Cake-riarchy
I greatly enjoy the blog Cake Wrecks; it's one of the few sites I visit regularly that is not feminism focused. A recent post had two pictures of cakes that resemble the Playboy bunny. The rub? The cakes were for a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old. Jen, the author of the blog, puts it best:
[blowing nose] "I mean, every parent wants her little girl to grow up dreaming big dreams, padding her trainer bra, and looking to attract men as a means of personal validation, but to see it actually happening ...[sniffle] I'm sorry, it's just a dream come true.
Seriously, what was going through the parents' minds when ordering these cakes?
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I think the playboy bunny is one of those symbols marketed these days to tweens who have a vague idea of what it means. (That being something sexy.) The parents are probably misguidedly trying to appeal to something they know their kids are "into."
All parents do this to some degree.
Not all parents are smart.
I read this blog and saw those cakes too. Ugh. Also, with the creation of The Girls Next Door I am not so sure that tweens have only a "vague idea" of what the bunny stands for. I'm actually very surprised so many parents are willing to buy crap like this (and there is a lot of it) for their children.
Kittycat, your comment reminded me of something I read in Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown's book, Packaging Girlhood. They are speaking here of preteen and early-teen girls. Bolding mine: