Here are some costumes I found last night while browsing online.

Teen Sexy Costumes is an actual category.
http://www.findcostume.com/teseco.html

http://www.findcostume.com/chcaco.html
The choice of the gender of models for those children's costumes is pretty consistent with my worst fears in regards to gender "nurture." Especially bothersome are the (few) little girls' military costumes, which include "Major Flirt" and a belly-baring camo shirt and boot cut pants. As compared the hordes of plain costumes for the boys.

And most disturbing for me was this Dark Night Mistress or something, that requires fishnets and high heeled boots - it was there last night but I can't find it today.

have you seen Miley Cyrus's little sister who's 9, dressing up in a "sexy" Halloween costume? Ugh... and her little friend was wearing those same exact tights.

Halloween used to be awesome. Not anymore.

None of the contexts links work.

I'm not exactly sure how fishnet stockings are innately "sexy". How are fishnet stockings anymore sexy than black opaque tights? Or red tights?

I feel like there's an assumption being made about fishnet tights that I'm completely missing.

Fishnet tights are not inherently sexy, nor is any lingerie. But the way we view fishnets as a culture is that we don't wear them to church or to work, and if we do it's shocking. It's seen as part of a uniform for women who wish to be express overt sexuality.

It seems to me that the trend of wearing unique stockings and layering different legwear is moving fishnets away from strictly "sexy" status into a more "fun, quirky" territory. Especially if you layered them with a fun color of tights, there wouldn't be anything at all inappropriate about them on a child. It's a bit of a leap to consider the mere existence of child-size fishnets to be automatically sexualizing.

I also think it's worth noting that smaller-knit fishnets like these are really pretty tame even on adults. If these were industrial net or fence net stockings, I might come to the same conclusion that you are, but these not so much.

The photo on the front is pretty telling, too. No high heels; bright and fun colors; a fairly neutral, bold/playful pose that isn't "sexy". The skirt might be a little short, but hey, we're showing off tights here.

You know, I agree that fish nets are not "inherently" sexy, but no article of clothing is. It's how we see it, wear it, use it. That said, fishnets are viewed as revealing in part because they perform no function in terms of warmth. They are a window to the legs--literally.

The packaging is significant: the skirt is short, in my view, not just in order to show off the fishnets but to mirror the "appropriate" way to display one's legs--i.e. short skirt. You could also show the image with shorts which would diminish the sexuality a bit. But of course a skirt is used. The overt sexualization of young women is increasing--while we also expect them to appear sexual we expect them not to BE sexual. A contradiction to be sure.

I am now 23. When I was in 8th grade (ie, when I was 13) I wore fishnet stockings with a few of my skirts. Was I wearing it to look sexy? Absolutely not - I wasn't trying to do that back then. Did I think it looked cool and fun? Definitely.

Looking at the skirt in the picture, as compared to what I see every day here in Scotland, I'd have to say: the picture is being incredibly modest, as compared to over here. Yes, the US has a different perspective upon things ... the question is: who manufactured these, and according to which particular social standard? If they're a former British colony, then they're manufactured to align with social standards in the UK, which mean that fishnets are perfectly acceptable office wear in many places.

I sort of want to echo the above posters, but I'm not willing to give stockings a pass. I worked at a wealthy upscale children's summer camp for ages, and a distressing trend that became more and more popular was girls--starting at about age 8--started to wear mini skirts and fishnet stockings in various colors to camp. Keep in mind, this was a camp that prided itself on keeping the kids very active and busing them to things like golf lessons and private swimming pools, so the stockings and short skirts were not at all appropriate for the activities planned each day. The girls who wore the stockings were very much at the top of the pecking order of popularity in their groups, and regularly wore clothing more suited for a 21 year-old going clubbing than a 10 year old going to tennis lessons.

It was absolutely sexual, and sexualized the young girls. They weren't "punk" or anything like that, they were specifically worn because of the taboo that the stockings were supposed to represent. Hell, punk wasn't even popular--or seen at all--at the camp. It was all about labels and expensive purses and sexualizing young girls as early as possible.

