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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

“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?

Older people have moaned about teenagers for generations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

I agree with you

At 12 I had one Boots 17 eyeliner which is used to make panda eyes and colour my brows black 😂 I used to ask my mum for her old makeup, but she kept it until it was all dried up so pointless.

I actually think social media is one of the worst things to happen to us, for many, many reasons.

I had to sit down with my daughter when she was 8 years old as she was developing a bit of a 'I'm not in to wearing dresses or anything girly, but they are - urgh, I'm so cool and different' attitude towards some things and I wanted to put a stop to it straight away.

Reading some of the posts on here it would seem like there's some adults who could do with this chat too.

Indeed.

@CarryOnCharon it was ever thus.

Teenagers have been accused of liking the wrong things, dressing the wrong way, listening to the wrong music and prioritising the wrong things forever.

The 12 year olds now will be complaining about the same things with their children in 20 years.

We had to contend with that too, girls rejecting any kind of natural femininity. It was disturbing and toxic.

My 12 year old is into some brand, make up etc. she’s also reasonable intelligent. It’s not something I see as a problem and yes I do parent my 12 year old, I just don’t mind what she spends her pocket and birthday money on. I have drawn the line at her piercing requests tho!

she’s also reasonably intelligent, pretty good at sport and a very kind, sweet girl!

I read something the other day saying all these unnecessary chemicals and lotions obviously get absorbed into our skin, and effect hormone levels, endocrine system etc. eg high levels of vitamin a? Or e? I forget which, but it builds up in unsafe levels in the liver and it is not good. I'm mt opinion, not something children should be using, plus the acid face products, are they even using sun screen?! Like vaping, I wonder what the future health issues will be.

Another problem is that the children are victims of mass advertising. Much more sinister than the old days, now they have the sense of inadequacy and endless prompts to buy buy buy being piped into their own rooms via smartphones every day.

But it's not just some glossy make up laboratory TV advert now, it's "real" influencers (an oxymoron, I know) who are fostering this ersatz relationship with younger people just to flog the crappy overpriced chemical laden products.

Agree. I was into make up (rimmel and boots 17) aged 10, lasted til mid 20s by which time I was buying expensive brands. I'm not vacuous and I couldn't give a hoot about that stuff now.

I think social media has professionalised everything and given people knowledge of expensive brands younger. Also some people are happy to spend £££ on their dc. A generation raised on cheap credit think nothing of buying expensive cream for a 9yo or expensive trainers for a teen or buying latest iPhone for a child.

When mine were teenagers, I just used to say “sorry we don’t have the money to buy that, if you really want it you’ll need to save up, or put on birthday/xmas list.
My two DDs are now adults and thankfully don't care about labels etc and think some of their friends/workmates are mad for spending what they do on labels/brands.

Better then to develop critical thinking skills early in life so children are able to protect themselves, given we are not going to successfully eliminate these challenges - as much as we might like to.

Developing interests in sports, the arts, history and music will also diminish the influence of SM.

You've just made me laugh at a memory.

Back in the 90s I was desperate for Calvin Klein knickers - the ones with Calvin Klein emblazoned on the waist band
Of course my parents refused to buy them, stating they were a waste of money and I didn't need them.

I saved up my pocket money and bought 1 pair for £5, because that's all I could afford.

I was so happy.

My parents found out and hit the roof.
My mum kept bleating on about the waste of money and I could have got 5 pairs of knickers for £1 in Tesco. 😁

I think my point is every generation is sucked in by advertising to buy crap they don't need.
For me, it was magazines, billboards, tv.
For this generation it is tik tok, influencers and social media.
The medium may have changed, but the message is still the same.