Xtra large and Xtra small

Bigorexia

Boys are big, girls are small. That is just the way it is. According to a Blue Cross-Blue Shield 2001 survey of ten-to seventeen year old boys, half were aware of sports supplements and drugs, and one in five takes them. Forty-two percent did it to build muscle and sixteen percent just to look better. That is a dramatic increase from the BCBS survey in 1999 that found no sample of kids under fourteen had taken products. In the 1980’s there was a big force in the media culture—giant billboards for Calvin Klein underwear and fierce male torsos in designer perfume ads helped to change the shape of male bodies, literally.

“When you hear girls gawking at Abercrombie and Fitch about how hot the guy is on the bag- that makes an impression,” one teen bodybuilder told New York Times magazine in 1999. One of Abercrombie’s countless bare-chested and buff youths had clearly been seared on that teens mind. This drive for huge pecks and out of control muscle gain has been deemed by media wags as “Bigorexia.”

Teen, male fitness is something that requires hours of painful effort not only for lifting but also when it comes to diet. I thought girls were bad, but what about all the teen boys who have a meticulous diet regimen involving egg whites, protein powder, whey, whole bread and turkey. According to Alyssa Quart, “Once there was a hope among feminists that girls could be taught to escape their oppression body project. This has not occurred. Now boys partake in it as well. Weightlifting, enthusiasts say, is a form of self construction.

Pro-Ana.

The following is an excerpt from Quarts book,

My name is Cheallaigh (pronounced Kelly),” reads the home page. “I have had anorexia for six years, of the bulimic subtype. I weigh 120 and I am 5’6”. I am 17 and attending community college. This page is my personal diary of my love affair with anorexia.”

Cheallaigh is not using the word, “love affair” lightly or ironically. She is truly besotten with anorexia and she is not alone. She is one of a new movement of girls, many of them teenagers, who dub themselves, pro-anorexics. They dwell clandestinely on the Internet and chat about their starvation methods, their feelings and, of course, their hatred of fatness. Those who produce their own pro anorexic sites proffer “thinspiration” photographs of tiny actresses and often digitally alter them to look even thinner….

The most plaintive response from the pro-annas was one I recognized personally, “It is disheartening to be faced with these extremely tall, thin, beautiful girls wherever you go, beauty can all be explained away by, ‘it’s all makeup,’ height ignored there is nothing anyone can do about their height, but thinness is always seen as something you can have control over. And if you can just be as thin as these women, then maybe you’d be as happy as they appear and just maybe instead of your guy looking at the billboard with lust they’ll look at you that way.”

It seems as if the plastic-surgery girls and the weight-lifting boys and the pro-annas are symptomatic of a new sort of adolescence in which kids ratify their family social status through looking the part. Marketers have convinced these kids that they need a specific set of physical attributes, and that their own qualities must be obviated. For the large subculture of teens who self-brand into look-alikes with tiny waistlines, bulging biceps, deracinated noses and copious breasts, the supposed freedom of self creation is not freedom at all. What they have is the consumer choice, no substitute for free will.

Teen Extravagance

Let me start with the popular MTV series, My Super Sweet Sixteen. In an article written by Kyle Ryan he deems the MTV show as “The Most Offensive Show on Television” saying, “There may be no better contraceptive than that show, as its pampered, materialistic brats are enough to make anyone reconsider procreation.”

But sweet sixteen parties are only one dimension to the growing obscenity of teen extravagance. Bar and bat mitzvahs and quinceaneras, which were once small and traditional events now cost up to 30,000. Angela Rowe of Quince magazine says that quinceanera extravagance has only exploded within the past seven years. Maria Theresa Hernandez, a professor at the University of Houston, told the Houston Chronicle in 2001, “There are instances where parents are willing to spend 15,000 on a quinceanera, but there’s nothing in the college fund.”

I think part of the reason of this extravagance is parental guilt. According to Alyssa Quart, “The tween buyer is now more able to manipulate an overworked parent into spending—out of the parent’s shame over their increased absences.” And affluenza, it seems, has invaded all realms of traditional religions, not sparing the Jewish coming of age ceremony, bar/bat mitzvahs.

