Those Earlier Teen Years |
Growing Up Too Fast. |
Becky Romatoski |
My little sister's all grown up
now, but she's only ten years old. She looks like a teenager. She thinks
like a teenager. And you could say she acts like one because teenagers
themselves are not very mature. She loves to hang around me, and she tries
to persuade me to act more like a typical 18-year-old girl because she
wants to be one herself. She begs me to take her shopping and let her do
my hair. She wants to be just like me. At first, I thought it was because
she's the youngest in the family, and she wanted to be like her big sister
and brother. However, I realized I didn't look like the typical teen. In
fact, she dresses more like a typical teenager than I do. Many of her
friends are the oldest children in their families yet try to present the
image of a teenager. They all seem to wish they were older. Girls these
days just seem to want to, and do, grow up sooner and sooner. It seems the
"teenage years" have changed, starting well before the age of thirteen.
As I have said, my sister and her
friends are prime examples of this change. For instance, they have
sleep-overs and stay up till dawn. Their many sleep-over activities
include gossiping about boys and discussing fashions, painting nails, and
experimenting with make-up. I never did such things at that age. My
friends and I had to go to bed by one or two at the latest, and we played
games and watched movies. My sister also thinks that she should have the
same privileges that I do at age eighteen when she's only ten. She thinks
she can stay up late, till ten or eleven o'clock. I was in bed by eight
when I was her age. Not only does she want to stay up late, but she also
thinks that she can watch any movie she wants. It's hard to pick a movie
the whole family will like that's rated PG these days, so many times we
choose a PG-13 movie (sometimes even R) and let her watch with us. This
has given her the idea that she is mature enough to watch anything she
wants. She likes the TV show Friends, but at her age she doesn't
completely understand the adult content in the show, nor does she need to.
However, she begs to watch it. This is also true for movies that are
geared more to adults. At her age, it was unthinkable for me even to
consider such demands. Yes, she is the youngest in the family, but she
wants to watch these things because her friends do and then come to school
and talk about them. This observation of premature
teenagers made me wonder what is causing girls to start their teenage
years earlier. If you take a look at the media, advertising, and rising
young stars, you find premature teens who influence girls to be like them.
For example, television and video star twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen,
first made famous from the TV series Full House, look 20 years old yet
have several years to go before reaching that age. In a TV show they made
called Two of a Kind, they look like 10 year olds trying hard to appear 14
or 15. The situations and plots of the show revolved around relationship
issues with parents, boys, friends, and twin sisters. The parent-kid
relationship dealt with the typical difficult teenage rebellion stage, and
the other relationships, like boys and friends, dealt with situations
beyond their ages. Kids who were 10 liked to watch the show because
Mary-Kate and Ashley were on the show. In reality they were playing
characters who were older than themselves. This made girls want to be like
the twins even though they weren't as old as the twins' characters.
Advertising is also a factor in
girls' growing up faster. Stores like The Gap and The Limited now all have
stores for kids: Gap Kids and the Limited Too. These kids' stores sell
clothes that are similar to those in the stores for teens; therefore,
little kids are wearing the same types of clothes as teenagers, which
increases the likelihood that little girls will strive to be like typical
teenagers and grow up sooner. My little sister and her friends all have
clothes from these stores. They own and wear tight flared pants or short
shorts and tank tops. It is important to them to have these clothes, and
when their birthdays or Christmas rolls around, they request the latest
styles that clothing stores advertise as fashionable.
In addition to dressing like
teens, my little sister and her friends listen to music for teens. They
probably don't notice the underlying references to adult situations and
don't think twice about the revealing clothes the music stars wear. These
music stars influence the way kids dress. Britney Spears and Mary J. Blige
lookalikes can be found among many groups of little girls. Kids like my
sister think this is the norm. Little girls innocently sing Jennifer
Lopez, Nelly, and Eminem because they like the beat of the songs. The
lyrics maybe are just words with no meanings, yet the content is still
being presented to them. I've heard girls singing "It's getting hot in
here, so take off all your clothes." They don't consciously realize it
relates to sex, and some of them don't even know what sex is, but this
music is played on radio stations for anyone to hear. The content of music
and other media seen or heard at primetime hours and during the day is
becoming more mature in content, accustoming children at younger ages to
the world of grown-ups and adult situations. The media is introducing the
"real" world of adults to children, and as a consequence the children are
responding by wanting to join sooner than is appropriate the real world
with the adults they admire and strive to be like.
At my previous school, enrolling
girls from Kindergarten to 12th grade, we wore uniforms. However, every
month we would have an out-of-uniform day, and as I walked the halls I saw
4th, 5th, and 6th graders wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, Tommy Hilfiger,
and Express clothing. Comfortable tennis shoes weren't worn either;
instead sandals and heels could be heard clicking as the girls shuffled to
class. They had tight hip-hugger pants or super-short shorts and tank
tops. Going to school on out-of-uniform days was like jumping into an
Abercrombie and Fitch ad and living inside the picture. Not only was their
dress ahead of their age, but their faces were decked out with all sorts
of beauty-enhancing products, and their hair was neatly groomed and
curled. For what reason, I don't know. They weren't even any guys at the
school to impress. Okay, so if the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders went over to
the boys' school across the rode at the end of the day they'd see boys to
impress, but at that age those boys aren't looking at girls the way the
girls look at the guys. They are usually talking about and playing sports,
not thinking about girls. Back in the 1800's and early
1900's, girls would be at the courting age starting around age 13, but
times have changed. People live longer and can afford to grow up later.
Being young is the best time in life. There are few responsibilities, few
worries. Why are girls wanting to grow up so fast? Don't they realize it's
hard to survive in the world? In my experience, older generations like to
give advice to younger ones because they feel some regret about life and
hope that the ones they love who will follow them won't have the same
regrets as they did. My grandparents love to tell me about when they lived
in the Great Depression and were forced to get jobs and act like
responsible adults when they were only 13 or 14. They feel sorry that they
had to grow up so soon and weren't able to enjoy the pleasures of
childhood longer. And as a result, they continually express their opinion
that they don't want me to waste any of my childhood by growing up too
fast. These little girls who feel an aching need to grow up will
eventually realize they should have embraced childhood as long as they
possibly could. Sooner rather than later they'll be 30 or even 40 and
wishing that they hadn't grown up so fast and wasted those early years
acting older than their age. They'll be wishing they were back at age
three again, enjoying and marveling at the simplicity of a life without
responsibilities or the need to survive on their own.
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