We recently came across a picture of a store in a mall in Cuevas, Ecuador, that is so shocking you have to see it to believe it:
The picture can be found at the Reddit-like site Rebrn in which users comment on various lowbrow pictures, but other pictures of this store can be found elsewhere confirming that it is indeed a real store.
Even the commenters of this picture, who seem gravitate to this website largely to comment on pictures of attractive and scantily-clad women, found the name of this story horrifying. As one commenter said, “I can’t believe a room full of adults had meetings, sent memos, and put together presentations about this and not one person raised an eyebrow.”
Even the incredibly vulgar College Humor site found the name of the store shocking, subtitling another picture of it as “Sign of the Apocalpse[sic] #45601: Sexy Toddlers.”
A small travel blog explains that the store is across from a “Sweet and Sexy” adult store, although the blogger gives the store management far too much credit, believing this to be a simple case of misunderstanding the English word “sexy”.
This is quite unlikely, however, as the English word “sexy” is in common use in Latin America and means exactly the same thing it does in the US. After all, they’d used the word in the adult version of the store.
The simple reality of the choice to name this store “Sweet and Sexy Kids” is that in our modern culture, across the globe, the innocence of children is under attack. Store managers and marketers everywhere are perfectly fine with blurring the lines between children and adults.
Retailers in England were happy to step up to the plate for the insane gender debate last month, removing “boys” and “girls” from the labels of their clothing and planning a new “gender neutral” section in their stores.
Popular teen clothing store Misguided had no qualms with planning out and manufacturing a neon sign in their stores that read “Send me nudes” above the dressing rooms where teen girls were planning on trying on clothing.
So is it any surprise retailers and mall managers in Ecuador thought “Sweet and Sexy Kids” was an appropriate title for a clothing shop for small children? Not at all.
This sexualization of children needs to end. The slippery slope towards far more heinous acts against children is already being breached. We need to defend the innocence of our children and end the conversation about their sexuality and gender now.
Hear Activist Mommy throw down about the sexualization of our kids!
