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Growing up way too fast?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1174626/Rise-child-women-The-new-breed-girls-young-dream-manicures-diets-breast-implants.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1174626/Rise-child-women-The-new-breed-girls-young-dream-manicures-diets-breast-implants.html)

Pedo-Bear is watching you, so don't copy those pictures.

I agree, VERY disturbing, especially this 'My parents say she's growing up way too fast, but what can I do to stop her?'

Lemme see, be a parent instead of a helpless-acting moron?

These kids are not "growing up" on any meaningful way, they are getting crash courses in becoming sex-magnets and eating disordered zombies. Having certain kinds of knowledge before mental and emotional development can ameliorate it into some sort of liveable arrangement is simply insane, and the parents and other "protectors" are abdicating their own responsibilities for their children with pathetic pleas like the one I quoted above.

" I don't want her to look tarty." Yeah, sure you don't. You just want her to be a sex-object at age 10!! Fear not she will be way past tarty before ya know it.

Nichole

Why must parents, and it seems to be the Mothers, insist in turning their daughters into the objects of desire.  This kind of thing just fuels the wackos and pedophiles.

Why can't they just let their daughters be kids.  They will grow up all to fast.

This kind of pageantry is just plain disgusting.

Janet

Disturbing? Can you say understatement?  :P Even if you said very VERY VERY Disturbing it could not express how disturbing and upsetting that article is
No wonder so many kids are so messed up

Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul.
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon.
Politicians say more less taxes will solve everything.
And the band played on.

Glad we nipped that in the bud back when Ball of Confusion was written 29 years ago eh?

Quote from: tekla on April 29, 2009, 01:53:35 AM
Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul.
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon.
Politicians say more less taxes will solve everything.
And the band played on.

Glad we nipped that in the bud back when Ball of Confusion was written 29 years ago eh?

I love that song  ;D Which version do you like best? I tend to like the Love and Rockets version

Quote from: Janet Lynn on April 29, 2009, 01:29:34 AM
Why must parents, and it seems to be the Mothers, insist in turning their daughters into the objects of desire.  This kind of thing just fuels the wackos and pedophiles.

Why can't they just let their daughters be kids.  They will grow up all to fast.

This kind of pageantry is just plain disgusting.

Janet

I know who you're talking about, but those aren't the people the article is talking about.  There's a HUGE difference between moms who dress their kids up for *actual* pageants, and kids who dress up on their own, with or *without* parental encouragement.

It's also very easy to say, 'Oh, I wouldn't let *my* 10 year old do that', but as an ex-10 year old I can attest that this is nowhere as easy to do as it is to say :P


edit: oh, and 'this kind of thing' has nothing to do with fueling pedophiles -- seing a 10 year old dress up sexy is not going to make someone do something they weren't already likely to do anyway, but that's really a whole other debate for a different support forum.

I don't get it... I watched shows like Saved by the Bell & Beverly Hills 90210 at ages 8-10, and never became obsessed like that.

SD

Well hard to beat the original, the Temps were in a class all by themselves, but the L&R version was cool, and the Tina Turner version is world class too.


I don't get it... I watched shows like Saved by the Bell & Beverly Hills 90210 at ages 8-10, and never became obsessed like that.

Perhaps, but also, perhaps, some might argue you became obsessed in a different way.  I never saw either one ever, so I don't know (my parents didn't have a TV in the house and not out of poverty either, and I didn't let my kids watch TV programing when they were growing up - video games and movie rentals were OK).

But I think in general that TV shows lead to: a coursing of interpersonal relationships, a degrading of culture, a lowering of IQ, and the creation of unrealistic expectations.  As Nichole once very wisely said: I have a sewer line running out of my house to take the garbage away, why should I have one running in.  (or words to that effect)

I'm not wholly opposed to TV (watching some right now as a matter of fact), but most of it is junk.  If TV is still around if/when I have kids, I'll decide what they watch (or at least attempt to :P).

"The model Jordan is Georgie's absolute idol, and she tells me and her father that as soon as she's 18 she's going to have breast implants so she can be just like her. She's been saving up her pocket money for the operation for the past few years."

