Heelarious Sells Baby High Heels - Are They Inappropriate?

Would you dress your little girl in baby high heels? Heelarious.com is now selling baby high heels for baby girls. They are designed only for babies ages 0-6 months. They have several different designs - ranging from "Sophia" a hot pink patent-leather-looking shoe, to "Brooke" which is a leopard print. Apparently baby high heels are selling like hot cakes. Britta Bacon and Hayden Porter, the creators of Heelarious, say that it's all in fun. The heels of their baby high heels are squishy and the shoes are not meant for babies who can walk. They are doing everything they can to promote these baby shoes; their shoes have been featured in stores on at least two major networks - ABC and NBC. According to Heelarious.com they will even be including some of their baby high heels in the gift bags for the Emmy Awards.

It seems like the original intention of these baby high heels was more of a joke than anything. On the Heelarious website, they say that they came up with the idea of high heels for babies when they were on their way to a party and Britta thought, "That would have been hilarious if I could have brought Kayla to a party in high heels when she was a baby." So obviously they were meant to be all in good fun.

Yet many people are saying that these baby high heels are inappropriate for babies because they are too sexy. I first saw these shoes on "The Today Show" on NBC this morning and Matt Lauer joked that the shoes are $35 and "$45 for the bustier." I think that is the image that comes to many minds when you see zebra striped or leopard print high heels. It seems very incongruous for an innocent baby to be wearing something that could be considered "sexy."

Baby high heels seem like just another step in sexualizing children. When you go shopping in the girls' clothing department, you can find so many styles of clothes that are hardly fitting for a little girl to wear. Halter tops, deep v-necks, and triangle-topped bikinis. You can even find rhinestone underwear for toddlers! What does a little girl need rhinestone underwear for? Similarly, what does an infant need baby high heels for? They might be meant as a joke, but in a world where predators even have fetishes for babies in diapers, parents might want to think twice before putting high heels on their baby.