To hate the vacuousness of some young girls nowadays?

It's still not correct to place the blame squarely on 12 year olds and calling them vacuous though. It's the adult world that's feeding them the trends to rope them in. And parents should still be in control. The kids aren't operating in a vacuum. If there was internet and social media in the 80's, I'm not sure I would have been any different. I was into every trend that was available at that time. Peer pressure for teen is also a constant. The only variable is with each generation the trends and marketing strategy changes, and is getting more and more insidious. Children will only know better if parents educate them, as well as set an example, which is also a problem, because many (not all) mothers themselves cannot be pried away from social media. The problem is not the children.

So when you were a kid you sat around discussing plato?! And knitting….

I ought to add - this is a small percentage I've noticed at airports etc. All the young people I know and have had the pleasure of spending time with have been great! Yet to meet a rude or stroppy teen.

Elizabeth Bennett's two younger sisters are presented as vacuous airheads in Pride & Prejudice, this is nothing new. However, I actually see worse brand label addiction in young men. Hideous (IMO) clothes blasted with "designer" names.

I'd agree with this wholeheartedly!

I think it’s developmentally normal for teens to “try on” different identities with the use of make up and clothes.

And parents can teach them to be aware of and resist commercial pressures and not buy in to them to an excessive degree and to develop other activities that do not depend on consumerism.

None of this is remotely nee op. 😎

This is such a lovely post and I agree. Dd (15) has some fab female friends. She has also started to be closer to a few boys (just friends, not boyfriends atm) so I’ve only talked to girls up until now. My friend’s ds doesn’t talk much… I just look squelchy eyed at him because it’s him. What I’ve learned is that boys are also truly amazing. We have so much to learn from the youth if we just listen. And they have so much to learn from us. We have an amazing gift these days of being connected with teens in a way that hasn’t happened in past generations.

To be honest I agree and disagree.

15 years ago when I was a teen, I was witnessing the exact same thing! In fact the popular girls of the school would go on about how their parents bought them a mulberry bag for their birthday and they always had tan and nails done. We're put partying and drinking before their time.

I just think social media has made us more aware of this behaviour.

I do genuinely think young girls are more scantily dressed nower days though. They wear things that we would have never dared to wear back then, even the popular girls!

Also they seem hell bent on skipping the 'awkward ugly duckling phase' we all used to go through before we stared looking half decent. It seems criminal that they should miss out on such an experience 😆

Nobody’s marching atm. No one is chaining themselves to the railings. My 15 yo dd is as you describe. Not at 12 though. Some of her friends were. But she and all her friends recognised Trump for example and the ‘are you gonna build a wall’ TikTok went viral on social media. If there was some kind of marching movement, it would be out there on TikTok. But we don’t have that right now. No Greenham Common protests or marching against the poll tax etc today. The post Brexit marches etc have ceased.

As others have said, I was the same when young. It was all teen magazines, Rara skirts and lying down to zip up my jeans at 12. I had a pair of lucky star jeans. Idk if I was even 12 when I got them.

I think people are being very judgmental of these girls. My daughter is into all the skincare, makeup etc but is very academic and plays several sports to a high level. Girls have always been interested in makeup. I wouldn’t allow false nails, fake tan, skincare with harmful ingredients for young skin such as AHA, however I see no harm in her buying the Charlotte Tilbury/NARS/Rare beauty etc cosmetics out of her pocket money which she earns by doing chores.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s and went to college in the early 80s. I think of every girl or young woman I met and can say with conviction that we just never obsessed over beauty products or expensive fashions in any way. We probably spent less than £10-£20 on make up a year. Nobody had Botox or trout lips etc.

Of course there would always have been a few girls who were higher maintenance but they were rare - and I never met even one tbh. It isn’t just girls though in terms of designer clothes - boys seem to be affected by this materialism too 🤷 it just seems the early sexualisation that affects girls the most.

💯

😂😂😂

There is a new vacuousness. A new narcissism. It’s fuelled by social media. Influencers are the vanguard if you like, but it creates a ripple/coy effect. I saw a (I would guess) 10 year girl posing for her own “sexy selfies” outside a museum the other day. I think that’s sad.

Why did you never suggest that they name one of their sprays "Insteadofshower" because I guarantee that their sales would have been even higher, all bought by parents of teenage lads who had accepted the inevitable!

My favourite line about teenage "individuality" is from Phineas and Ferb.

For those not in the know, it is a Disney channel cartoon that is very very funny and on the nose with some many things. Also one of the voice actors is Richard O'Brian so worth it just for that.

Candace, the teen sister of the two main characters, goes to their mum and says "Mom!! Can I get a pink streak in my hair"
"No! Why would you want to do that?!"
"To assert my individuality......everyone is doing it!"

So right!
My mum still laughs at how her and her friends would roll up the waist bands of their school skirts to make them shorter in the 60's and then my friends and I would do the same in the 80's and you see girls in short skirts now. So nothing new there! Same with "sneaking" makeup or pushing the rules about hair. Twas ever thus.

We all wanted to be different and so ended up looking exactly the same.

It’s depressing to me how much money the teenage girls in my family waste on high tech skin care they do not in any way need just because it’s the ‘in’ product. It is quite literally money down the drain.

Yep 😆 I wrote papers on this - tribalism in youth culture. It's incredible how specific it has to be (and how fast it changes). As part of developing your identity, you must develop a look and persona that expresses your unique self ... and surround yourself with people having the same unique self and appearance, sharing your unique tastes in music, literature and entertainment, etc. Then you can all go around together, looking down on people who aren't as uniquely individual as you are (collectively) 😂

It's psychologically and anthropologically interesting. However, I was doing this to help brands market their wares to young opinion formers. One of my clients has had breathtaking success in this market - sorry, folks, but I'm part of the reason why Lynx was such a massive hit with young men!

kids that age of both genders are equally vacuous just obsessed with different things.

before social media and the current lack of outdoor play for many children things were certainly better.

This is a horrible thread. Picking on 12 year old girls for enjoying social media and following a few harmless trends. The teenage girls I know all work bloody hard at school, deal with a lot of peer pressure and feel huge demand to succeed in their exams and go to college/uni. They understand that the internet is full of weirdos trying to get them to send nude pictures of themselves and most boys their age are not worth their time. They're clever, kind, selfless kids who just want to express themselves with hair, make up and clothes like I did in the 80s and my mum did in the 60s. Vacuous indeed.

YANBU. My daughter is still only little and has a such a sweet and innocent way about her. I hope she doesn’t become a self-taking phone-addict and am hoping to delay her getting a smart phone for as long as possible. I think they can be really damaging.

The older ladies in town would slag off Anne of Green gables and her mates for their obsession with calico dresses and ribbons. It’s the same.

Same here, boys, fashion, makeup. I had my first kiss aged 10.

When I started secondary school aged 11 I wore makeup every day. Just put it on at the bus stop and wiped it off on the way home. My mum gave up and allowed me aged 12.

We were all into the Body shop lip balms/perfume etc. Not exactly drunk elephant but this was back in '94.