Yuck. Why would Jordan be anyone's hero?

"During the 7 June 2001, British General Election, Jordan ran as a candidate in Stretford and Urmston under her real name using the slogan: 'For a Bigger and Betta Future'. As part of her election campaign, which was intended to bring a little fun into a dull election, she promised free breast implants, increases on nudist beaches, and a ban on parking tickets.[11] In the end, Jordan won 713 votes,[12] 1.8% of the votes cast."

"In 2006 Price signed a £300,000 advance with Random House for Katie Price's Perfectly Plastic Poppadoms, a series of children's books, with the first 6 released in 2007. As part of the deal, Price has received an unprecedented guarantee that Random House will pay for any and all future breast augmentations."

On the plus side Jordan is a pretty canny kind of person when it comes to raising money both for herself and for charity.

I bet the girl will grow out of it.

You know, I was about to bite on the topic, but I think the "glam" clothing and the mention of boob jobs might be obscuring the larger issue.

Children (and adults for that matter) tend to pay attention to the ideas presented to them.  If they see their parents and peers dress a certain way, they tend to dress in that way.  If they hear their parents or peers talk about a certain topic (whether it's advocacy or contempt), they will pay attention to that topic (and may either accept, reject, or qualify that viewpoint).  Since people tend to not do things they have not paid any or much attention to, the simple acknowledgement that the issue exists (including through the censorship of said issue) risks encouraging the person doing the said thing.

The interests these particular girls is fairly consistent with this idea.  The women (adults, including their mothers) and girls (peers) in their lives tend to have focus on glamorous clothing, boob jobs (partly attributible to wealth), and body weight, and so it shouldn't be a surprise that these children think in this way.  However, if you look at girls in general, there is growing tendency for them to desire "sexy" clothes and obsess about their body weight, but you can see that parents and other adults act in kind.

Once you strip the "celebrity" out of the story, the people are dealing with a fairly mainstream issue.  Many women of all ranks commit these same sins (and many men reinforce them), and they have a tendency to dress up young daughters in ways that are still "girly" (even if not necessarily "sexy girly").  If adults want to see a change in behavior, they can do a bit of good by evaluating how they conduct themselves and how they interact with their children.

Well from what I read, not all the mothers were encouraging the daughters -- the kernel of the story is about how the girls are 10 years old as opposed to say 13 or 14.  But the root cause is the same, which is the hypersexualization of women (by both genders) and how that bleeds out from women to teens to pre-teens and so on.

Quote from: Ketsy on April 29, 2009, 05:55:18 AM
Well from what I read, not all the mothers were encouraging the daughters -- the kernel of the story is about how the girls are 10 years old as opposed to say 13 or 14.  But the root cause is the same, which is the hypersexualization of women (by both genders) and how that bleeds out from women to teens to pre-teens and so on.

Yep, couldn't agree more. Hypersexualisation of women, something women buy into for ourselves, is close to the center of this sort of thing.

Yep, I pay to have shot removed from my house so I can live comfortably, why pay to have it pumped back into my living-room so I can't live comfortably?

Commercial tv is, no doubt, the root of all evil in the world today!! Well, tv and Dick Cheney!! :laugh:

Nichole

And hey, its not just the TV, this entire article reeks of...

ISN'T IT HORRIBLE THAT 10-YEAR-OLD GIRLS ARE MANIFESTING BEING SEXUALIZED BY WANTING TO BE DRESS SEXY!

...So here are a bunch of pictures of tarted up 10-year-olds.

It boggles the mind how people want to grow up so fast

Trouble is, none of this is about being 'grown up'.  Bring an adult is about responsibility.  It's about doing the next right thing that has to be done.  So, total fail on the part of the parents here. 

I think that's the problem with the TV stuff is that it give unreal, and unrealistic goals and expectations. 

I don't want to contradict everyone, but I guess I look at this a bit differently.  :-\ Maybe it's because I don't have any kids, but I can identify with the girl's point of view better. (If I had kids though, I would hope that I wouldn't allow them to do something I thought was detrimental to them like this mother is doing.)

