First-graders fighting over makeup? High heels on the playground? Some say young girls are on a too-fast track to adulthood. Others say they’re just . . . : Playing Dress-Up

So you don’t think it’s tough being a kid today? Consider the First-Grade Makeup War.

The fight broke out on a school playground, reports a Los Angeles father who prefers that his family and the school remain anonymous. (He explains that, even though his daughter was not involved in the fight, “the school is already like a little Peyton Place.”)

This is how it went down: After one first-grade girl wore and brought her makeup to school, two others became envious. They wanted the potential Lolita to share her lipstick. She refused, and a pint-size cat fight broke out. Now, months later, one of the girls is still not talking to the junior makeup queen.

Says the father, who permits his daughter to play with makeup at home but not to wear it to school: “Makeup is now like contraband to these kids. And the girls who have makeup have power over the ones who don’t.”

Although blusher battles are apparently rare--at least in the first grade--the father is appalled by what he and other parents see as a small but growing trend: young girls transforming themselves into miniature adults long before adulthood, sometimes with parental encouragement.

In extreme cases, they don the provocative styles popular with female music stars seen night and day on MTV: tight, micro-miniskirts; midriff- or cleavage-baring tops; see-through blouses and skirts; off-the-shoulder tops; press-on fingernails; dangling earrings, and bright, dramatic makeup. There are some unflattering names for little girls who wear this stuff: Baby bimbos. Boy toys. Pop tarts. And worse.

According to area teachers and school administrators, the overwhelming majority of girls show up for elementary, junior high and high school in styles traditionally suited to their ages. But there are startling exceptions. Fourth-graders have arrived wearing panty hose and high heels. And 8-year-olds have been known to win Madonna look-alike contests sponsored by their schools.

Says a grandmother who is surprised by the precociousness of her two “Valley Girl” granddaughters, ages 6 and 9, “I went to a birthday party for the 6-year-old and all the kids were wearing adult-style clothes. All the parents were wearing sweats. The children looked more like adults than the adults. They watch MTV constantly and use very suggestive dance steps that I’m not sure they really understand.

“They love Disney movies, but ‘Pretty Woman’ is one of their favorites. I asked the 6-year-old why she liked it so much and she said it was because of the romance between the hooker and Richard Gere. I said, ‘What’s a hooker?’ She told me it was somebody who has sex for money. I asked her what sex was and she said, ‘Oh grandma, you know.’ ”

School administrators report that the trend toward girls dressing and acting adult-like shows up most predictably when they enter junior high school. It’s typically the time when their bodies begin to develop, and they increasingly test the boundaries of acceptable behavior on assorted fronts.

Even at schools without official dress codes. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, has rules banning only gang-related items. Says Josephine Jiminez, operations administrator for the district’s senior high school divisions: “The bottom line in our dress code is that clothing has to be safe and non-disruptive. At every campus, you see kids who tend to be extreme. Those kids are usually counseled individually. You really don’t get any where today by saying your skirt can’t be so many inches or you can’t wear a crop top.”

But even schools with official dress codes don’t always find their students dressing as teachers would prefer. Reports Jane Hancock, who teaches at Toll Junior High School in Glendale: “Some of the girls come in wearing low-cut tops, and even though we have school rules about it, they’re pretty hard to enforce. You’re not supposed to show your midriffs or your breasts, but the girls come with jackets on and then, suddenly, they’re off.

“We usually just send the girls to the office and the office takes them home or sends them home for a change of clothes,” says Hancock, adding that Toll might be considered a typical, middle-class Southern California school; its student body encompasses virtually every ethnic group in the area. “I can remember a case in which an administrator took a girl home to change her clothes. The mother couldn’t see anything wrong with it. The girl was wearing her mother’s clothes.”

Some parents, many of whom came of age in the permissive 1960s, find nothing wrong with allowing their daughters to dress in adult-style fashions. Those interviewed said they are careful to ensure that their children dress fashionably, not seductively.

Says Siporah Bank of her daughter, Ashley Bank Goldberg, a child actress who attends a public school for gifted children and likes to wear minidresses, high heels and dangling earrings: “She’s 9 years old going on 50. She likes to think she’s older. Not everybody wears the kind of clothes she does to school. Some just wear jeans and T-shirts. Some wear tight skirts and jackets and really neat shoes and look as if they’re going to work in a corporation. Kids are very trendy these days.

“Kids have always done this, dressing up in their parents’ clothes. Now they have their own to do it in. It’s not any different.”

Ashley, who lives in Hollywood with her mother and stepfather, is aware of what’s off limits. “My mom won’t let me wear eye shadow out of the house. She lets me wear lipstick and not too much blush. She lets me wear a little mascara. She won’t let me wear earrings down to here,” Ashley says, pointing to her shoulders. “But they can go down to here (the jaw).”

