Generation Diva

“Much has been made of the oversexualization of today’s tweens. But what hasn’t been discussed is what we might call their “diva-ization”—before they even hit the tween years. Consider this: according to a NEWSWEEK examination of the most common beauty trends, by the time your 10-year-old is 50, she’ll have spent nearly $300,000 on just her hair and face. It’s not that women haven’t always been slaves to their appearance; as Yeats wrote, “To be born woman is to know … that we must labour to be beautiful.” But today’s girls are getting caught up in the beauty maintenance game at ages when they should be learning how to read—and long before their beauty needs enhancing. Twenty years ago, a second grader might have played clumsily with her mother’s lipstick, but she probably didn’t insist on carrying her own lip gloss to school.”

The above excerpt is from a Newsweek article I found earlier this week: Generation Diva: How Our Obsession with Beauty is Changing Our Kids.

The way our culture values beauty and sex appeal, and then encourages that mindset on elementary school age girls, is certainly something to think about. If, at age 7, a girl is worried about body hair, skin, makeup, or her next spa treatment, how is that fascination with her appearance going to play into her thoughts, decisions, and reactions about sex and sexual attraction at a later age?

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