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.

I think all the teen stuff has been forever thus. I find the micro shorts, crop tops and princess tags for the very young horrible.

So boys aren’t obsessed with brands then? As every teenage lad I know it’s nike or nothing including my own.

It’s the journey that they go on we were all the same as kids. Until you leave school get a job and realise that brands are expensive so you either downgrade or you Work hard to be able to still afford them. There’s always someone being down on the teens why not do better and see the best in them?

My 12 year old dd was very into all those things…now at 19 she makes a very nice little side income on social media doing make up videos that pays her way through med school.

I was pretty vacuous at that age, too. In fact I probably still am!

At age 13 (this was the 70s), I was reading James Bond books from my brother's bookshelf and making lists of all the things I'd have to do before I qualified to have sex one day. It was based on the Bond girls, so I listed things like rubbing coconut oil in my hair, using fake tan, etc. I also worried about the advice in girls' magazines, which went on about softening the skin on your elbows using lemon juice, using honey as a face mask, and other such nonsense, which now seems almost Edwardian in its quaintness.

Not sure anyone has changed much, more that marketing (esp via social media) has well and truly got its claws into everyone - and from a young age. Plus, I can't imagine the impact of online porn on what girls must think is expected of them soon.

Plus, the cosmetics counter at Boots used to be a few small display cabinets, not the entire fucking ground floor 🙄

It's fine for 12 year old to be immature and obsessed with 'vacuous' things because they're 12!
Tweets following the latest trends isn't new and it's very unpleasant to see all the adults on this thread sneering at them.
Poor girls. Hating the judgement I'm seeing here. They're still children.

My 12 year olds put on lashes and nails to go to the stable and literally shovel shit.

It's not new though, TikTok and high end brands are though. I'm from the Mizz / Just 17 generation, that was our version of TikTok position of the month?!

The only thing that's different is that girls now see influencers on TikTok instead of reading about the latest trends in Just 17 or 19.

My daughter is almost exactly the same as I was at her age (13) as she's massively into 90s grunge and loves her thick black eyeliner. So I'd say she's probably quite influenced by me, too!

This is a well judgy thread.

To be fair, every generation's parents criticised their dress sense, makeup, etc. If your mum didn't you were doing your teens all wrong!

Back in the 80s we were all Jackie magazine clones instead.

It is just more intense, extreme and more pressure on them because of the influence of social media.

Quite! My son is far more obsessed with brands than my daughter, as boys are buying into this TikTok bullshit that it's 'high status male' stuff.

My daughter loves makeup for the sake of makeup and isn't fussed whether it's Superdrug own brand or Lancome.

Not RTFT because I can't be arsed to see the to and fro but I remember walking past a car pulling out of a supermarket a few years back and seeing a teen girl take a selfie in the back while dad drove in the front. I just thought, no way would my Dad/stepmum/extended family have let that pass. I'd have been hammered for it, what are you playing at, give over and get a grip etc. I also remember the first time I saw a young someone take a selfie unabashedly, not for any tourist reason or with anyone else and thinking how embarrassing... Kids are kids. Playing with makeup is fine, it's literally that. The online-ness of it all means it's a totally different ball game now. The problem is nobody is stepping in to talk about how weird it is because it's their normal. I just listened to a podcast about extremely powerful face recognition software and I'm about to send it to my family chat so my parents can understand why my SIL doesn't want her toddler on social media.

I'm glad I'm not young anymore.
Full stop.

It’s concerning that many of the skincare brands being used by young girls are not suitable for their skin. Parents really do need to conduct their own research and push back where necessary. The skin barrier is easily damaged and the consequences are pretty awful

Seconded.

Actually what worries me more than young girls being vacuous is seeing adult women being obsessed with self-image and how they look. And not just women! The whole Western world seems to have been sucked into a dysmorphic nightmare (including the gender fluidity that is so fashionable now). No prizes for guessing how/why (it shifts useless products off the shelves), but it's a terrifying trend and I can't see it loosening its grip any time soon.

So adults created a hyper-commercialist world full of influencers and instagram videos about how to be a vanilla girl or a tomato girl or a coastal Grandma or whatever perfect-skinned, beige living-roomed, clean-eating goddess we're supposed to be this week, and we're going to blame the 12 year olds for falling for it?

And simultaneously pretend like when we were 12 we weren't also begging our parents for whatever we thought would make us one of the cool girls, except we weren't dealing with pretty much 24/7 advertising from the devices they get handed the moment they can recognise and click on the YouTube button?

Why is it ridiculous to do your hair and wear short skirts for school, I’m 50 and I know for a fact I did both those things at secondary school as did most girls - we also read smash hits and just 17! which I would suggest is the equivalent to todays social media.

My 17yo DD does/ did all the ‘vacuous’ things you have suggested- she also works part time, plays county level sport, is doing alevels and has unconditional offers to 3 universities.

I get what the OP is saying.... having worked in secondary schools and listened to a LOT of girls endlessly obsessing over the way they look, what they're wearing and what other people think of them, it can seem quite depressing - ESPECIALLY when they'd rather piss about surreptitiously using their phones in class to watch make-up tutorials and get VERY annoyed when prevented from doing so, ruining the learning experience of other students in the process (an all-too-regular occurrence in several of the schools I've been in).

I, too, know it isn't ALL girls. However, when you've got 18 year olds getting botox and lip fillers something's gone very fucking awry with the beauty business and the amount of influence it wields.

Also, ALL of us - girls AND women - need to stop putting shit on our faces and into our bodies that contain harmful chemicals. I'd love to see MORE young girls and women demanding more natural alternatives in this respect. If we're gonna get 'obsessed' over anything, it would serve us well if it were rooted in what the beauty business can do for US and not what we can do for THEM by simply giving up our money to make corporations richer and handing them the control to stick any old shit in the products we use.

You nailed it.

It’s sad really. ☹️

This. Remember the emos? They would say "You hate me because I'm different, I hate your because you're all the same". Yet they all looked the same as each other.
The individuals with purple hair that looks like it's been cut with a hedge trimmer (no doubt with a special gender announcement incoming) are the current times' version of emos.

I’m a relatively smart woman who adores makeup and perfume, we’re out there and we aren’t vacuous.

My daughter is 16, doesn’t do any of those things. Doesn’t wear makeup, used skincare but not expensive. She’s not one to follow the crowds if she doesn’t want to and I’m glad

from OPs post-'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'

okay let's take the time machine to 1977, substitute tv for tiktok and baby oil instead of sunscreen for the very necessary suntan in summer months for the fake tans. Literally everything else is the same except OP left off 'get dolled up and walk past home of boy I have crush on over and over until he hopefully emerges to notice how gorgeous I am and marries me, I've been practicing writing my married name signature'

Times change but people don't and teen girls will always be vapid and overly focused on looks and superficial shit. Let them do that, adulthood will be hard and they need to enjoy the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Yes, but we weren't being surgically enhanced.

Are 12 year olds being surgically enhanced, @BigAnne ?