I wasn't allowed to wear makeup until I was 13. Other girls in my class were wearing eye shadow at 11. I don't think this girl is thinking that she's being "sexy," at least not the same way we as adults think of it. She just wants to look and feel pretty. Granted, I firmly believe the media is doing young women a disservice by bombarding them with images of the "ideal" woman, but I don't think it's any worse than it was 30 years ago when I was that age.

Little girls think "sex" is about cuddling and kissing, even if they know about the birds and the bees. Even some of us who had our innocence shattered at age 10 didn't equate looking "sexy" with wanting to be pretty. Sexy is an adult concept.

In that photo the girl doesn't look like she's even trying to be sexy. I just see her as wanting to look pretty and even grown up the same way I did when I was her age. It does bother me that she's already thinking about breast augmentation before she's had a chance to develop her own, but I'm betting she'll grow out of that idea.

Some of the stuff is disturbing, like the desire for breast augmentation and the mother who offerred her daughter a tummy-tuck, but most of the girls were just interested in fashion, it sounds like.  Older perceive this in their own perverted ways, but it mostly seems to be a combination of fitting in with their peers and dressing in a way they think looks nice.  There are some body image issues thrown in sometimes, but that is nothing new.

In that photo the girl doesn't look like she's even trying to be sexy.

PedoBear thinks you need a dose of reality.

Quote from: Mr. Fox on April 29, 2009, 04:37:16 PM
Some of the stuff is disturbing, like the desire for breast augmentation and the mother who offerred her daughter a tummy-tuck

I had sympathy for that girl -- if I'd had surgery as a child that left me deformed I'd damn well want my parents to pay to have it fixed.


I do think it is odd that the cautionary tone of the article was accompanied by the glam pictures of the kids.  The least they could do was pair each of the glam photos with an everyday picture, maybe the kid and the mom, to get some idea of how much effort they put into it, rather than just focus on the result.

Your missing the point by a distance of at least between NYC and Land's End in SF.

Quote from: tekla on April 29, 2009, 08:36:55 PM
Your missing the point by a distance of at least between NYC and Land's End in SF.

Then please enlighten me oh enlightened one.

If I hazard an attempt to sythesize some points made, I get this result:

To the girls, they tend to see themselves as looking good.
To (many) adults who see these kids, they see the girls as dressing sexy.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.  They can both be true.

There is one point I have read a lot, and this concerns the second group:

"The girls should do more to protect their virtue."  The way girls dress may "send messages," but the ways they interact with other people is much more relevant.  Plenty of plain-looking girls get knocked up, too.  Self-respect and self-esteem go a long way.

There is a counterpoint to make with respect to the first group:

"The boys (and pedo bears) need to take responsibility for their actions."

Just like TGs don't want bigots bullying them, discriminating against them, imposing on them, or telling them how to act, girls are entitled to enjoy reasonable freedom of expression without facing harassment.  It's unlikely they can typically enjoy these liberties, but that doesn't change what they should have.

With that idea in mind, I don't disapprove (at least anymore) of the girls' clothing choices (although body-image insecurities ought to be addressed by family and the appropriate medical professionals, just because people need to have realistic and appropriate goals for themselves).  I do agree with Tekla's assertion of the article's hypocrisy (seeing a "problem" and then feeding it via pictures), and I would be happy to ride that point into the ground.  But then, maybe I liked South Park's Jonas Brothers episode too much.

As an extra anecdote, out of a UN survey of 21 major developed countries, the US ranked 20th in terms of how it treats its children.  Who was 21st?  The UK, the country of origin for this article.

Quote from: Kaelin on April 29, 2009, 11:12:00 PM
If I hazard an attempt to sythesize some points made, I get this result:

To the girls, they tend to see themselves as looking good.
To (many) adults who see these kids, they see the girls as dressing sexy.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.  They can both be true.

There is one point I have read a lot, and this concerns the second group:

"The girls should do more to protect their virtue."  The way girls dress may "send messages," but the ways they interact with other people is much more relevant.  Plenty of plain-looking girls get knocked up, too.  Self-respect and self-esteem go a long way.

There is a counterpoint to make with respect to the first group:

"The boys (and pedo bears) need to take responsibility for their actions."

