Most young girls understand the cultural expectation to be pretty before they can read or write.
Most young girls understand the cultural expectation to be pretty before they can read or write.
Seventy four – stock.adobe.com
Researchers surveyed 170 children aged 3 to 5 to find out at what age children start to worry about their personal appearance.
The study found that preschool girls placed a high importance on appearance and beauty, while boys of the same age did not.
“Across all measures we assessed, girls on average placed a high value on their appearance. Girls said that to be a girl, they had to be pretty, and that being pretty was important,” lead researcher May Ling Halim wrote in a HuffPost column.
When presented with a selection of outfits and occupations, girls selected “fancy” outfits and appearance-related occupations (such as being a model), were more likely to remember fashionable clothing, and enjoyed pop culture characters for their beauty.
This lines up with another study cited by Halim, published by the International Society for Self and Identity, which found that young girls were attracted to appearance-focused toys.
Girls were about five times more likely than boys to say they liked a pop culture character for their looks than boys, often saying things such as, “I like all princesses because they’re pretty.” “.
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Instead, boys tended to choose their favorites for “action reasons”, such as liking Spider-Man “because he jumps high, climbs and shoots webs”.
Experts believe that “while girls everywhere have long learned that beauty is of the utmost importance,” the launch of the Disney Princess franchise and “girlie-girlie” culture in the early 2000s brought more emphasis on this belief, which is only exacerbated by social media.
And although obsession with appearance starts earlier and is stronger in girls, previous research has shown that nearly half of elementary school-aged boys are unhappy with their bodies.
“By adolescence, children are already primed to be concerned about their appearance – a vulnerability that social media, often a very visual platform, exploits and exploits,” Halim said. “If a child is already imbued with these gender stereotypes and body dysmorphic ideals at age 5, imagine what they will be thinking at 15.”
The expert recommends that adults be more attentive to the messages that children receive daily through the images and toys they like and the way we talk to them.
“The preschool and kindergarten years are particularly crucial, because it is during this time that children typically begin to strongly identify with a gender” and “form gender stereotypes based on the information they have,” Halim said .
“Because children learn that girls are defined by how they look and boys by what they do, we need to change the information they receive. »
But unfortunately, it seems that young girls are becoming more and more obsessed with their appearance.
Elementary-aged girls pressure each other to try and buy expensive skincare products, while tiny beauty influencers – also known as “Sephora kids” – trash the beauty stores and share their 12-step skincare routines on TikTok.
Experts have sounded the alarm about the terrible physical and mental damage these children could be causing themselves, but some parents turn a blind eye, masked.
New York Post