So I echo the original poster: fishnet stockings on younger girls are typically a sign of sexualization. They're purely ornamental, and unless worn as a counter-culture statement, I don't see how else you could interpret them. They're not like sheers that even out the tone of your legs (which I had to wear, even at the age of 5, for things like dance recitals) or tights which are for warmth, they're part of "sexy wear" much like corsets and such are. Such items of clothing are not appropriate for children.

We often use fishnets in theater because they're more visually interesting than putting the girls in black stockings. I definitely agree that they're completely desexualized.

I love me some fishnets. But I am 25. And I have to say, in my years of dating as a heterosexual female, fishnets ARE sexual. It's cold up here in Wisconsin, and I often wear tights/stockings under my skirts. I have fun, opaque tights in all colors. The boys think those are cute, but not particularly sexy. The fishnets I have, on the other hand? The men find them incredibly sexy and usually can't wait to get them off me.

Fishnets are fetish-y. The only reason they were ever associated with "punk" is precisely because of that sexual edginess.

This reminds me of a time in about 1998 when a friend nudged me at a Halloween party and said "Hey, look, those 8-year-old girls are dressed up like hookers!!"
Sure enough, they did have a bit of a Little Miss Sunshine thing going. I asked one of them what their costume was.

She proudly exclaimed, "We're the Spice Girls!"

Looking back on that moment, it really drives home the obvious: children use dress-up play to explore their curiosities and fantasies about the adult world as seen through the roles they're exposed to. When they put on clothes that we regard as sexual, it's not entirely right to assume that they're just succumbing to some imagined agenda to "sexualize" them. Rather, they take in sexuality as one of the many mysteries and available visual features of their world, and reappropriate it along with lots of other details they don't quite get (as in basically every other costume).

I'd be willing to consider the possibility that little girls are being more "sexualized" now than in times we regard (wrongfully) as more innocent, but I think it would take more than some kiddie fishnets to convince me. How exactly do you "sexualize" something that is already inherently sexual? Or do you believe that sexuality is being implanted where it doesn't exist? Even in the absence of pornography, sex-obsessed advertising, and adult-themed pop culture, children's imaginations are incredibly rife with sexual curiosity and fascinated by the role it might play in their own futures. When we earmark some of their clothing choices as transgressive, are we really protecting them, or merely satisfying our discomfort with the awkward reality of juvenile sexuality?

One more flashback: all the giggly games with other kiddies in which GI Joes and Transformers undressed and penetrated Barbie while contemplating divorce from the Cabbage Patch Kids (or was it the other way around?). We 7-year-olds were absolutely obsessed with sex, girls and boys alike, and incredibly polymorphous with how we expressed it among ourselves. The knowledge that our parents did it, and that we also had interesting parts that might be somehow involved, was all it took to "sexualize" us irretrievably.

a few years ago i worked at a Spirit halloween store for a few months (hell, they only exist for a few months out of the year).

i mostly got assigned to the dressing room, so i got to watch all sorts of shit go down. the 'Legs Avenue' brand of 'sexy' costumes was lined up right next to my area.

my favorite was seeing a girl that was maybe all of 14 march into the dressing room with an armload, emerge looking skeptical with one on, and say to the lady waiting outside

"I don't know mom, I don't think this one's SLUTTY enough!"

who apparently agreed with her.

Seconding the Scottish poster, I'm a teacher and generally dress very modestly, and I have no problem wearing tights like that to work (and I wouldn't to church, if I went). They are very, very mainstream here in the UK, especially the small-hole ones. Yes, they can be worn in a sexy way, but they don't have to be here.

Isn't calling them 'tights' indicative of British usage? Because I'm also a Brit and second the notion of fishnet TIGHTS not being treated as inherently sexy over here.

Stockings, yes. Tights, no.

DaviMack, I don't know if you meant more body weight, but I don't know many women the height of children.

idk, i would say that there are different kinds. like the kibd with floral designs are 100% meant to be sexualizing but the normal holey kind arent.

theyre literally sold as lingerie

the floral kind