I'm not a prude or anything, but ...

... if I had a young daughter, my goal would be to keep her OFF the pole.

The marketing folks at Tesco [a retail chain in England] thought differently:

Tesco has been forced to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website after it was accused of "destroying children's innocence".

The Tesco Direct site advertises the kit with the words, "Unleash the sex kitten inside...simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go!

"Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars".

The £49.97 kit comprises a chrome pole extendible to 8ft 6ins, a 'sexy dance garter' and a DVD demonstrating suggestive dance moves.

As a solution, Tesco agreed to remove this from the "toys" section but keep it in the "fitness" section of their web site. Well, at least, I say.

At first, I thought this was an ad for "Pole Dancing Barbie" or something, which would have made this --- in some twisted way --- funnier than it really is, until I realized it was an actual pole (a cheap-looking one, at that, I'm all about quality) that you could install. In your house. To practice on. Right next to the ceiling swing, I'd assume. Hours of entertainment. Why Tesco classified this as a toy is beyond me.

Strippin' ain't easy, yo.

I totally agree that there's some kind of bizarre cultural shift going on right now that increasingly exposes young kids and teenagers to sexuality early on --- case in point: sexy Halloween costumes, for Jah's sake! --- why can't we just let kids be ... kids? What the hell happened here?

Twisty from I Blame the Patriarchy has a great post on this, which inspired me to write this post. But Twisty does a much better job. And her title is funnier than mine. So go check it out.