Chelsea Morganelli
ENG 199-003
Professor Santos
2/27/15
Blog post 5
In the world today, it seems that young girls are growing
up faster than they should be. During the summer I work at a camp and I have
seen these young girls chasing after boys and calling them their boyfriends. It’s
cute when they have a crush and then forget about it five minutes later and go
play. But it seems to take up all their time and energy to get this boy to like
them. They obsess over how they look and all about what the boy is doing
instead of enjoying their childhood. These kinds of pressures are already
hitting girls at this young age.
This thought came to me in class during the discussion of
chapter “Sex “R” Us” in Douglas’s book. Douglas writes about young girls in pageants
that are dressing up like grown women and wearing a ton of makeup. Mothers at
these pageants are encouraging their daughters to look and act grown up in a
competitive way. This is clearly unhealthy for them and Douglas states, “Child
psychologists who denounced the emphasis on looking good and pleasing others as
unhealthy for girls” (Douglas, 159). These young girls are already feeling the pressure
to look like adults. The television show Toddlers
and Tiaras is a great example of the kind of pageants I am discussing. In the
show, young girls parade around on stage with a face full of makeup and a
glittery outfit on competing to win the pageant. The little girls in pageants
may now have it in their head that they must compete with other girls to get
what they want. They now think that they have to look a certain way because their
mothers or pageant coaches are telling them they have to.
I remember when I was that age; I couldn’t care less about
what I looked like. Maybe once in a while when I was shopping with my mom I would
find a shirt I liked with a dog or something on it. For the most part, I just
wanted to play with my friends and be a kid. Now, young girls are growing up
faster and want to be older than they are by dressing and acting older.
I was the same as you when i was a little girl. I feel like my childhood was spent more on enjoying time with those around me then about me worrying about what guy i liked or what i should be wearing to be considered cool or cute by everyone around me. It's kind of crazy how things for kids have changed so quickly. I agree with everything you mentioned here. Pageants have become so crazy now because parents put in their kids head that they have to be better than every other girl in order to win and its just sad that from a young age this is what little girls are taught.
ReplyDeleteI am very glad that you bring attention to this phenomenon of girls acting and looking like women. I, too, find it incredibly disturbing and even horrifying. I feel as though allowing little girls to "grow up" this way caters to the fantasies of pedophiles. I'M genuinely worried for the wellbeing of these little girls and their images being posted online like they so often are. I was never really a little girl who wanted to grow up too fast, and I find it to be a really hard concept to grasp. Over all, great post!
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