At a party planning showcase the salespeople are well aware of the tween buying power and when they smell money they pitch everything, from the dried ice cream, to the digitally photographed self-portrait magnets. Not only that, but there are party themes, most increasingly popular has been the shopping theme, one of the props available for that party is a 200 dollar poster of a photo-shopped bat mitzvah girl surrounded by bags from Abercrombie and Fitch, Tiffany & Co., The Gap and Gucci. Or they could go with a Hollywood theme where they can have a poster of Fight Club but with the guest of honor in the place of Brad Pitt.

But my favorite poster by far is the one that promises to wedge the kids face between the legend, “Thou shalt have good taste in music” and photos of Britney and N’Sync. That is just creepy. So many of the posters listed celebrate teen’s importance only by connecting them to images of wealth, pop starts, or movie stars. What happened to God and religious ceremony?

My Prada handbag, Gucci Sunglasses and my Yale acceptance letter.

I can remember back to the college acceptance days… which is not always a pleasant flashback, because those few months were simply full of stress and tears, trying so hard to pitch myself to a board of faceless admissions officers who were to judge my worth from an essay and test scores.

Everyone in my high school took SAT prep classes and we were all determined to beat each other’s scores. This was the first time it was pointed out to me that SAT classes were an unfair advantage of the rich, and made it easier for those kids to get into college. As opposed to the kids who couldn’t afford extra prep, but needed high scores to obtain a scholarship.

I have found that having an SAT tutor was once something that was shameful, to admit you needed help was weak, but these days you are shunned if they aren’t one of your accessories.

I went to a college prep school and everyone was competing for top schools, especially when we found out that schools like Stanford and Yale only took one female and one male student. The thing that gets to me though, is how competitive it all is, and yes that spirit of competition is necessary, however if you applied to Brown twenty years ago with a 1200 and good extra curriculars you were in. So what happened? Well college attendance has increased dramatically and there has become a need to have a designer name school to match your designer brand life.

As a result of this change kids are being prepped for college freshman year of high school. Parents spend ridiculous amounts of money on tutor and special college coaches who run at hundreds of dollars an hour. How many kids did you know in high school who only participated in tons of extra curriculars and did community service so that they could write it on their college apps? I know I am guilty of it, I was an officer in the Interact club in high school and I hated it, but I did it for apps.

Kids just wrap themselves up with paper and ribbon to make them into the perfect package. Summers are now wasted on summer school and special educational camps instead of just frolicking around the block. I guess parents can reason that they are prepping their kids for the hard times of college, but they are really only stealing their last couple years of being a kid.

Mom, Can I Borrow That?

I don’t know how many people have witnessed this phenomenon, but last week, when I was on a lunch/shopping date with a few of my friends we did a little “people watching.” We sat at a café at South Coast Plaza (SCP) and just observed the women and their daughters as they passed and mused at the fact that they wore the same clothes.

Sit around at SCP next time your there and you will count more middle aged women in Seven jeans and teenage girls in Chanel than the laws of natural science should allow. I mean, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Mom is always trying to look fifteen years younger and her daughter is usually trying to look fifteen years older, and I guess they just meet in the middle. This seems to be the phenomenon mostly with upper-middle-class families however I have surely witnessed it in much lower income. I remember my friend and her mom used to wear the same Roxy clothes in middle school, the girl acted like that was cool but I have a feeling she was marginally mortified.

However the fixation with the high fashion brands is very interesting to me because I feel like I have witnessed it take over the minds of girls. But heck, I am in no way, going to deny I wouldn’t love to have a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes or Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses, but not today at least, I still have to pay rent this month and buy a couple more books. So why do kids not only force their parents to buy this stuff for them, but also work themselves to death and spend it all on unnecessarily high fashion. Where did the superfluous NEED for expensive brands come from? Television? Movies? Magazines? Peer pressure? I am researching the issue and hopefully with be able to provide you with an answer. For now, I guess, we can just reminisce. Does anyone remember when Abercrombie and Fitch used to be considered high fashion in the teen world?

I feel like I could write a whole book on this subject, but I will spare you, however teenage girls trying to dress like they are in there thirties is just weird, but it happens. It’s like their dream is the movie 13 going on 30 with Jennifer Garner, and I think it is because they all secretly just want to make enough money to buy couture.

