To hate the vacuousness of some young girls nowadays?

Do 12 year olds play anymore? Like imaginative play? When I was around that age I used to play dress up with old clothes from a trunk and we’d pretend to be fairies and witches etc and put on plays and dances. Is this still a thing with kids aged 8 to 12 or is that all over much younger now. Genuinely curious as mine are still little.

I think there have always been vacuous young girls. It’s just that they are more noticeable than the sensible ones. Empty vessels make most noise…

I think it’s just a right of passage I remember the popper addidas trouser, the specific Nike trainers and spiffy jumpers that everyone just had to have. Not to mention the Ugg boots or the Sun in. The “what” the money is spent on has just changed, although I have seen the poppers are back in fashion 😂

I think as parents it’s about keeping them grounded and individual enough through this passage.

My DD is 12 and is interested in looking after herself, but she doesn’t faff around before school or anything, she still loves her footie and books so I think fair play it’s her pocket money she can spend it how she likes within reason. Although I do know the 12 year olds that you are referring to. They all look like they are wearing a uniform.

If there are some vacuous young girls around, there are even more vacuous women who look like Barbie dolls with tattooed eyebrows, lifeboat lips and ridiculously long eyelashes. That’s celebrity obsession for you. It’s so refreshing to see natural looking young women.

Twas ever thus. Just the objects of desire change

I don’t hate them. I feel sorry for them. Social media should have opened a world of different ways to be a woman. It should be a window into millions of lives and sub-cultures. It should be liberating. But instead it presents a very narrow ideal. One or two aesthetics. And conforming costs money.

Teenage boys and girls have always exhibited shallow behaviour, but in my day - when rainbows were black and white - that shallowness took many forms and it was joyful. Now, it seems like a prison.

I believe it creates gender dysphoria. I’m fine with gender identity not being taught in schools but I wish gender expression was… Celebrating all the many ways to be a girl or a boy. A digression.

So no. I don’t hate them. I pity them.

It’s always been a thing, OP - it’s just more visible since the mass access to social media.

When I was a teen, in the early 00’s, it was all about which flavour lip smacker you had, whether you ironed your hair for school, had the latest Benefit mascara etc etc. We idolised Britney and Paris and tried to emulate their look.

My family were churchgoers so it didn’t go down that well. Didn’t stop me from being ‘vacuous’ as you put it. Also didn’t stop me getting two degrees and a masters ✌🏼

I’m 33 and there were 100% girls like this at
my school when I was a teenager!!

I can beat that! My mum wore one of those hooped short skirts that were all the rage for a short time in the late 1950s to church one sunday. I guess my grandmother didn't go that day... Anyway, the vicar had a new topic to rage about from the pulpit that day. 😂

Op hasn't been back. Let's hope she's feeling less grumpy today.

I'm loving all the posts with today's doctors and other successful professionals having been 'vacuous' teens obsessed with make up, being popular and boys.

I hope you're right.

It isn’t normal in my world. By the time they are old enough the trout pout will be well out of fashion. Boob jobs are less common these days than they were a few years ago it seems?

They're being exposed to the normality of it.

of course you were? it didn't bloody exist.

You know that is not even remotely similar right?

Are 12 year olds being surgically enhanced, @BigAnne ?

Yes, but we weren't being surgically enhanced.

from OPs post-'12 year olds obsessed by beauty brands, TikTok, doing their hair for school, fake tan, ridiculously short school skirts, it all seems so sad. And they are clones. Room in their heads only for brands'

okay let's take the time machine to 1977, substitute tv for tiktok and baby oil instead of sunscreen for the very necessary suntan in summer months for the fake tans. Literally everything else is the same except OP left off 'get dolled up and walk past home of boy I have crush on over and over until he hopefully emerges to notice how gorgeous I am and marries me, I've been practicing writing my married name signature'

Times change but people don't and teen girls will always be vapid and overly focused on looks and superficial shit. Let them do that, adulthood will be hard and they need to enjoy the transition from childhood to adulthood.

My daughter is 16, doesn’t do any of those things. Doesn’t wear makeup, used skincare but not expensive. She’s not one to follow the crowds if she doesn’t want to and I’m glad

I’m a relatively smart woman who adores makeup and perfume, we’re out there and we aren’t vacuous.

This. Remember the emos? They would say "You hate me because I'm different, I hate your because you're all the same". Yet they all looked the same as each other.
The individuals with purple hair that looks like it's been cut with a hedge trimmer (no doubt with a special gender announcement incoming) are the current times' version of emos.

It’s sad really. ☹️

You nailed it.

I get what the OP is saying.... having worked in secondary schools and listened to a LOT of girls endlessly obsessing over the way they look, what they're wearing and what other people think of them, it can seem quite depressing - ESPECIALLY when they'd rather piss about surreptitiously using their phones in class to watch make-up tutorials and get VERY annoyed when prevented from doing so, ruining the learning experience of other students in the process (an all-too-regular occurrence in several of the schools I've been in).

I, too, know it isn't ALL girls. However, when you've got 18 year olds getting botox and lip fillers something's gone very fucking awry with the beauty business and the amount of influence it wields.

Also, ALL of us - girls AND women - need to stop putting shit on our faces and into our bodies that contain harmful chemicals. I'd love to see MORE young girls and women demanding more natural alternatives in this respect. If we're gonna get 'obsessed' over anything, it would serve us well if it were rooted in what the beauty business can do for US and not what we can do for THEM by simply giving up our money to make corporations richer and handing them the control to stick any old shit in the products we use.