The entire concept of lounging poolside nauseates me. Having a dip in the ocean or sunbathing in some tropical island gives me heart palpitations. Do you get my drift? When I tell you that they've outlawed whaling, I mean it. There is absolutely no godly reason for anyone to be scarred by seeing my lumpy behind in a bathing suit. Period. Not even Spanx or a MiracleSuit can help this bread truck get all its rolls onto one even tray and not even Doctor Phil can cure this particular mindset. 

Part of my horror with the entire summer swim season is that it seems that bathing suits, and bikinis in particular, have gotten smaller and smaller. Every time I look at my options I get depressed because I think there's no way in creation that I could ever pull that off and even if I could, how would I even move in such a thing. Have you seen the latest Victoria's Secret swimsuits? It's an orgy of butt-floss bottoms and teensy triangular pieces of fabric strung together like some Christmas tree decoration. There's no point to tying this nonsense on your assets. At this point, just drop trou and go naked--it'll probably be more freeing.

Armed with this particular doomsday mindset, I got all sorts of hot and bothered when I heard that Abercrombie & Fitch is now selling string bikinis with padded push-up bras to girls aged 7-14. They're called the Ashley Push-Up Triangle Bikini and they're obviously meant to "push-up" your chest. A teensy bikini with a padded bra for a pre-teen--seriously, what is wrong with people? 

I know what padded push-up bras are for--believe me--they work wonders. But I'm 28, not 8--my twins are fully grown and developed and I know their use and their worth. I assure you that before about say age 16, I had no clue of their miraculous power and nor did I care. What then is Abercrombie & Fitch trying to do here? Why offer a little pre-teen girl "push-up" powers when she has absolutely no need for them.

It's as if we're trying to train young, innocent girls to be little teeny bopper streetwalkers or, worse, we somehow want to expose them to child predators. This is pure insanity and contributes unequivocally to the over-sexualization of little girls at a very young age. I have a goddaughter who is nine. I am fairly confident that in her little innocent world, there is no room for any padded bras or string bikini bottoms. She's focused on piano, Littlest Petshop, and Twinkle Toes Shoes. That's it. So, I have to ask: are stores like Abercrombie & Fitch marketing to these girls or to their parents?

I am assuming and hoping that the majority of parents out there are not all like Brittney Spears' or Lindsay Lohan's mothers--they don't want to prostitute their little girls for reasons such as monetary gain. It's my hope that there's still some "smarter" version of parents that will not even consider purchasing this garbage, parents like my own mother who refused to buy me a bikini or even a remotely revealing bathing suit. She certainly wasn't about to put me on display for gawking eyes and rogue miscreant passersby, even if I was only frolicking through the lawn sprinkler. I learned about padded bras in due time and I certainly didn't need premature exposure to that nonsense in my developing years.

Certainly, it is not as if a 7 or 8 year old little girl has enough money to buy even a lip balm or a hair accessory at Abercrombie--it is the parents who hand over the money to buy this garbage. With every ring of the register for this Ashley Push-Up, the parents will be contributing to the downward spiral of the purity of childhood by irreparably blurring the demarcation line between childhood and adulthood and thrusting their little girls into a world that they will inevitably enter in their teenage years. Believe me, this is the same world that will continue to confound, challenge and sometimes depress them. There's no need to prematurely plunge these girls into this world--It's scary enough as it is for us adults.