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tweenage wasteland
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tweenage wasteland
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tweenage wasteland
the dangerous look for girls
15-Year Old On Miley Cyrus: "I Don't Want To Be That"
So what do actual 15-year old girls think of the whole Miley Cyrus-Annie Leibovitz Vanity Fair shoot? The New York Times decided to ask some (specifically students at Manhattan's Beacon School), as featured in an article in today's Metro section. "My friend loves her," said one girl, "Well, she love-hates her. [And] she called her a slut [when she saw the Vanity Fair photos]." She went on. "Is this who we're supposed to be growing up to be? I don't want to be that. It's sending a message that girls are supposed to be whores. It's like you only get so many years to be a child, and then once you're an adult, you're an adult for, like, 100 years. That's it. Welcome to adulthood. There's no turning back." More »
tweenage wasteland
Cosmo Girl Has The Spiciest -- And Smartest -- Advice When It Comes To Teen Sex
Down Under, two of the major teen magazines, rivals Dolly and Girlfriend, are banding together to fight government suggestions that the magazines come with "audience age recommendations," because of the sexually-explicit nature of their question-and answer-sections. According to the Daily Telegraph, "Tasmanian Senator Stephen Parry said he was concerned readers as young as 11 were writing in for answers to questions on anal and oral sex." (Because if they don't read the magazine, their questions will magically disappear, right?) Dolly editor Gemma Crisp told a government inquiry, "We see it as a service. It's our responsibility to provide the correct information rather than them (readers) saying to their 15-year-old friend, 'my boyfriend wants me to do this, how do I deal with it?'" We decided to see what kind of advice the American teen magazines are giving their readership. A look at sex coverage on the websites of Teen Vogue, Cosmo Girl, Elle Girl, YM and Seventeen, after the jump. More »
A group of middle school girls in Southern Indiana was allegedly "inspired" by the Florida teenagers who brutally beat a frenemy and then attempted to post the violence on YouTube. These Indiana tweens — pupils at Clarksville Middle School and aged 12-14 — lured a classmate to a parking lot, filmed themselves abusing her and then posted the video on PhotoBucket.com (it has subsequently been removed). According to the AP, "The video begins with one girl arguing with the victim and escalates into a fight during which the 12-year-old is repeatedly hit in the head as other girls watch and laugh." Charges have yet to be filed and police are still interviewing the perpetrators. The Clarksville superintendent says he does not plan to discipline these bullies because the violence did not occur on school grounds. Again, we ask: How many kids have to die before bullying is taken seriously? [AP via MSNBC]
the dangerous look for girls
Bikini Waxes, Highlights & 'Tramp Stamps': That's What Little Girls Are Made Of
First we hear about little girls getting pedicures, then bikini waxes, and now, at the tender age of 6, it's chemically treated hair. The New York Times reports that today's moms are paying for their daughters to get highlights. (Full disclosure: I was a hair model in high school, and for a good four years my hair got dyed every color of the rainbow. But I made money doing it and I was 15. The girls in the Times are much, much younger.) Says Tammy Curris of Toadly Kool Me salon in Fayetteville, NC, "We've had girls as young as 6 in for highlights, but 9 and 10 is more the norm." Echoes Mark Goodman of Hair Designers of Hilton Head, SC, "Five years ago, the rule of thumb was 15- to 16-year-olds would come in for their first color. Now, that girl is 10." More »
clips
Earlier: New Game Encourages Young Girls To Embrace Their Inner "Bimbo"
'Miss Bimbo' Creators: "Take Care Of Your Bimbo, Nurture Her, Love Her"
Ann Curry and company over at the Today show were just as incredulous about the internet game for burgeoning skanks, Miss Bimbo, as we were. In the clip above from this morning's broadcast, two adorable English moppets named Jasmine and Poppy enjoy Miss Bimbo's "big jugs and facelifts," and the dudes behind the game defend Miss Bimbo with straight faces. The pair of floppy haired founders say things like, "It's a morally positive, fun game..."What about loving your bimbo, taking care of your bimbo, sending her to university?"Earlier: New Game Encourages Young Girls To Embrace Their Inner "Bimbo"
kids today
How Many 8-Year-Olds Have To Get Bikini Waxes Before We All Agree The Terrorists Have Won?
In the first thousand words of a story I just read:1. An eight-year-old receives a bikini wax.
2. A ten-year-old gets microdermabrasion.
3. Numerous children under ten get highlights.
Funny you should ask! This is not dystopian work of satirical science fiction. (Though there is a stylist who finds himself in a sort of Guy Montag type of role when a woman asks him to relax her 12-year-old's "beautiful, wavy hair.") (He now "hawks an all-natural product to moms who want to lighten their five-year-olds' locks; applied daily, it brings out subtle highlights.") No, this is a story in Philadelphia magazine, a place I used to work in a city I used to live, a city that always seemed disarmingly normal and unmaterialistic relative to my current place of business. So reading it was kind of personal for me, especially since I know its writer, Carrie Denny, and I have to say, it was weird reading sentiments of such earnest dismay as "Without the ugly years, when do you learn to accept yourself?" coming from her.
