I recently watched "Sasha: Beauty Queen at 11" on the BBC, in which an eleven year old girl is attending beauty pagents and being 'Barbie dolled up' regularly, simply for the sake of it. This got me thinking, are girls growing up too quickly?

Personally, I'm not a fan of seeing young girls having their faces plastered with makeup and being made to look older than they are simply from a moral standpoint. I think it's going too far in that children are being forced into acting like adults at far too young a' age by their parents.

In Sasha's case, I got the feeling that her mother was living out her own dreams of becoming a Jordan style model through her daughter and pushing her into things she simply doesn't want to do. Did anybody else see it?

I'd very much like to hear an American's point of view on this, as beauty pagents seem to be part of American life. Personally, I think it's disgusting, but I'm from Blighty so it's natural I think that

Edit: Apparantly that Sasha girl is at 'serious risk' from paedophiles

I do think girls are growing up too fast. The amount of girls you see on the street who all look in their early 20s and you discover they're 14 or around that age.

Hangy-wish granted. I find these competition deplorable. While they do help to somewhat build an older girl's esteem, I believe that what they teach is that your outer facade is what counts. Not who you are as a person. And it also can lead to young girls having issues with bulimia, etc. in order to "meet the mark" of perfection.

I don't agree with dressing little girls up in slinky clothes, 15 pounds of makeup and making them shake and shimmy across a stage to songs that are a bit risque. Children are naturally beautiful and should be able to sing age appropriate songs all while dressed as a child. Some of these little girls look like pre-pubescent prostitutes. And in the background is some frumpy frazzled woman doing the routine while her kid is on stage.

These stage mothers should be horse whipped. While they say, "It's ok if she no longer wants to do this. I told her she can stop any time." , all one has to do is look at the parent and see it's not ok if the child wants to stop. I watched a show on HBO about this type of thing. The little girl told her mom she didn't want to do this anymore and the look that came over the mother's face was rage, desperation and disappointment. Gods bitch, exactly who are you having your daughter do this for?! And the little girl saw this and started to cry.

Terrible crap all of it.

It isnt just young girls being dressed up like women but they seem to be growing up a lot quicker physically. Our eldest daughter is 15 and I remember when she was about 12 or 13 these bits just popped out and my wife and I were shocked. We believe it is the food that we eat today, not just the chicken and stuff but the lack of fresh food but I guess this could be a whole new thread

You know, Hank, you could be on to something there... definitely worth a new thread! Want to do the honours?

Based on how things were when I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and seeing how succeeding generations have done it, it does appear that girls (I'm not sure about boys) are become sexualized at progressively earlier ages. By "sexualized", I mean relating to the world in an overtly sexual way, as a sexual being.

While I think it's a good thing that we're getting more comfortable with the notion of sexuality (at least we are in the US, which historically has been notoriously prudish), maybe we're not using enough common sense. What may be OK for a 16-year-old isn't necessarily appropriate for a six-year-old, and for some reason a lot of parents don't seem to get that.

Oh, let's blame it on Britney Spears. Her main target audience early on was the pre-teens. Parents would take their kindergarten-aged girls to her shows, where she'd be dressed in next to nothing and doing pole dances. Then they'd wonder why their 6-year-old daughters wanted to get their bellybuttons pierced so they could wear rings in them. And now, eight years later, they're wondering why their 15-year-old daughters are turning up pregnant. "Didn't we teach you better than that?"

Well, er ... no.

"Set a new course. There's coffee in that nebula." -- Capt. Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager

It is the music videos and tv shows that they are watching. It is also the clothes that are marketed to the kids these days. Even more than that it is this attitude that kids have to wear certain clothes to be accepted and if they wear the wrong clothes they will be teased by other kids. What a load of rubbish if you just dress nice and tidy no one else really cares, well no one who matters anyway. We tell our kids that if your friends dont like the way you dress then they are not very good freinds. It is a bit sad when the parents are setting these kids up to be so reliant on superficial images for their happiness.