Just like TGs don't want bigots bullying them, discriminating against them, imposing on them, or telling them how to act, girls are entitled to enjoy reasonable freedom of expression without facing harassment.  It's unlikely they can typically enjoy these liberties, but that doesn't change what they should have.

Exactly! Thanks for putting this so well.  :icon_yes:

Yes, thank you -- I agree completely.

I'm glad somebody here could eloquently state my opinion.

I just don't see the extreme outrage in this. Raising the alarm that the decline and fall of Western Civilization is at hand because of what those wayward females are up to these days is not new. I honestly don't get all the anguished reactions that the sky is falling. All I see is girls liking to dress up. Far as I know, it's always been this way. The pictures and text in that article are not extreme at all. Starr is right, they're just being girls, big deal.

I'm sorry to have to point this out, but Starr is someone who actually was brought up as a girl at that age, and experienced what it was like, so I think her perspective on girlhood carries some weight. I grew up in the company of four sisters so, at least vicariously, this aspect of girlhood is not strange to me either, and that was way back in the 1960s and '70s. I dressed up in my Mom's outfits along with my sisters back then. I remember media pushing the panic button back then too-- ZOMG horrifying revelation, girls like to dress up, what's the world coming to!

Sorry, I just do not get the overreactions here. I could understand it if this was a forum of one of those fundamentalist churches that don't allow women to wear makeup or anything stylish. But in terms of society in general, I see nothing alarming. Just girls being girls.

As a woman of trans history who also likes to be pretty, I've faced plenty of negative reactions from many in my tribe, a constant barrage of femmephobia. The tribe is quick to jump on any of us who like to be pretty, accusing us of being fetishists, phonies, not really trans, autogynephilic, a disgrace to the rest of us, etc. The peer pressure in the community not to admit that one likes to be pretty has been intense, and from my somewhat wounded perspective I'm wondering if perhaps the outrage in this thread comes from a not entirely dissimilar sort of femmephobic attitude.

I don't not think it is accurate to think of "society in general" as a homogenous entity that is heavily disjoint from "those fundamentalist churches that don't allow women to wear makeup for anything stylish."  Ideology falls along a multi-dimensional continuum, and girls' rights (not entirely equivalent to women's rights, since it adds age as a factor) are not universally understood, especially since it is not a matter maturely discussed in US politics (if anything, "moral leaders" and politicians tend to sell kids' intentions and judgment short); plenty of people steer clear of the "fundamental" group but still seek to regulate expression to a substantial degree.

Those of us here can try to fill the holes on our own based on needing to be consistent with our beliefs, but a lot can be overlooked when we haven't been in a particular social position of lesser influence.  MtFs can have an idea of what it is to be a woman, and they may go through certain things that teenage girls go through (growing boobs, dressing with a particular style or level of experience), but they often haven't been harassed by teenage peers who see them as girls or lorded over by (over)protective parents while presenting the female gender.  Other social factors (again, economic class, race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc) present their own issues that we have to do our best to understand, but we can't do it on our own.

Since Susan's is a TG-oriented site, is pretty easy for this community to pat each other on the back for accepting Trans-issues (although even that can fall to the wayside at times), because that acceptance is generally why we remain here.  A feminism orientation, however, can't be considered "automatic," nor can we assume certain attitudes regarding race/ethnicity, economic class, religion, etc.

In defense of the early tone of the thread, the (trashy) article presents an emotionally-charged title with the mention of diets and boob jobs; these concepts do point to self-esteem and body-image issues that women but girls especially should not need to endure (it's not "girls being girls").  Toss in an initial post that does not make a clear dead-on point, and groupthink can spill over into other sub-topics (dressing and manicures, actions which are more playful), at least until someone with a strong contrasting take comes around.  To the point, the initial flood dried up for the most part once Starr offered her experience, so I think she did a damn good job of making herself heard and understood.

This is pretty sad..(the article and everything)

'The model Jordan is Georgie's absolute idol, and she tells me and her father that as soon as she's 18 she's going to have breast implants so she can be just like her. She's been saving up her pocket money for the operation for the past few years'

*Facepalm*