Amelia Jones
People have been left horrified by the bizarre story of one woman who claims her friend's toddler was asked to 'cover up' at a recent swimming lesson.
Katie Sturino is an entrepreneur, author, and body acceptance advocate who posted a video last week about her friend's experience of parenting and views on her daughter's 'nudity'.
You can watch her tell the shocking story here:She's captioned the video "Different rules for boys and girls bodies start young and are reinforced constantly along the way. What are your thoughts on this?" with the writing over the video reading: "Should toddler girls have to cover up?"
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She begins her troubling story saying: “I was just catching up with my friend and she said that her two-year-old daughter was at swim lessons yesterday and all the little boys around her were shirtless.
"Baby boys were shirtless in diapers and she was in a swimsuit bottom and didn’t have her rash guard on yet and the lifeguard came over — two different lifeguards came over at two different times — and said, ‘Ma’am, you need to put a shirt on your daughter. There’s no nudity allowed at the pool'."
The digital influencer's reaction matched most peoples as she says: "That made my f**king head pop off. Because I was like, ‘This is it. This is when they start policing our bodies. They start to say, ‘You gotta cover up. There’s something wrong with you. You’ve gotta cover up, okay?'
"This is not appropriate. Your body, not appropriate'.”
She continued: “‘You’re two years old. You’re a two-year-old little baby. These rules are put on women from the start.”
She then asked her followers for their thoughts on whether or not 'toddler girls [should] have to cover up'.
The comment section, unsurprisingly, lit up with the video receiving over 47K likes and almost 3K comments in the past six days.
One follower commented: "What. As a paediatrician and expert in the bodies of children, there is no biological difference between a toddler girl's chest and a toddler boy's chest. That is absolutely insane."
A second said: "Sexualising a two-year-old is what that sounds like."
A third answered from a lifeguard's perspective: "I lifeguarded for 10 years and never once was it my place to tell a child what to wear.
"It’s much more acceptable in other countries for children to be shirtless. America is so effing rigid and obsessed with sex at the same time.”
Another said: "This is how we begin to train boys: a) There is something wrong/strange/unfamiliar about female bodies. b) That they shouldn't know about them because they're different/mysterious/unknowable. c) That the boys are not individually responsible for themselves but instead that it is girls/others who should police their environment to 'protect' them from seeing and therefore d) That they don't have responsibility for their own thoughts and actions.
"This is horrible for the boys and men in our society too."
Sturino simple replied to the comment: "This!!"