This customer was disgusted by the bikini designs this brand is selling for young girls. The swimwear brand owner responded.
Every parent gets to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for their child to wear. Some parents prefer for their kids to be covered up or wearing cartoon prints, while others are fine with skirts or streaks of colorful dye in their hair.
While these opinions are very individual, several people have sided with a customer who shared her opinion on whether little girls should wear this bathing suit style.
Woman calls out brand for kids’ bikinis
In a viral video with more than 2.8 million views, content creator Brooke Cornell (@brooke_cornell) shared her take on this kids’ bathing suit design. Then, the brand weighed in.
Cornell explained that she had ordered from a swimwear brand, but her order had been mixed up with another customer’s. Before sending it back, she decided to take a closer look at what was inside and was taken aback by what she saw.
First, she was surprised to see that the receipt was for a toddler size 12 to 18 months since she didn’t know the brand made baby/toddler attire.
“Call me a prude, I guess; call me old school, but I’m not gonna lie, I do think this is a [expletive] crazy top for a baby,” Cornell said, holding up a yellow bikini top with ruffles on the bottom.
Cornell purposefully hid the clothing tag because she didn’t want to put the “brand on blast.”
“What baby needs scrunch butt bottoms and little tiny string bikini tops,” Cornell said.
After seeing that, Cornell decided she didn’t want to support the brand and asked for a refund instead of getting the bathing suit she had paid for.
She did name the brand as Maheli Heli in her follow-up video after several people named them in the original video’s comment section.
Maheli Heli owner responds
Rebecca Vazquez, owner of Maheli Heli Swimwear, responded in her own now-viral video that has more than 1.2 million views.
“There’s basically a customer who I think is using a situation to kind of get popularity on TikTok. I don’t know where she’s going with this or why she’s choosing this topic as clickbait,” Vazquez said.
Vazquez explained that the other customer whose order was switched with Cornell’s needed the custom bathing suit order for a vacation coming up in a week.
They explained the situation to Cornell and were relieved at her willingness to help despite the inconvenience. Vasquez said she and her team expressed their gratitude at her being so cooperative “probably a 100 times.”
Vazquez thought everything was fine until she saw Cornell’s viral video.
“Our gratitude has been twisted in a ridiculous, disgusting way,” Vazquez added.
Vazquez said that it was fine that Cornell and others have a different opinion on what’s appropriate for children’s swimwear, but she didn’t think it was okay to “attack a brand that we have worked so hard to build for ten years on nothing, just based on an opinion.”
“I don’t believe you have anything to stand on. I believe that it’s very dangerous and very backwards,” Vazquez said. “Calling my customers pedophiles and my team pedophiles is just insane, unnecessary. It’s a far stretch.”
Commenters react to both videos
“Strange that the brand makes them, even stranger a mom ordered them!” a top comment read.
“The over sexualization of kids is outrageous,” a person said.
“100% whoever actually ordered those should be looked into….,” another speculated.
“In theory the product is a very cute idea but there are way too many sick ppl in the world for that product to even exist,” a commenter wrote.
“Not accepting feedback from a group of ppl concerned about over sexualizing babies is a wild take,” another added.
@brooke_cornell Sending back today but…. Sorry let’s let kids be kids & dress like kids.. #fyp #letkidsbekids #weird #parenting ♬ original sound – brooke
The Daily Dot reached out to Cornell for comment via TikTok direct message and comment and to Vazquez via the Maheli Heli company email.
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