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.