Call me old-fashioned, a prude, out of touch with current fashion trends, but I could not help but be alarmed yesterday when I saw a three-year-old girl getting onto a bus wearing, get this:
Black, knee-high boots, with two and a half inch heels.
Aged three? Surely that's not right.
And adding to the bizarre-ness of the scene in front of me was the fact that the mother was carrying the child's pushchair which seems to further emphasis just how young the girl was.
The boots were well worn. They were not something the child had insisting on wearing as a one-off. I know IJ has gone out wearing unusual clothes that I'd prefer she did not wear in the supermarket - her witch's costume, for example - but she has put her foot down so I've let it go. Others have smiled at her unusual choice of dress but it's harmless. If it were me dressing up in a odd costume for the weekly shop things would be different! No, the boots looked as if they had been worn many times.
So as I watched the child totter along the pavement I couldn't help tutting in my head (never out loud of course). Memories of my mother's views came into my head: she'll damage her feet in those, they need to be properly fitted, she is pushing all her weight to the front of her foot, she looks like a mini-teenager.
Perhaps it was the teenage look of this three-year-old that disturbed me the most.
Don't get me wrong. There is a place in life for two and half inch heels. I have several pairs which I love wearing as they increase me height to a Kate Moss five foot seven. And every extra millimetre counts.
But on a pre-schooler?
No, there's time yet for killer heels, but its at least a decade away!
