KGOY "kids getting older younger"

It's pretty depressing how I'm used to waiting in the line for H&M or Forever 21's dressing room with middle schoolers. I look over, see a 9 year old with a tube top and low-riding jeans, and shrug. Normal. Kids getting older younger is no longer shocking because it's so widespread. I think our society is getting to a point where this is no longer a sad phenomenon -- its just what childhood is now: you leave elementary school and your life is an extended process of waiting to be a teenager. 

The first time I actually thought about the way I looked -- was actually worried about it -- was when I met the teenage daughter of my parents' friends. I was shocked by the way she looked. She wasn't ugly at all, she was just normal looking. At 7 or 8, I was so used to the way I saw teenagers on T.V. and in movies. Never having really interacted with any teens on a personal level, I just assumed when you got to be a teenager, you'd automatically be beautiful. I actually thought that. From that point on it became a conscious thought, "Well I'm going to have to do something to make sure I'm pretty when I'm a teenager." 

Which is why when I read this article from the Washington Post, I wasn't all that surprised. Bluntly depressed, yes, but not surprised. 

Apparently there has been an increase in girls as young as 9 hiring image consultants, paying as much as $120 for an initial consultation and $500 per shopping session. The worst part is that parents hire these image consultants under the guise that they are helping their kids' self esteem. 

Am I the only one that thinks self- esteem can't be built from having your parents confirm that the way you look and dress is a legitimate way to feel good about yourself? 

Of course, it's true, when you look pretty, it makes you feel good -- but for a whole host of fucked up reasons! We shouldn't be confirming that the reasons looking good feels good are legitimate ones. 

In the article, three friends are reported to all hire the same image consultant. Their reasoning? "I dress for other girls," admits one girl. "It can be pretty competitive," says another, "You don't want to see someone wearing the same thing." "But we don't want to be the different one, either," the third concludes. 

I think this is the biggest problem teenage girls face today: we know exactly how wrong the fucked up patterns we get ourselves into are, we don't hide them. We know eating disorders are bad, we are aware that we aren't independent. But it's far more important to act like this than to accept that it might okay to be any other way. 

Maybe I'm just idealistic, but I'm pretty sure we all feel this way. We act the way we do because we think everybody else believes in a society that makes us paranoid about the way we look, when in reality few of us do. We can't be that odd person out who sees the truth. Can't we just all admit it? 

Of course that's easier said than done. But I'll be the first to admit it (probably not first, but first publicly). Maybe somebody else will, too. 

I admit that of course I want to be thin, I want to dress in a way that makes people jealous of me and look up to me, and generally would like to be as "beautiful" as the emaciated women I see on billboards. More like I want people to look at me in that way. 

But it doesn't make me happy to always be wondering how many calories are in the food I'm eating. It doesn't make me happy to spend my entire, hard-earned pay check on clothes that may be considered cool but don't actually look that good on me or are uncomfortable. I really, really want to be happy with the fact that I have curves, but it's hard to be. I want to stop feeling jealous when random guys that I don't even think are attractive or cool whistle at some of my friends and not me, because why should I be jealous of that? It's gross. 

So that's why I believe in feminism, that's why I love it. It helps me to see the world beyond these things, see myself in a way that's beyond the shallow. Of course it's a process - I'm a teenager, and even if I am a feminist I still feel like that all the time. I'll never be totally happy with myself. But with feminism, I'm a lot happier than I ever was without it.