This week we have seen a toy cleaning set marketed by Sports Direct with the label "It's Girl Stuff!". A few days later, news emerged that Harrods was offering little girls the chance to be turned into Disney princesses for just £1,000 a pop (or £100 for the princess on a budget). Then an Everyday Sexism Twitter follower alerted me to a website offering girly games from Bratz Makeover to Hollywood Beauty Secrets. Read her brilliant blog about it here.

The Harrods Disney experience, complete with sparkly makeover and deluxe princess dress, is aimed at girls aged three to 12 and culminates in an oath where princesses' vow, among other things, to be "kind and gentle". Perhaps not the best advice for future boardroom battles or climbing the steely managerial ladder, but of course, those aren't the sort of roles one would expect a princess to aspire to. Girls lucky enough to be treated to the full £1,000 royal experience come away with a case full of makeup too – just the thing for the under-12s!

Meanwhile, over on the Friv site (which seems to be aimed at a similar age range, if games such as Where's My Blankie? and Girl Fashion are anything to go by), young gamers are treated to a veritable smörgåsbord of options. But look closer, and almost every game, from Selena's Date Rush to Back to School Makeover, involves exactly the same steps. Players are presented with a cartoonish waif with a head nearly triple the width of her waist and charged with using "beauty products" to make her presentable, from clearing spots to plucking brows to applying makeup. Whether the goal is a hot date or the first day back at school, the message remains the same: conforming to beauty standards and slathering on products is the number one priority for girls everywhere.

Thanks to games such as Dream Date Dress Up ("you have a dream date today … wow him with your cuteness"), it's pretty clear that making yourself beautiful to attract a boy is the ultimate goal. The instructions to Selena's Date Rush are simple: "When Justin comes to pick her up in the morning, she just woke up with no makeup! Please help her complete her makeup before Justin finds out!" Because heaven forbid her boyfriend should realise she doesn't sleep in full slap.

Sadly, these themes are by no means isolated to a single website – they are everywhere, from the website for tween sensation Monster High to Nickelodeon's own site. The latter includes such gems as iKissed Him First ("Carly vs Sam in a battle for a boy"), Big Time Crush Quiz ("Find out which Big Time Rush guy is right for you!") and Makeover Magic. On the Monster High site you can meet characters including Clawdeen Wolf – a "fierce fashionista" whose hobbies are "shopping and flirting with boys" but whose time is tragically consumed with removing leg hair: "Plucking and shaving is definitely a full-time job". It would almost be funny if it didn't make you want to weep.

And it doesn't end there. Over on the website of Top Model Magazine, another big hit with the tween age range, girls learn that "Mascara alone is not enough! You need more to achieve a radiant look!" There are even tips to get rid of cellulite by "pinching yourself with a twisting hand movement". Because they might as well learn young that inflicting pain on oneself in the name of beauty is a woman's lot.

So to return to those who think that making a fuss about these things is an overreaction, it is only when you look at all of this stuff together that you start to realise the immense impact it might be having on young girls. Everywhere they turn they are bombarded with the idea that their looks are everything, that their place is in the home, that pleasing the male gaze is paramount and that they are riddled with imperfections that need to be "fixed". As if the constant bombardment of hyper-sexualised, airbrushed media images of women wasn't enough to get the message across.

And things are only getting worse. One mother told us: "My seven-year-old daughter told me 'Barbie is fat' when she compared it to her Monster High doll." Another said her five-year-old daughter had asked to be turned into a boy so she could go into space. A 15-year-old girl wrote to us to say that "I always feel like if I don't look a certain way, if boys don't think I'm 'sexy' or 'hot' then I've failed and it doesn't even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I'll still feel like nothing …"

So that's the answer, for those people who want to know why we're getting our knickers in a twist – why we're getting so worked up about this. Because as long as our little girls receive the message, everywhere they look, that hiding their "imperfections" and making themselves sexy is the sum total of their value, we are failing them. Frankly they deserve better.