One day last year, Ashley reveals, she made the mistake of wearing her prized 3-inch heels to school. “My teacher almost threw them out,” she recalls in horror. But Ashley’s wardrobe also includes plenty of tomboy clothes, her mother insists. And outfits that she wears to synagogue (sweet, traditional, little-girl styles that Ashley snidely dismisses as “ ‘Little House on the Prairie’ dresses”).

Bank says she is not worried that her daughter’s minidresses and earrings could land her in deep trouble.

“Ashley’s 50 inches tall,” Bank says. “She’s too short to be mistaken for someone older. These kids look very young in their faces. Their hair is also very young. It’s more like they’re wearing trendy clothes than older girls’ clothes. Kids learn to imitate what their parents are wearing. Parents also tend to buy their children’s clothing. Cool parents buy their kids cool clothes.”

Many would agree with the notion that young children repeat or are encouraged to repeat the styles favored in their homes--especially if those styles match ones seen on TV. Observes Carolyn Seefeldt, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Child Study, “Until the age of 12 or so, children get the majority of their attitudes about clothing and everything else from their parents. They have no control over what they wear unless a parent buys it for them and reinforces it.”

Says the father whose first-grade daughter witnessed the playground makeup war, “You can tell exactly which mothers let their kids wear this stuff. They’re always the ones in the trashy-looking clothes when they come to pick the kids up from school.”

But what is trashy to some is merely trendy to others. Says Nancy Kaufman, owner of Na Na, a Santa Monica store that sells rock star-style clothing for adults and children, “I think (the phenomenon) is happening because kids are exposed to the media at younger ages and because people like Madonna are very public figures. The kids really tune into them.

“They like what they wear and the fact that they can express themselves. Wearing these kinds of clothes may signify the first time that they can choose themselves instead of being put into the narrow horizons their parents might choose for them. There are also a lot of younger parents now who haven’t completely outgrown the phase themselves.”

While the store may sell some of the most outrageous styles available to youngsters--leather jackets, second-skin, Pucci-inspired leggings and miniskirts printed with skulls--it is hardly alone. Perfume manufacturers have recently developed and marketed products aimed at children. Jewelry makers have gotten into the act as well, selling diamond bracelets designed for the kindergarten set.

Kaufman, who also operates Na Na stores in San Francisco and New York and is planning to sell her rock ‘n’ roll children’s wear to stores nationwide, maintains that adult styles--even some of the outrageous gear--look wholesome on youngsters.

“The kids look really cute in the stuff,” she says. “It doesn’t have the same connotation that it does on adults. It has a real cute feel to it.”

Experts on child rearing, however, find nothing cute about the extreme manifestations of this phenomenon. In fact, they consider it potentially dangerous.

“If children are doing this (dressing in provocative adult fashions) spontaneously as their play, it’s OK,” says Dr. Benjamin Spock, author of the best-selling classic “Baby and Child Care.” “Children are certainly growing up faster than they did before, and a lot of it is encouraged by adults who want to teach reading to 2- and 3-year-olds. I strongly advise parents to let their children be their own ages.”

As for tight miniskirts, high heels and makeup, Spock considers the styles ill-advised for preteens.

“There’s a big difference between parading in the streets in high heels and parading in the attic. (The latter is) something children have always done. By wearing these things outside of playtime, at one level it’s playing at sex. It’s playing at prostitution at some level. Playing at sex should wait at least until children are in the relatively late teens.”

“I don’t think there’s anything good about this,” adds the University of Maryland’s Seefeldt. “It’s almost as if we as a society find childhood so annoying and irritating that we do everything we can to push kids out of it.

“Five-year-olds really do enjoy Mister Rogers and his neighborhood. If parents would reinforce Mister Rogers rather than MTV, you would find a whole group of kids being kind to one another like Mister Rogers. But adults find Mister Rogers very slow and unsophisticated, dull. . . . Adults need to teach values other than glitz and sequins and makeup. You are not what you wear.”

Even some kids would agree. Listen to these pupils at Toll Junior High School discussing their classmates who wear sex-bomb styles:

“People who wear sophisticated clothes are setting themselves up for trouble,” warns 12-year-old Alexandra Spada. “Guys might be looking at them in bad ways. I’ve seen girls who wear trashy clothes and I’ve seen guys watching them. It’s not in good ways that they’re watching them.”

The boys on the class nod in agreement. “A lot of it is influenced by rock stars. Tight clothes are what’s in right now. You can judge a lot of books by their covers. Girls dress like that to get attention,” says Brian Underwood, a 15-year-old ninth-grader.

“They want you to look at them and then when you do they say, ‘So what are you looking at?’ They’re trying to attract themselves to boys. They’re saying that they’re sluts.”

Or as ninth-grader Narineh Hacopian puts it, “I feel like saying to these people, ‘Act your age. You look stupid.’ ”