Part 1: The 12-year-old girl is the new 21-year-old woman
One side of this double-edged sword is the adultification of teenage girls/children in popular culture and fashion. Teenage girls are not allowed to be teenage girls anymore. Instead, society requires 13 years to look like young adults. If a teenage girl looks like she is a teenager she is shamed by her peers and possibly herself. She is pressured by other girls to look a certain way. Or else she will be left behind by her peers. She is shown less respect and kindness. It can cause self-esteem or body image issues if she doesn’t follow the beauty standard.
More importantly though, one of the teenage girls’ biggest critiques is older men. Men 20 years older than her will judge her if she doesn’t follow what they deem as beautiful. They won’t value her as highly as they would a fourteen-year-old they can see potential in. One example is the series and video game The Last of Us (TLOU). The video game originally came out in 2014. It was a success, with many people falling in love with the story and characters. After the game’s success, HBO decided to adapt the game into a TV series. While the show saw similar success to the game, it was followed by many critiques in the cast.
One of the main protagonists in the franchise is a 14-year-old girl named Ellie. In the TV series, Ellie is played by a 14-year-old named Bella Ramsey. For many reasonable people, this was the perfect casting for Ellie because she looked like a 14-year-old girl. Her physical appearance matches the video game character well. However, this was the worst decision on earth for some older men. For days, men complained that Bella was not attractive enough to play Ellie. They could not sexualize a 14-year-old anymore because she looked like a child.
It’s one example of how teenage girls are sexualized by society to fit the 40-year-old male gaze. If they look like Bella, they are harassed by people online for their appearance. All because She didn’t match the fantasies of grown men. Men would rather Ellie’s character be played by a 26-year-old with size C boobs, a nonexistent waist, and a round ass, even if that is impractical and unrealistic for most 14-year-old girls around the globe. They would want to eradicate all the features of a 14-year-old girl so that they can openly lust over her online and between friends.
One of the main reasons why men feel so comfortable shaming a teenage girl for looking like a teenage girl is because of pop culture. For example, let’s look at the Academy Award-winning film American Beauty.
This film is filled with pedophilic tropes and desires. One of the many problematic scenes from this movie involves a HIGH SCHOOL teenager and a MARRIED MAN with a wife and child. In this, Kevin Spacey’s character watches a HIGH SCHOOL cheer team perform their routine. In this scene, he fantasizes about one of the cheerleaders striping down naked for him. She is exposing her bare chest to him with delicate and sensual petals flowing out of her. The movie frames it like she is enticing him to look at and touch her. There was an unnecessary amount of sexual tension between the HIGH SCHOOL girl and a GROWN ADULT man. He soon becomes infatuated with a HIGH SCHOOL girl, and many similar scenes play throughout the film.
This film glamorizes a sexual attraction to a teenage girl. The film industry awarded them several significant awards for glamorizing the attraction of a teenage girl. Many people, specifically older adults, watched a film that glamorized the attraction to a teenage girl. Many grown men watched themselves become like Kevin Spacey and have desires for a teenage girl. Many young girls looked at themselves in the mirror and knew they could never look like that. Their self-esteem plummeted as they realized that was their beauty standard. They knew boys their age would only date girls who had that same sexual tension she had. So, what’s the solution?
If you guessed telling the film industry to stop promoting the male gaze on teenage bodies, you would be wrong. They’ve made plenty of films and shows with similar premises. What about telling grown men that they shouldn’t have fantasies about teenage girls? Also wrong. The correct answer was teenage girls sexualizing and adultifying themselves to feel beautiful in their bodies. According to society, If you can make a grown man do a double take, you’re on the right path. Teenage girls “must” sexualize themselves so they can fit Hollywood standards of a teenage girl. If not they are deemed unworthy of basic respect and humanity.
The fashion industry is also no saint in this war against girls. In 2022 Balenciaga released a campaign for their collection. Soon after, they had to release an apology and remove the campaign photos from their site. You may ask, “Why the PR nightmare?”. It was because they portrayed children with BDSM stuffed animals and then coupled it with a court case about child sexual abuse
In this campaign, they had girls no older than seven holding teddy bears wrapped in bondage harnesses and costumes. The teddy bears were wrapped in leather and chains. The campaign was filled with BDSM motifs and ideals. However, what makes this ad go from bad to horrifying lies in a picture featuring a black bag. It may seem innocent at first. But when you zoom in, you see a document with some words. This document shows a Supreme Court ruling on child pornography laws. Not pictured above, this same campaign, displayed a photographer’s book filled with children in suggestive scenarios.
Intentionally or not, Balenciaga promoted children in lewd scenarios to their audience. Every detail from the document to the photo book tries to paint young girls in compromising positions. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that the machine behind Balenciaga let this publication happen. It is highly like everyone on the executive board is a man.
As seen earlier in the film industry, older men will do nothing to protect a young girl. A society that allows a film like American Beauty to win an Oscar, will allow a fashion house to promote child SA. The connection between the two is much closer than people realize. A capitalistic society that sexualizes young girls will sexually exploit them for profit. It’s an industry that subjects women and girls to the male gaze. Even when those girls are as little as 6/7 years old. When people like Bella Ramsey are forced to look sexy, it should shock no one that these six years also have to be sexy. We are never too young to be considered sexy or to be exploited.
Overall, young girls are not allowed to look like young girls anymore. Men must be able to drool over you. From the time you turn two years old, you are subjected to the male gaze and unrealistic beauty standards. Men profit from the beauty capital while girls are consumed and controlled by it. It’s one of the many chains of womanhood enforced by the fashion industry and popular culture. Some may ask what age will women be free from these chains? Well, as we are about to explore, these are lifetime shackles.