Lilly’s Blog: The Conflicting Messages Girls Get About Growing Up Too Fast
We — okay, I, Rachel — interrupt this post to bring you a special news bulletin: Lilly was accepted to her first choice college! Readers will remember that Lilly’s deferral last fall inspired two reflective, powerful blog posts about the pressure girls face to do it all and the “real world” lessons girls can learn from applying to college. I know readers join me in applauding Lilly’s thrilling accomplishment — and thanking her for her refreshing honesty and courage. Okay…now back to our regularly scheduled blog:
Age may be just a number, but America is fascinated by girls who act older than their chronological age. Of course the relationship society has with precocious girls is not simple; society’s opinions about teenage girls never are. We both laud girls who seem wise beyond their years and chastise girls for growing up too quickly.
First let’s look at the ways in which girls are encouraged and praised for acting older than their age. One of teachers’ and parents’ favorite things to say is “girls mature faster than boys.” I’ve been hearing it my whole life. We don’t say boys mature slower; instead we say girls mature faster. This syntax makes the pace at which boys mature the norm. In this sense, girls are expected to be more mature than their years.
A boy who acts his age? That’s a miracle. But if a girl acts her age she’s not performing as expected. She’s falling behind.
Who doesn’t love a good prodigy story? Learning about a child with exceptional talent just warms the heart. And if this child happens to be female, well, that’s just downright adorable. Little women with big talent become favorite anecdotes. We cheer on Tavi Gevinson, a quirky and precocious, preteen fashion blogger. We applaud Mohini Dey’s bass skills. Don’t even get me started on Beatrix Townsend; at two years old, she is Mensa’s youngest member (Mensa is essentially a society of geniuses…I have yet to be invited).
Girls are congratulated for achieving beyond the means of their age.
Yet America is continuously outraged and shocked by girls who experiment with adult behavior. Miley Cyrus is possibly the most hated precocious girl. Miley lives a very adult life; she is the face of a billion dollar empire. She has grown up in the public eye and has been repeatedly criticized for doing so too fast. Miley has been criticized for supposedly pole dancing, for dating an older guy and for a “scandalous” Vanity Fair cover.
Okay so she acts too old. Nope. Not that simple. You see, she’s also criticized for being immature and a bratty teen. Miley, like so many girls who are trying to grow up the best they know how, cannot win. For more about the impossible position she is in, be sure to check out Rachel’s blog, In Defense of Miley.
Companies bank on America’s fixation with young girls in adult situations to sell their products. Everyone has heard of fifteen-year-old Brooke Shield’s controversial Calvin Klein advertisement in which she purrs that nothing comes between her and her jeans. An American Apparel ad (Too much alliteration. I die) was recently called into question in the UK for the indecent exposure of a young looking model. Karlie Kloss, Marc Jacob’s “sexy new muse” is seventeen years old.
The love/hate relationship the public has with young women who are more sexually mature than they are chronologically is a profitable basis for many ad campaigns.
Young women are expected to be mature and successful despite their age. Yet, god forbid, they mature sexually. This tension is yet another example of the mixed messages teenage girls receive all the time. It is everywhere we look. In newspapers heralding a female prodigy, in magazines criticizing young superstars and on billboards flaunting corrupted youth.
Another accomplished young woman! The New York Times names 15- year-old Alexis Thompson a future golf superstar! A post-Tiger Era? How refreshing!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/sports/golf/04thompson.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nyt%2Frss%2FSports+%28NYT+%3E+Sports%29
Thanks for including this comment — I actually read it myself (and I believe my own comment comes right before it – it was a great blog by Belkin). You are so right on. Nice addition here — thanks again!
I copied the following from the comments on Lisa Belkin’s blog about the Massachusetts bullying case. The mom is from Virginia but I can tell you that the same stuff is going on at the NY middle schools. I think it’s all related — the pressure to grow up too fast, the pressure to conform to media/marketing images of what they think girls are supposed to look like, the pressure to act like the girls on Gossip Girls, parents whose own social anxiety makes them care more about their kids’ popularity than their souls. Rosalind Wiseman’s YA novel is spot on about a lot of this. The characters seem like they were based on the kids in South Hadley:
“Well, no. Generally, Mean Moms raise Mean Girls. Mean Moms tend to think that bullying is funny. They tend to care more about whether their daughter or son is popular than whether or not they’re a nice person. Believe me. These moms knew exactly what was going on, and may have even encouraged their daughters or joined in in some way.
In my kid’s junior high, there’s a lot of tension between the kids who are in a hurry to grow up (highlights, nails done, eyebrows done starting in fifth grade, leg waxing, really grown up clothes, own cell phones at a young age, concert tickets for rock concerts at a young age, dating at a young age, coed parties at a young age) and those who are not in such a hurry to grow up. But here’s the thing — when a nine year old is allowed to miss school for a hair appointment to get highlights, there’s a mom behind it who thinks that this is okay. Clearly, young girls aren’t driving themselves to the mall, to their boyfriend’s house or paying their own cell phone bills in seventh grade. In order for these girls to have developed into who they ultimately became, their moms had to have been aware of what was going on and the paths that they were on. I taught junior high briefly and the kids who called the teachers “dorks” and “nerds” usually had mean moms who thought we were “dorks” and “nerds” as well. The moms might have thought they were being more subtle about how they expressed it — but the teachers know if a mom thinks they’re a loser. The kids are just expressing the values which their parents have taught them — the good values and the horrid ones.” http://community.nytimes.com/comments/parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/the-parents-of-the-bully/?sort=oldest&offset=1