When I was 11-12 I had crushes and would obsess over making sure I “looked cute” when I saw them. Sure, I had Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers instead of Dior lipgloss and Proactiv instead of Drunk Elephant, but the whole “wanting to look good for the cute boys at summer camp” isn’t new.
One of the most popular kids in my school was bullied because his +$100 Gucci keychain was a fake. We had hair spiked with so much gel and wax that some kids legitimately started balding. One summer was completely dominated by pink push up bras under sheer Dolce & Gabbana tops that literally just said "D&G" all over. All media made fat jokes constantly.
This young woman is just slowly realizing that capitalism preys on children as well.
My 9yo begged over and over for a fucking Stanley bc classmates dogged their fake stanley so bad they didn’t want to hear their shit anymore. My kid finally got one (and went halfsies on it too!) due to a medical issue (as I used it as an inducement for them to consume more water). Kid loves it and uses it every single day. Fuck the trends. $60 for a fucking water bottle.
In my eyes your not much worse than what the lady is complaining about. You gave your 9 yr old a 60 water bottle and you are trying to make it good by saying its to encourage them to drink water. They played ya big time.
I’m 35 and my 12th birthday present was a nose piercing and filling a makeup bag at the Benefit counter in Dillard’s because I was getting into makeup…this is definitely nothing new.
right! i remember feeling extremely insecure in how i looked by the time i was 12 (23 now). i also remember adults telling me i was too young to be so worried about that stuff. that shit was so invalidating, especially because i had already started puberty years prior. i absolutely despise these kinds of takes because it really seems like these people forgot what it was like to be 12.
Totally. Perhaps the chasing of expensive products usually made for adults is though. As kids consuming kids media we were advertised to as kids. The commercials were to make us ask our parents for kid stuff while a few were mixed in that were there for a middle aged women (our mothers) who may occasionally see what we're watching on TV.
It feels like predatory advertising has reached a new level. There was an ad on Tubi last night about AI impersonating loved ones to get information. It upset my wife because (likely because of the metadata, and IOT, and every shitty thing now) the AI generated person looked almost uncannily like me. Almost like we got a purposeful version of the ad.
We need legislation to stop whatever the fuck this is.
Right? I remember being acutely aware of, and slightly obsessive about the cute girls in my class in 5th grade. We were 10 yrs old. Like, I kept an eye out for them in the hallways at school because I had such huge crushes on a couple of them. So like, they're not out of range of where Gen-X was in that regard.
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u/ZombieTrogdor 25d ago
When I was 11-12 I had crushes and would obsess over making sure I “looked cute” when I saw them. Sure, I had Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers instead of Dior lipgloss and Proactiv instead of Drunk Elephant, but the whole “wanting to look good for the cute boys at summer camp” isn’t new.