for her). I knew the little girl and her family–she was a lively, bright-eyed, fun-loving kid. So yeah, in a way, I guess it IS about pedophiles.
But my daughter always wore an entire swimsuit, and I have never seen a girl over 2 or 3 in a public place like a beach or swimming pool who was NOT fully covered. Yeah, it does seem kind of silly when you consider there’s nothing to cover until a few years later (though I read awhile back that the age when girls first need bras has dropped and a number of girls start wearing them at 9–the article attributed it to the rise in obesity), but there seems to be some kind of tacit rule about this. Hence the post.
Americans have sexualized breasts to the extent that we can’t see them as anything but sexual. They are the same as genitals to us. Even public breast-feeding - which is totally non-sexual and exactly what breasts are supposed to be for - is controversial here. We think it’s “nudity.”
I’m just concerned about her security.