Glamour Babes

Meanwhile: Alyssa Steffy, 5, comes over to her mom for help with her costume. She looks like a dark-haired, miniature version of Shakira: the tight outfit, the exposed belly, the makeup, the jaunty hair and the headset.

What pop star does Alyssa like?

Alyssa lowers her eyelids shyly. They are covered in pink eye shadow.

"What is a pop star?" she asks.

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Funny thing about 4-year-olds in starlet clothes.

They don't yet know to suck in their bellies. They're not self-conscious about their bodies, not aware of what looks "sexy," even when dressed in clothes suitable to a Miami nightclub. In a crop top, a little girl's body is an inversion of what the grown woman goes for: flat across the chest where puberty hasn't made its presence known; her belly poufed out like a sail. Watch the way little girls walk, stomachs forward like ballast. Their hips have yet to broaden, to lend magical sway to a pencil skirt or a pair of jeans.

What little girls know about what it means to be starlets could fit on the paw of a miniature stuffed dog.

Sometimes people walking through the mall gather by the windows at Club Libby Lu to watch the spectacle of little girls: all that pink and glitter. All that flesh, too.

A woman passing by says to three blondes in tight outfits, the youngest of whom is 4: "If you're wearing those kind of clothes, you gotta shake your booty."

The girls look at her blankly.

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