Whilst meandering through my local shops I can’t help but notice a growing trend. I will often be toddling back towards the exit struggling with my ambitious amount of grocery bags, when I will pass a group of young girls. These girls usually have big, and extremely fake hair, sophisticated, and revealing clothing, and don’t look a day over 13. Younger teens (if you can even call them that), trying to pass for 20 year olds have seemingly become so common that no one feels the desire to stop and stare, except me.
The town I live in has a predominately under 20 population group, and walking down an average city street it becomes fairly clear that it is dominated by youth culture. Soon, though, it will dominated by tween culture. If you are unfamiliar with the word ‘tween’ think Eminem mashed together with the Wiggles, and playing Barbie dolls before a solid night of underage drinking. Tweens, are not quite teens, but definitely no longer children, and they are making more effort to grow up faster, and faster. I find it disconcerting watching these tweens strut confidently through the shopping centre, buying more revealing, tweeny clothing, with their tweeny bank cards, and chatting animatedly on their tweeny I phones.
I believe one of the reasons for the local mentality that this sort of display is entirely natural springs from my town’s beauty pageants. 13-year-olds dressed to the nines strutting down catwalks and being judged by a bunch of older men. Surely I am not the only one who can begin to think ‘something’s really not right here.’ 13-year-olds no matter how mentally mature are still more physically close to children than the 20-year-olds they so desperately want to become. Frankly, I can’t understand why. I’m 20, and it’s not at all glamorous. Being 20 is trying to stretch out your food budget, and it’s trying to balance due dates with working hours, and the occasional spot of alcohol poisoning.
So, I say to tweens everywhere: Stop it! Stop it now! Everyone will still love you if you learn to enjoy being young once in a while! Well I can’t make any promises when it comes to the perverts that make up the panel of my local beauty pageants, but the world could benefit from a little less exploitation anyway.
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