To hate the vacuousness of some young girls nowadays?

I agree with you

There’s hundreds of threads on here putting down gaming, either stressing about the amount of time DC are gaming, or people slagging off adults who game.

I too hate the waste of money on expensive cosmetic products by kids that don’t need them. My DD recently spent £12 on a teeny-tiny liquid blusher from SpaceNK. She’s 12. I’m not bothered about the make-up, I wouldn’t have cared if she bought a £4 one from Maybelline, but it’s the fact that the advertisers have sucked her into believing it’s worth it. She only gets £3 a week pocket money! I feel they’re being taken advantage of.

You are delusional if you think there wasn't a pressure on young girls to look a certain way 20-30 years ago. I grew up in the era of Baywatch and blonde hair, large boobs and tanned skin was where it was at and we used to wear push up bras, use sun in which fried our hair and the very limited orange fake tans that were available then.

Then there was the Sun newspaper with page 3 girls, wet t shirt competitions, and 90s supermodels who were literally everywhere, there was the wonder bra advert with Eva Herzigova with the tag line "hello boys". Back then, being thin was everything, there wasn't the range of body types there is now and if you had an ample bum you'd get ridiculed for it - "does my bum look big in this?" was a classic phrase. Beauty standards back then were all thin, white, caucasian women with straight hair. Sexual harassment at work was not considered wrong and work culture meant women were regularly harassed, denigrated and minimised down to how they looked rather than what they were actually capable of. Yes, some things have changed for the worse but many things have also changed for the better- you probably cant see it because it didnt affect you personally at the time.

It’s true though isn’t it? Our leisure and beauty spending is absolutely through the roof compared to years ago. I think buying a property is very hard now even with scrimping and saving but you’re not going to help yourself chucking away £50 on a tiny pot of moisturiser or whatever. That would’ve been seen as insane by the older generations in my family, and totally frivolous. Up to them yes, but if you regularly spend money on overpriced unimportant items you can’t be surprised when you have less cash for the important ones.

Same goes for the bloody nails, whenever I see somebody on TV complaining about being skint they always have the £35 acrylics!

In 1990 I would have done a week's shopping for £17.50 to feed two people! No way would I have spent more than £3 on a skin cream back then.

My DD was like that a bit - without the short skirts thankfully - it's kind of a crash course in all of the knowledge they need (or think they need) as young women. DD is now sixteen and still wears make up, although it's very subtle, and is much more interested in the world around her and her school work - thankfully.
DD is brilliant at make up and blowdrying now, and dresses really well, she even gives her old mum some help every now and then which I'm pathetically grateful for.

That’s clearly what she meant, although you can nitpick. Unless she’s suggesting by some genetic twist everyone born after 2004 is thicker and more vacuous by personality than the people who came before, she’s clearly talking about the general culture and the effect it’s having on them.

I do think it’s pointless to pretend that society hasn’t changed since we were young - the internet and social media is creating more pressure on girls re:their appearance, and peer pressure and judgement follows you home now - they can’t get away from it. Where I take issue with the OP is imputing their problem to the children and their « vacuousness » . It is the vacuous culture we have created for them they are responding to. Perhaps it’s our job as parents to help them navigate it.

Older people have moaned about teenagers for generations

“I do think it's sad that such young girls now are so bothered about trends and brands. They need time to develop their own style, and it's horrible that they feel the need to waste their money on commercial crap when they might need to get on the housing market etc.....”

blimey - that’s a giant leap from a young girl wanting a cleansing balm to one day not being able to make it on the housing market….,

Is that any different from a boy wanting a £40 gaming card?? But no one is worried about him are they?

I think you have your rose tinted specs on. I remember being a teen in the 90s and we were all obsessed with hair, makeup, and fashion - revlon skin lights, Maxfactor 2000 calorie mascara, MAC lip pencil in spice, Salon selectives and sun silk shampoo, body shop henna hair dye powder, and the highlight of our week was getting a new top from new look. We all plucked our eyebrows thin like Gwen Stefani and wore daisy clips in our hair and wore those blocky platform shoes. I remember aged 15 going out clubbing with a fake ID and hot pants up to my arse cheeks, it was the highlight of my week and at the time was literally all I cared about and I thought I was so cool. Our main topic of conversation back then was what happened on "The Word" that week and Buffy the vampire slayer.

I loved it all. I still managed to go on to get two degrees, start my own business, and I still read every day of my life on a range of subjects through from philosophy, quantum physics to psychology. I am not shallow. I am a very deep thinker but as a teen, my main interests were beauty and fashion. It's normal- it's a development stage where you are finding out about the world and discovering your place in it. Yes, the world has changed in the way those things are now presented to young people but it doesnt make them any more vacuous than previous generations. There will always be people in life who are shallow and have the emotional depth of a puddle. Those people would have been exactly the same if they had been born in the 70s. They wouldnt have suddenly become Nietzsche just because they were born 30 years earlier.