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the dangerous look for girls
Dear Moms: Your 6-Year Old Daughter's Ass Is Not "Juicy"
"Nothing needs to be on my child's rear end. It doesn't need to have any words at all," says Suzie DeWitt of Tacoma, a mother to two daughters. You wanna know what else DeWitt doesn't want on her girls' asses? Low-rise pants. "The pants rise on little girl pants are too low to be practical. Kids run, jump and hang on monkey bars. With these fashions, their bottom is hanging out at recess." Wanna know how old DeWitt's daughters are? Six and eight. We've said it before and we'll say it again: slutty dressing is skewing younger and younger, with kids just out of kindergarten wearing everything to platforms to spaghetti straps. Recall how the beauty industry is targeting the younguns also? Same deal applies to fashion: Things that have typically been aimed at teens are just being shrunk, literally, and marketed at the kids that teens are probably baby-sitting. More »
tweenage wasteland
Young Adult Novels Plumb New Depths Of Product Placement
About a year ago, I was desperate to review Dial L For Loser from the New York Times best-selling tween book series The Clique. I thought the title was hilarious and I wanted to see what sort of written culture the kiddies are consuming these days. Within the first ten pages, there were mentions of Ella Moss, Neiman Marcus, Prada, Range Rovers, and Chantico drinking chocolate (even hot beverages must be branded!). In fact, it broke down to 1.8 brand mentions per page, which is staggering when you consider that each page had about 160 words. The characters consuming these lux brands were supposed to be seventh graders. Well listen up kiddies, the brand-infiltration of books aimed at ten-to-twelve year olds is only going to get exponentially worse. A new series of books by HarperCollins and named for a heroine called Mackenzie Blue is offering brand sponsorship for each new novel before the books are even written. More »
the good, the bad, & the ugly
Hannah Montana's Best Of Both Worlds Concert: The Worst Of All Fashions
Last night's Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds concert in Hollywood featured a proper red carpet... And crappy red carpet fashion. Hannah Montana, in case you've been living under a rock, is the Disney Channel-conceived alter-ego of Miley Cyrus, daughter of Billy Ray "Achy Breaky Heart" Cyrus, and tween girl idol. On the show, Miley plays a girl named Miley (whoa: meta) who is really rock star Hannah Montana, but keeps her performance identity a secret, so as to live a "normal life" as a high school dork. Which is why the theme song declares that Miley/Hannah has the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, everyone in both worlds is poorly dressed! Maybe it's better to look hideous at a ridiculous event, to diffuse the horror of being there? Decide for yourself with the good, the bad, and the ugly, after the jump. More »
teenage wastelands
Teen Girls Join Britney In Tippling The "Purple Drank"
Teen usage of cold and cough medicines to get high is a major problem in the U.S., reports the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Any fan of The Basketball Diaries can tell you that barely legals have used over-the-counter meds to get high since the dawn of NyQuil, but a recent study by SAMHSA shows that the number of people age 12-25 who use large doses of cold medicine to create hallucinations is at about 3.1 million. Many adolescents are mixing the cold medicines with other substances — like Britney with her "purple drank" of vodka, NyQuil and Red Bull — but the key ingredient to cause hallucinations in large doses is the cough suppressant DXM. More »
tweenage wasteland
Today's Teens Believe It's Better To Be Sexy Than Clever
"In a culture that celebrates Paris Hilton, thong underwear and songs like 'My Humps' — where the female singer expounds the sexual magnetism of her breasts and buttocks — there's scant recognition or respect for female modesty or achievement that isn't coupled with sex appeal," writes Carol Platt Liebau, managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and author of a new book, Prude: How The Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls. Liebau argues that "the overwhelming lesson teenagers are now learning from the world around them is that being 'sexy' is the ultimate accolade, trumping intelligence, character and all other accomplishments at every stage of a woman's life." And, while this fact alone is disturbing, Liebau also notes that "girls are being led to believe they're in control when it comes to sexual relationships but they're actually living in a profoundly anti-feminist landscape where girls compete for attention on the basis of how much they are sexually willing to do for the boys." More »
tweenage wasteland
Being A Fresh-From-Rehab Mean Girl Is Awesome!