The Makeover Movie…

Around the time I was born, so was the first iconic “teen film,” The Breakfast Club. The lineup included the indulged clotheshorse, a driven nerd, a vacant jock, a stoner, and an attention-deprived Goth. The movie rages against high school cliques and hierarchies and it proposes that all kids should unite against two common enemies, their parents and a future of soulless-ness. The movie has heart and it rings true like a diary entry… what life is like when parents or teachers leave the room.

That was then… this is now…Clueless, Bring It On, She’s All That, Legally Blond and Varsity Blues, just to name a few. Movies have evolved from the inspirational underdog finding justice, to the hyped stories of the elite insiders, the sports stars, beauties, cheerleaders and rich kids.

“These kids live in the blondest, richest suburbs, suburbs without seasons. The characters have abs so hard and defined they seem to have replaced personalities,” says Alyssa Quart in Branded. She also states that these films’ fascination with the high school in-crowd echoes most big-firm marketing recommendations to snag the shoppers of the in-crowd, called channelers or influencers—“the cream of the crop,” those “that know their status and revel in it.”

At the center of the movie She’s All That, is the senior class presided and soccer player Freddie Prinze Jr. The heroine of Legally Blonde is a Bel Airhead beauty queen, Elle Woods. In Bring It On, the influencer is the captain of the cheerleading team who struggles to keep her kingdom of cruel, anorexic girls happy. With Bring It On, if you followed the old model of the teen movie you would assume that by the films close Kirsten Dunst’s character would learn a lesson about how girls of a normal body mass are people too, but alas, we are simply left again to the blockbuster with a vacant heart.

My personal favorite of all these is—the makeover movie—this is all about normalizing the social outcasts and turning them into influencers and carrying them from the lowest high school rung to the very top, something every average girl would kill to do.

A perfect example is She’s All That, a beautiful and dynamic film about that teaches kids the importance of having fancy clothes and wearing good makeup, truly heartfelt (ha). In fact, in a matter of minutes, with a pair of tweezers, a short dress and lip gloss she transforms from a neohippie to a homecoming queen nominee. Wow, so easy!

My point in all of this is that movies that primp, powder, and brand girls claim that the girls are becoming their “true selves,” but the entirety of the films are testifying to the power of constructed and artificial selves. The films all say that girls just need to find the courage to be themselves, when in fact they are encouraging their audience to become someone else, someone suave, with perfectly straight hair, designer clothes and a perfect body. In the words of Quart, “Anyone can turn into a popular girl or a prom queen, the films say. All it takes is a full commitment to beauty conventions and the high school brand economy.”

Overall, the screen teens are more often what critic Pauline Kael termed “un-people.” Where characters were once confronted with real-life difficulties, they now have contests, social machinations and makeovers… Wow tough life, don’t worry about how you affect the lives of millions of teenage girls around the world or anything, because no one ever takes this all to heart…. Right?

Planet Conservo

Alright so I realize that I kind of come off harsh, and like I said in the beginning of my blog I don’t want to sound like I am from Planet Conservo and that we should lock up all children and only let them watch approved G-rated programming, eat organic food and pretend MTV doesn’t exist. Because when you step back and look at the world you can see that not every little girl growing up today will be ruined by the media, the movie She’s All That will not mess up her self esteem and she won’t become obese because she eats McDonalds. HOWEVER, I have to say that parenting as well as corporate responsibility are a huge part of this, because both parties need to realize their level of influence and use it responsibly, something I don’t think they really do.

Story time! Okay, I have four very sweet neighbor girls who come to my door almost every day in their little pink or blue (depending on the day) princess dresses and ask if I can play. Sometimes I have time, sometimes I don’t, but I try my best. If we don’t end up playing tag then I break out my paints and sparkles and we usually sit on the lawn, paint and chat about things.

The two older girls who are usually not sporting princess costumes are Hailey and Jessica. Hailey is 8 and Jessica is 11, Hailey while notably younger is less disciplined than Jessica and less respectful of authority. Jessica’s mom is a single mom and seems to be very involved in her life and they do lots of things together, whereas Hailey is trucked from her father’s house to her grandmother’s house daily. Her mom is young and never shows any real care for what she does, she tells me she roams around the neighborhood as she pleases and watches whatever she wants on television.

