to think 14 year old don;t have 'womanly curves'

[gordyslovesheep]

followed a link from here to DM and came across this and seriously just wanted to bang my head against a wall

I have not read the article but 14 year olds are not children. She is on the cusp of womanhood. There seems a tend these days that seems to want to view young adults as children happy to play with their dolls and climb trees without a sexual though in their heads.

I was a tomboy at 14, wore jeans and hoodies (still do) but i also had the body of a woman and was beginning to explore my sexuality. I didn't view myself as a child even though i was not quite an adult. i was infact somewhere inbetween as is this young woman.

The term "womanly curves" sounds archaic, about as archaic as the DM's attitude towards women.

Agreed - it's the tone of the article. "Flesh was on show"/ "flaunt her curves"/ "figure-hugging" - all entirely inappropriate when referring to an underage girl. The by-line is a female name, but it doesn't read as if it's written by a woman at all.

And this bit - "Her costume was particularly poignant in the wake of the devastating Superstorm Sandy." WTAF??

Cantspel - no one is disputing that many 14 year olds, and younger, are young women, it just doesn't seem ok to comment on it. It's the equivalent of a pervy uncle at a family party leering at a 14 year old and saying something like "You're coming along nicely aren't you love?"

Yermaw/ cantspel - you're missing my point and the point that others have been trying to make. No one is denying that at 14 many young girls will have curves - I certainly did at that age.

What's depressing about that DM article is the hypocrisy and inappropriateness of the article.

You're totally missing the point Cantspel and Yermaw.
I don't have a daughter, I have a teenage boy. His female friends are, as is perfectly normal, curving out in all the right direction and have been doing so since they were 12/13/14, (they're all 16 and 17 now, ds's age).
It's called puberty.
But the thought of these sweet and silly teens being perved over in a newspaper makes me sick.

I don't think she looks like a woman. I used to think i had "womanly curves" at 14 and yes i had 32DD boobs and hips but in hindsight i was a more mini version of my full grown self now.

Well - some girls have very womanly figures and some want to dress much older. They should be able to do this without being perved at by unkown males so the article is 'wrong' in how its dealt with the subject matter.

Also yes its a bit weird and agree its like the weird uncle who makes comments about "how your growing nicely" just odd! no one is disputing the girl is going through puberty but it is weird. I wouldn't talk about a kid like that.

I'm not one for feminist hackles as anyone who has encountered me on the few feminist threads I have ventured onto will know, but this is just horrid! Lots of 14 year olds have, "womanly curves" and both my own dds were far more, "womanly" than this at that age. But to call attention to them is just sleazy imo. She has a very young face and the incongruity of the 11/12 year old face and the 25 year old way of dressing makes me uncomfortable. Much prefer her in the other photo at the film. There she looks exactly what she is, a very pretty girl.

Is the OP objecting to the term or the article though? or both?.

I would imagine the article in the main YerMaw.
Though WTF uses the term 'womanly curves' these days except some sleazoid tabloid?

Yes I agree op it's overly leery and nasty.

Of course most 14 year olds have curves but for a newspaper to point it out like this is yeukky...

I have stated 3 times at least yermaw that I object to the article

I can kind of see where you're going with this, OP. A male goes from being a boy to a man and there is no reference to his physique whatsoever until he becomes a man... with girls it's different. It shouldn't be, but it is.

There will always be people who leer; sometimes they're in the same family. Not nice at all but people do seem to keep supporting the DM.

One thing I want to say about the Jimmy Saville thing though... where were the doting and observant parents of these teen girls when all this was happening? He was a disgusting, vile, pervert... but what jumped out at me from the footage was him with his arms around girls - and their mothers smiling benignly on... such a shame that he's dead and was so adulated during his lifetime and will never have known how much he is now despised.

I have the same figure and height now that I had at 13. But I was a 13 year old. Obviously.

Can anyone imagine a similar DM article about a 14 year old boy, highlighting how his clothes hug his developing body & which bits of his skin are on display? With lots of helpfully captioned pictures?

14 year olds really do not need their bodies scrutinised by the gutter press.

They've changed the headline now anyway.

tabloid-watch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/mailonline-and-womanly-curves-on-14yo.html

Yes I agree with you OP.

It's just another example of the sort of non-story the Daily Fail publishes just so they can accompany it with a pic of a nubile young woman. It's a bit sleazy considering the older demographic that read it but not outrageous.

Oh thank goodness you said that, Joanbias, I've read and reread and couldn't understand what everyone was talking about. Maybe the Daily Mail are watching us...

New Statesman article about this

YANBU. No one is disputing 14 year olds can have 'womanly figures' but the whole tone of the article is like over hearing the conversation between two dirty old men. Vile. I particularly dislike the description 'the blonde'.The fact that so many of you have commented on the literal meaning of whether a girl can have a womanly figure or not and totally miss the sentiment of this excuse of an article, speaks volumes about how we accept the way in which women are treated in our society. Just change the words to the male equivalent - you would never see it.