The comment on short skirts or enjoying make up is misplaced, it has always been a thing - I had a hefty collection of eyeliners/eyeshadows and fishnets and am in a highly specialised profession, the “clueless” matching outfit/lipgloss/fake tan types at school are now largely doctors and lawyers so I think referring to any of us as vacuous is a stretch. Wanting to fit in is entirely normal at that age, as is wanting to experiment (for the record the green hair was a mistake), developing good personal care habits shouldn’t be discouraged.

I’m more concerned at wholly inappropriate products being marketed at pre teens and very young teens by feckless tiktok and IG ‘stars’ and it seeming to be very difficult to regulate.

“But I NEED it” whines the 10 year old in boots clutching a bottle of retinol serum and a glycolic acid peel. Mum is trying to reason that it’s not suitable. 10 year olds friend goes and buys it anyway.

This has nothing to do with being “vacuous”, it’s about irresponsible marketing on apps that aren’t applying age restrictions and for products that don’t have age restrictions.

Blame society and the media not the impressionable children. They are not “vacuous” they are a product of societal expectations and pressure.

It's always been like this the only difference now is kids are actually amazing at applying makeup and know how to do things like contouring as years ago you would go to school with an orange face and white neck

Also, a £50 skin cream today would be equivalent of about a £17.50 one in 1990 - doesn't seem too far off the mark?

But why does it matter where they heard about a campaign that they then go on to care about? I was
born in the 80s/teen in the late 90s/2000s. No TikTok, only dial up internet and teen girl magazines. Couldn’t afford the brands then so tried to emulate them.

The information I gleaned from J17 etc is not much different (probably worse in fact…) than the stuff my 16 year old daughter gets from TikTok. She likes clothes, make up taking care of herself and all that. Not sure she’s ever spent £50 on a moisturiser mind you. To look at her out and about with her friends who are the same you’d think they’re all clones and vapid and boring. They’re really not. All are lovely, ambitious and intelligent people.

Loving the nostalgia on this thread (may have missed several points - what can I say, it brought back my teen vacuousness!)

I have very clear memories of:

1. begging my mother for a hair crimper in the 1980s. Was told it would ruin my hair. She was right, but that wasn't the point!

2. obsessing over the Boots / Argos catalogues for both a mannequin make up head, and an eye shadow palette with EVERY colour. Did not receive.

3. begging for the right brand of wellies (what can I say, it was a definite thing at my school!) GOT A PAIR OF GREEN HUNTERS! Best mother ever!!!!

4. Saturdays hanging around the shopping centre, splitting our time between Boots, the Body Shop, the weird place that smelt of incense cones and sold weird jewelry on black cords, and HMV. It was mostly the Body Shop.

5. dying my hair with hint of a tint. It went pink.

6. friends and me obsessing over YSL make up, ckOne perfume, Louis Vuitton handbags, Armani jeans, Jane Norman (for the carrier bag mainly I recall), Morgan - yep, we were utterly label obsessed, sold to by the editors of J17 and More and their ad revenue.

7. oh! Clothes Show Live at the NEC!!!

We emulated teen pop stars, wore our trousers indecently low, our black wonderbras under white shirts, our heels 6" high at a minimum, and some got piercings / tattoos that they deeply regretted later in life. We drank far too young and far too much, we learned that we should have great orgasms (just as soon as we could find someone who wasn't a spotty teen to shag) and survived heroin chic without shooting up.

We turned out ok, counting 2 doctors, a CEO of a multinational, a lawyer, a prize winning journalist, a venture capitalist, and a university dean amongst our crowd. The kids are alright.

100% this.

Also when I was 13 I was obsessed with having Impulse body spray and twilight teaser lipstick, purely became my friends had it. Same thing with less access to funds and no social media.

Sophora girls

This is such a mean thread. Guess what OP, young women can be into make up and clothes and still have an interest in many other things. When I was 13 I used to love everything you’ve listed too.

DS is crazily into cars and football and wears a team football shirt when he’s not at school. Would that be considered vacuous by you too?

this is MN and it’s worse. 13 year old girls have enough to deal with without being judged on their looks and clothing choices.

Normal adolescent behaviour. grew up in the 1990s and we were the exact same, thankfully without the fake tan and social media, but make up (cheap rubbish), short skirts, permed hair, brand names, ridiculous trends, cigarettes, alcohol, some illegal substances, all featured. My 18 year old is much more mature and settled (and stylish!) than I was.

At 17 they change. And will be horrified by the pompa lumpa look

they’re kids. They’re responding to the culture we’ve created for them. If you don’t like it, blame yourself, not them.
i didn’t let my DD have social media at that age. I was virtually alone in that among parents of her friends. But it was the right thing to do.

There are quotes from Ancient Greek civilizations lamenting the vacuousness of the youth.

Every older generation says this, nothing new - but it's very natural for teens to be obsessed with how they look. It's a natural part of becoming an adult and trying to attract a mate/life partner etc. You were no different at that age.