Now I am not sure if there are any extenuating circumstances but I think it is safe to say that their parents clearly affect who they are as people. Now I realize that the media has a huge influence on their lives as well, and I will be posting more about corporate responsibility in the future, but for now I just want so show that there are normal girls out there. They each have their flaws but they are awesome girls who aren’t obsessed with being sexy or watching MTV, and hopefully as they age those things won’t become problems. But as our culture takes kids on a fast-track to adulthood I can only wonder how these girls will continue to grow in a culture that is growing ever faster.

An Army of One

In my opinion, we have become a more individualistic culture. We each have our own cell phones, our own computers, our own personal bubbles. Whenever I go visit my friend at his apartment I usually pass by a few other residents, and since I live right off campus in a very friendly neighborhood I usually give them the “acknowledgement smile,” as like a—hey we both hang out in the same place, that is cool, have a good day—kind of thing.

But all I usually receive back is the chilling look of confusion. Like why would I even acknowledge them? Why no sense of community? It may be because it is in ghetto Santa Ana and I find it to be generally scary, and less of a happy place, but I have experienced the same thing before.

How is it that we can pour out our hearts on a MySpace page but we can’t even talk to the people closest to us? Have we become so self-reliant that we are spending all our time cyber socializing instead of real human interaction? After all, I am currently writing a blog…

I think one of the greatest examples of this is the Army’s change of slogan, which they launched in 2001, entitled, “An Army of One.” The Army used to tell people to, “Be All You Can Be,” but it is now re-branded to attract new youthful recruits. After the $150 million dollar campaign launched army enlistment surged.

According to “Branded,” This ad is designed to pander to Generation Y’s self interest and taste, and in the words of one potential recruit, has “real cool” imagery. Oh and it doesn’t just stop there. The U.S. Army has even developed a video game: a “highly realistic and innovative” first-person shooter game that puts a player inside an army unit. In a radio interview in 2002, an army spokesman described the game as one of the new methods the military was using “to reach young people” over thirteen and to “inspire people regarding their career choices.” Cute.

Happy Meals Are Not Part of the Food Pyramid

I’ll spare you the usual... blah blah blah we are fat, we eat too much. WE KNOW. But that “we,” applies to those of us independent enough to decide what we eat, and have enough collective knowledge to know that french fries are not a food group. But sometimes junk food is just inescapable, and to some, especially kids, eating healthy can be difficult.

Let me make something clear—I am not an advocate of kids being forced veggies and I cannot stand when a mom doesn’t let her kids ever touch candy or ice cream. All the fun of being a kid is frolicking and eating cookies after school and NOT worrying about your health!

The only problem is, for most of us, our mom’s taught us how to eat healthy. For me at least, McDonalds was the occasional treat, and for the most part there was never a large amount of junk food in my house, and I had no idea. Today however, with busy lives, fast food is usually the most convenient option, and yes, it is a parents job to promote healthy nutrition, but the battle is uphill when you realize that most television ads and now even toy manufactures are pushing brands of junk food.

I can only explain my problem with all of this briefly, to better explain the total infiltration take a minute and check out this article. I am all for personal responsibility but the article does make a good case for corporate responsibility.

Kulturesmog2

Another great example of how television and advertisements serve as pollution to a child’s mind

Junk culture 'is poisoning our children'

By Ben Fenton
The Daily Telegraph, 9/12/06

A sinister cocktail of junk food, marketing, over-competitive schooling and electronic entertainment is poisoning childhood, a powerful lobby of academics and children's experts says today.


Experts are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and other experts call on the Government to act to prevent the death of childhood.

They write: "We are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioral and developmental conditions."

The group, which includes Philip Pullman, the children's author, Jacqueline Wilson, the children's laureate, her predecessor Michael Morpurgo, Baroness Greenfield, the director of the Royal Institution and Dr Penelope Leach, the child care expert, blames a failure by politicians and public alike to understand how children develop.

"Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust. . . to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change," they write.

"They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

"They also need time. In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum.

"They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past."

The letter was circulated by Sue Palmer, a former head teacher and author of Toxic Childhood, and Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.

Mrs Palmer said: "I have been thinking about this for a long time and I just decided something had to be done.

"It is like this giant elephant in all our living rooms, the fact that children's development is being drastically affected by the kind of world they are brought up in."

She cited research by Prof Michael Shayer at King's College, London, which showed that 11-year-olds measured in cognitive tests were "on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago".

"I think that is shocking. We must make a public statement – a child's physical and psychological growth cannot be accelerated.

"It changes in biological time, not at electrical speed. Childhood is not a race."

