Some days my brain wants to feel sexy, like a hot blob of gray matter just itching to try on… Some days my brain wants to feel sexy, like a hot blob of gray matter just itching to try on some new shoes and totally redecorate the apartment until it screams “Fabulous!” It’s a weird feeling, but I never argue with my brain. Suddenly, I find myself reading the New York Times Fashion section, wondering why I wasn’t also drinking a cappuccino and munching a bran muffin.

Two articles in the aforementioned section caught my attention. The first was about the perennial clash between mothers and daughters over how much skin the youngsters should be allowed to show. There’s nothing really new about that, but with the continuing popularity of teen divas whose talent is measured by cup size, that special age when a girl buys her first thong is getting younger. Not to make a broad generalization, but according to the New York Times, all pre-teen girls these days want to look like whores. Pint-sized whores. Interesting.

The second article, titled “I Don’t Want To Grow Up,” chronicled the plight of upper-middle class adults trying to reclaim their youth by buying toys. Not grown-up toys like SUVs or IRAs, but actual children’s toys like Strawberry Shortcake dolls and – wait for it – a Honda-brand toy truck marketed to extreme sports enthusiasts.

The article really made me feel for those young urban professionals with plenty of money to spend on reissued Care Bears. Then I grabbed my dictionary, searching for the definition of “emotionally retarded.” There it was: “buying dolls at age 35.” There’s something vaguely disturbing about an adult who finds the Chipmunks – those helium-sucking rodents whose albums of novelty songs were a kitsch hit when I was, like, 12 – “funny, period.” The really mean part of me wants to say, “You’re going to die alone, period.”

Incidentally, the children are with me on this one. Said one consumer, “I’ll be playing a Chipmunk record in my car and, if a kid hears it, they get seriously weirded out.” Yes. Though, if you really want to weird them out, maybe you should be driving a dark-colored van with tinted windows. Then park by a schoolyard and play your record. You’ll get some attention.

Like me, you’re probably thinking, “Where’s this going? What’s the connection between dirty whorechildren and thirtysomethings who live in their parents’ basements, playing with GI Joes?” There’s one obvious connection, but that’s a felony and it’s sick that you would even think it.

No, the real connection is simple: marketing. Both articles mention the marketing aspects of these trends, with their accompanying and annoying neologisms. For the young girls, it’s “K.G.O.Y” – an acronym for Kids Getting Older Younger, both in their sexual expression and, more importantly, in their purchasing habits. The oldsters who love toys are “kidults” or “adultolescents” who need to soothe their inner four-year-old with dollies and sing-along albums.

Marketers know that both affluent teens and disillusioned Gen-Xers have mounds of disposable income. And the golden rule of marketing is that any insecurity can be healed with a MasterCard. The hipsters try to recapture the freedom and fun of childhood by buying its trappings, while teens try to attain sexual maturity by emulating its most garish examples. And no matter what your fetish, be it limited-edition Masters of the Universe figures or that Britney Spears postage-stamp bikini, there will always be someone there to sell you a dream.

There is probably a serious point to be made here, about the confusion of material goods with the feelings they are supposed to provoke. Did you ever, as a kid, play with toys because you wanted to feel like a kid? So why, at 30, would a toy be symbolic of your eternal youth? And isn’t there something fairly shallow about an entire culture that wants to be 16 forever? Maybe not, as long as it’s a sexy 16.

You could probably make those fairly depressing points about 13-year-olds who want to look 27 and 27-year-olds who want to feel 13. But I’m an optimist, and I’d rather think that fashion – and marketing – is pushing us toward a one-age-fits-all future. Maybe if we all close our eyes and open our wallets, we can be whisked away to a future of deliciously hypersexualized grotesquerie: Everyone will be the thong-snapping 16-year-old boy playing with his action figures, or sexpot girl gossiping on her cell phone and applying gratuitous amounts of blue eyeliner. It will be a land free of boring jobs and student loans, cleansed of responsibility and grocery store runs. All our anxieties will melt away, the pressures and fears of adulthood buried in the sandbox, and our hearts will worry only about matching accessories and the possibility of cooties.

Jesse Hicks can be reached at [email protected].