To hate the vacuousness of some young girls nowadays?

[CarryOnCharon]

I find it so sad. 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

i know this is not all of them.

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.

😂😂😂

💯

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.

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.

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.

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 😆

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.

None of this is remotely nee op. 😎

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.

I'd agree with this wholeheartedly!

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sophora girls

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.

100% this.

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.

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.