The other signatories include Sir Jonathon Porritt, the environmental campaigner, Prof Tim Brighouse, the Commissioner for London Schools and Sir Richard Bowlby, the President of the Centre for Child Mental Health.

Mr Morpurgo said: "We have so much anxiety about children, their protection, their care, their education, that this has developed into fear. There is a fear around children, both from schools and politicians, which has led to this target-driven education system.

"That has put children into an academic straitjacket from a very early age which restricts creativity and the enrichment of childhood."

He condemned the "virtual play" represented by electronic games and internet surfing.

"That is where children are getting their ideas from and I find it quite "toxic" and pretty scary for the future."

Jacqueline Wilson said: "We are not valuing childhood. I speak to children at book signings and they ask me how I go through the process of writing and I say, 'Oh you know, it's just like when you play imaginary games and you simply write it all down'.

"All I get is blank faces. I don't think children use their imaginations any more."

Baroness Greenfield is so concerned about the effect of technology on children she has set up an all-party group in the Lords to look into it.

The other members are three former education secretaries, Baroness Williams, Baroness Shephard and Baroness Morris.

Don't Call Me a Cowgirl Until You See Me Ride

Yeah imagine that-- on a shirt-- on a ten year old girl-- Cute.

I have seen them since high school, in practically every clothing store ranging in price from Target’s Exhilaration, to Juicy Couture. And these simple T-Shirts are causing quite the stir. In fact many educators are forced to modify school dress codes to prevent these racy messages from being displayed across the chests of female class members.

And this is all okay because…? Ugh. The shirts are, “Emblematic of the kind of sleazy-chic culture some teenagers now inhabit, in which status can be defined by images of sexual promiscuity that previous generations might have considered unhip,” according the Washington Post. Don’t get me wrong, the message shirts aren’t all bad, but I am not talking about the shirts with “YO” on the front and “MOMMA” on the back. I am talking about examples like the 2002 drama with Abercrombie and Fitch selling thongs featuring cherries and messages like “wink, wink” and “eye candy,” to PRETEEN girls.

I seriously feel like I am from Planet Conservo when I write about all this, but really, that is crossing the line, and luckily there was enough of a consumer backlash to have them taken off the shelves. So where is the line of OKAY? No on sleezy panties, yes on humorous, ironic, yet mildly sexual shirts?

Sigh… I think it has a lot to do with the age of the kid, but I don’t think it will ever be appropriate to wear a shirt with an animated ear of corn asking, “Wanna Shuck?”

From American Girl Dolls to the Pussycat Dolls.

Obviously I have an issue with marketing to children, its extent and effect. But in order to give this some perspective, a jog through the past is necessary….

Marketing to this specific niche has existed since the word teenager was coined by Madison Avenue in 1941, in order to define the new marketable group of youths. And since this time it has constantly evolved.

According to the scholar Lynn Spigel, American children first became a target audience in the late 1950’s. She even sites one example of the first (terribly undisguised) attempts of advertisers to reach parents. “Your daughter won’t ever tell you the humiliation she’s felt in begging those precious hours of television from a neighbor.” Yeah right—but it worked.

Today we rest in Generation Y, a term that describes those born between 1979 and 1995. According to Alissa Quart in her book, Branded, “(This generation) dreams in Hi-definition and Sony sound. Their signs and wonders are the bright logos that line the avenues and shopping malls.” ICK.

Well, back to the past-- I wasn’t around in the 60’s but I think it is safe to say that, for teenagers, it was a time of rebellion, of individuality and free expression. Anyone notice that it has done a 180? Today it is cooler to be like everyone else. In my high school it was all about Abercrombie and Fitch, if you didn’t own anything from there you were looked down upon. It is cool to “be a brand.” Girls especially define themselves as such, “Oh I am such a, ‘insert popular brand!’”

I understand that when we are young we all brand our self, but kids are using clothes to define themselves. Check out the kids drenched in brand-name merchandise, they are usually the ones who are slightly awkward, maybe a little overweight and not conventionally pretty. “While many teenagers are branded,” says Quart, “the ones most obsessed with brand names feel they have a lack that only super branding will cover over and insure against social ruin.”

Well times do change, societal structures and moral foundations shift from under us, but I do think that our progressive view of “the now” should still hold itself to some of the values of the past.