How did you spend your time in high school? Editing the school paper? Drama club? Smoking behind Waffle House? These days, girls are being encouraged to partake in sex, drugs and lying through a new cell phone game called "Coolest Girl in School," which is all the rage in Australia. How does one become the coolest girl? Just "lie, bitch and flirt your way to the top of the high school ladder." All you have to do is "experiment with drugs, alcohol and smoking, skip school, spread rumours, bully" and have unprotected sex. Fun! Parents and educators are freaking the fuck out, naturally, that a game being marketed specifically at girls that encourages them to, uh, make bad choices. But the game's creator, Holly Martin, says the game is actually good for girls. More »
kids today
Watching TV Leads To Teen Sex; Teen Sex Leads To Teen Chlamydia
A new study claims that there's a "recipe" that raises the odds of a teen becoming sexually active early — and the more ingredients (low self-esteem, not feeling close to parents, lots of TV), the more likely a teen is to have sexual relations by the age of 15. Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author Myeshia Price conducted a two-year study of 273 children and used anonymous surveys."By 15," they write, "one out of five boys had participated in oral sex and about one in 10 said they'd had intercourse; the numbers were somewhat lower for girls. (Because the teens were mostly middle class and white, they had lower rates of sexual experience than the U.S. average.)" More »
every day is slutoween
Happy Halloween, folks! Know what this means? The PERFECT STORM of Slutty ShallowTween trend stories! Here's a quick guide. You start with the question, "Why did Halloween replace "scary" with "slutty"?" and usually the the follow-up, "Did witch and zombie costumes get replaced by costumes prefixed-'naughty' and/or 'sexy' maybe at the same time BRATZ DOLLS became acceptable?" The next-level story wonders if all this has something to do with the de-juvenilization of Halloween. Just when did self-respecting adults start dressing up like French maids? (And why, if French are supposed to be so classic and subtly chic, do their maids dress like strippers?) " Some commentators blame the gays, and the gays are not having it, and miscellaneous references to Kim Kardashian/Tila Tequila/Pussycat Dolls/burlesque/Hot Topic ensue, and at this point maybe we should return to Bratz — you can even be a Bratz for Halloween! And the big takeaway of it all is: everyone in this country between the ages of six and forty six is basically a slutty thirteen-year-old. And that is the new scary.
More »
Is "Slutoween" Actually Scarier Than Halloween Ever Was?
Happy Halloween, folks! Know what this means? The PERFECT STORM of Slutty ShallowTween trend stories! Here's a quick guide. You start with the question, "Why did Halloween replace "scary" with "slutty"?" and usually the the follow-up, "Did witch and zombie costumes get replaced by costumes prefixed-'naughty' and/or 'sexy' maybe at the same time BRATZ DOLLS became acceptable?" The next-level story wonders if all this has something to do with the de-juvenilization of Halloween. Just when did self-respecting adults start dressing up like French maids? (And why, if French are supposed to be so classic and subtly chic, do their maids dress like strippers?) " Some commentators blame the gays, and the gays are not having it, and miscellaneous references to Kim Kardashian/Tila Tequila/Pussycat Dolls/burlesque/Hot Topic ensue, and at this point maybe we should return to Bratz — you can even be a Bratz for Halloween! And the big takeaway of it all is: everyone in this country between the ages of six and forty six is basically a slutty thirteen-year-old. And that is the new scary.
More »
aberzombies
Tween Girls Get Mocked For Wearing Expensive Shit Moms Buy Them Because They Were Mocked
Have a kid you can't wait to bedeck in the Spring children's collections by Chloe/Missoni/Marc Jacobs/Dolce & Gabbanna/etc.? Ha ha ha, seriously, stay with me anyway. A story in today's Wall Street Journal interviews middle schoolers who are shunned by their peers for wearing, like, Armani in lieu of Abercrombie. Sixth-grader Aryana McPike, whose mom has purchased her a "closet full" of Juicy and Dolce, describes recently being "instructed" by her classmates that she should wear Air Force 1s and Apple Bottom jeans. Budding populists? Not really according to Becky Gilker, a 13-year-old who says she tries to wear her school's important brands, Hollister and Roxy.But even the wrong color can bring put-downs, Miss Gilker notes. When she wears pink, she says, "I get the snarky 'Nice clothes!' when people walk by in the halls."Thoughts: 1. This would be so much better if we were reading about it in Teen Vogue. Hint hint, Amy Astley! More »
Totally awesome teen sensation Hannah Montana (aka Miley Cyrus) is causing a national crisis. Tickets for her upcoming concert tour have been snatched up by scalpers and children everywhere are hysterical because they need to see Hannah and they need to see her now. Parents, of course, are at their wits' ends, with some of them are forking up to $5000 for a scalped seat. Yes, that's right $5000. In case you need some help putting that in perspective, that is like about half the the amount Jessica Seinfeld spent thanking / bribing Oprah with 21 pairs of Louboutins. [ABC News]
On the heels of their Onslaught video, Dove is teaming up with Seventeen magazine for a "Body Peace Project" to help girls appreciate their shape and "stop stressing over the beauty industry's preferred standards." The beauty company and the teen magazine conducted a body-image survey and found that 91% of teen girls feel anxiety about some part of their looks when getting ready each morning. 51% said they knew they should like their bodies better but felt cultural pressure to be thinner. "We're facing a teen crisis in teen body image," says editor-in-chief Ann Shoket. The magazine is encouraging girls to sign a "Body Peace Treaty" with vows like: "Never blame my body for the bad day I'm having," and "what you see isn't always what you get on TV and in ads — it takes a lot of airbrushing, dieting, money and work to look like that." It's a step in the right direction, but don't you wish some other adult magazines would follow suit? [AdAge]
