I thought this Judith Warner post made an interesting point:
A family counselor I heard speak last Spring said she believes that young girls today who get caught up in skinniness, fashion, popularity, pop culture and boys are, essentially, “underemployed.” Their brains, she said, need to be engaged by things larger than themselves: things like hobbies, sports, art, music or community service. If they’re not, there’s a vacuum, and all kinds of wretched stuff comes to fill their minds instead.
I thought of this woman’s words on Halloween, catching glimpses trick or treating of the tweens dressed in this year’s much-talked-about “bawdy” attire or simply in costumes that were more fashion-y than fun. These girls were striking. There was a self-consciousness to them, an inward-turnedness, that was joyless, and disturbing. It was way too adult-like and way too heavy a thing for their young and (invariably) skinny shoulders to bear.
I don’t know exactly how we can relieve them of the burdens of toxic girlhood. We can’t – and shouldn’t – raise them in a total media vacuum. We can’t simply preach at them, or badger them, or cloister them or dress them in the kind of puppy-dotted turtlenecks that are now showing up in some nostalgia-stoking holiday catalogs.
The only thing we can do is provide some sort of inspiration – of a kind of womanhood that makes them want to connect to the better aspects of the girlhood we once knew. And then, give them the space and the time to make it their own.
Interesting…it makes me think about the helicoptering parent issue.
Maybe boys don’t need it at all (and I think when it’s sports heavy that it’s fulfilling something for daddy), as society is presently designed to be fulfilling for them, but for girls, sports, music, hobbies, etc - even if they keep the family overly busy - might be better than just letting her exist in today’s vapidness.
Very interesting and I know the whole look of the tweens with the costumes. It was scary to me that these girls were out there and made me wonder what their parents actually thought of the costume.
This also gives me thoughts on how to raise my daughter to avoid this. She’s only 3 now but I would guess it’s never too early to start on building her up in the most positive way.
I thought “Little Miss Sunshine” was a perfect example of this. The lead is blissfully unaware that she can’t compete in the same league with the Jon-Benet Ramsey lookalikes - she is completely and utterly herself, a ray of sunshine.
There was a guy on TV this week discussing the inappropriate costume choices parents allowed their toddlers to wear on Halloween. He said he didn’t want his kid dressed as a “Prostitot”.