Is Victoria’s Secret marketing to tweens?

Judging by a Knight Ridder story about two 11-year-old girls in Philadelphia, it seems that tweens love to shop at Victoria’s Secret. Many of them head straight for the “Pink” department of the store, where they find stuffed animals, rhinestone lounge pants in pink, and shirts decorated with Pink’s mascot, a pink dog. Of course, the company swears up and down that it doesn’t market to 11-year-olds. Not that the girls mind. A professor of “fashion-industry management” is quoted in the story, and has this to say of these young customers: “They are not little girls, and they aren’t teenagers, but they have a lot of access to sophisticated information about what the media says is beautiful, what is pretty, what is hot and stylish and cool.