Tweens and Body Image
Younger teenagers are being targeted more and more with tighter and skimpier clothing, sexier outfits and the pressure to grow up faster.
Youngsters who used to be fussing about boys with cooties are now worrying about how they look in a miniskirt.
Store like La Senza Girl are catered to the Tween age, those between the ages of 6-12 years old, a title which has been created only within the last 15 years. These young girls can now buy padded bras for their non-existent breasts, play dolls who look trampy, and look up to role models who have celebrity status for starring in a hit film or two.
The marketing manager of Mattel, the company who produces Barbie dolls, Julie Keanrs, commented: "Someone identified this gap in the marketplace between the girl who is still a child under the age of about nine, and a real teenager of 13 or 14 who has reached puberty. They identified this girl getting older younger, [and thought] 'here's a market we could cater for in the right way and increase our sales'."
Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg, a psychologist and author of Bitchface Syndrom: Surviving Adolescent Girls, believes that the loss of childhood is taking a step backwards, instead of forwards: “It's all about sexualisation and the objectification of women… about being attractive to boys- and I hope there are generations of collective feminists rolling in their collective graves looking at his stuff because it's so retrograde.
“There is absolutely nothing positive about it, and I think it's sending all the wrong messages to an already confused and bemused bunch of kids- and what worries me is that it's the parents who are very often talked into buying these things".
