WHY YOU HATE YOUNG GIRLS AND WHY IT’S NOT THEIR FAULT

WRITTEN BY CAROLINE SMITH

ILLUSTRATION BY MADISON HOIBY

Sometimes I wake up like twenty minutes before my alarm. I’m too awake to go back to sleep, but too tired to get ready. With not much to do but kill time, I’ll open up TikTok on my phone. Every once in a while I’ll find a funny edit or cat video to send to my friends. Maybe a sketchbook tour that gets me wanting to draw more. TikTok usually delivers some mediocre laughs, annoying ads, or horrifying peeks into the deepest chasms of internet anger and what it spells for our future too.

I’m so over hearing adults talk about how young girls are ruining makeup stores. If you don’t know (lucky you), there’s been a big discourse with TikTok users sharing how they can’t go into makeup and beauty stores like Sephora and Ulta because there are girls, anywhere from seven to fifteen, rampaging about. They’re using up the samples. They’re using their mom’s credit card to buy Fenty lip glosses. Someone sound the alarms! There are teenage girls buying makeup!

In response to this, there were a lot of staff from these kinds of beauty stores confirming on TikTok suspicions of the siege on Sephoras. This is going in tune with the continuing discourse on how Gen Alpha is the worst, and they’re all iPad kids that have stunted socialization from quarantine.

These kinds of rabbit holes usually just make me turn off my phone. I need to see the sun. I need to talk to a real-life person. It’s exhausting to see how many people hate young girls. There is always something: Teenage girls are obsessed with Twilight, girls are obsessed with One Direction, girls are obsessed with The Beatles… Girls ruin culture! That’s what it sounds like to me. Simply, it is so easy to hate on young girls, because they are the hyper-feminine, seemingly powerless punching-bags for culture.

Why are girls invading the MAC counter? Well, some of you might have been a young girl once. What did you do for fun? You went to school, you went home, and you went to your after school activities. Sure, but where would you and your friends go for fun? The mall? Where in the mall? Claire’s, Justice, Limited Too, Libby Lu, Bath and Body Works, Aeropostale, Hot Topic. All 2000s mall classics. Are all of those still in your local mall? If they are, do the products in the store still cater appropriately to children? Likely no.

There’s this idea of a “third space” in society. You have home and work, but the third space is somewhere in the community where you can socialize with friends and strangers, which is becoming less common as we all tend to spend more time in the first two spaces. There is this loss of “third spaces” for everyone, but especially children. Especially since quarantine. A kid only really has home and school. There are less and less safe spaces for kids to be social and explore their identities. It used to be way more common to see the neighborhood kids playing in the street or at the park. It’s a space outside of family and school where they problem solve, communicate, and build experiences with friends. Arguably, the new third space is the internet. Which is potentially the worst possible third place. Sure they might be following their friends from school, but they’re not building new relationships or experiences. They are instead mostly watching influencers and YouTubers that might not even be catering to kids (that’s not to say that “kids content” on the internet is good either).

Tweens also don’t really exist anymore. 12-yearold me had American Girl magazines, Girl Scouts, AYSO, and Disney Channel to model those adolescent years off of. Now, algorithms on TikTok push kids to watch slime videos and beauty gurus explaining their 10-step skin care process. Tweens are becoming obsolete as you get more kids wanting to follow what adult influencers are doing. Social Media is putting middle schoolers on the fast track to adulthood, and that’s partially us adults’ fault.

Look, I get it. I worked with kids for three summers at a day camp. Starting in Summer 2021. I’ve seen those kids get pushed out of quarantine and online school into “the new normal.” They didn’t know how to socialize. They couldn’t share. They couldn’t spell their names. They cried for hours after their parents dropped them off. If we as adults are deeply affected by quarantine, they are even worse off. My coworkers and I were suddenly tasked with filling in for the lost time. I was dealing with the iPad raised Gen Alpha kids that everyone is terrified and annoyed with.

It’s easy to blame the parents–which they do bare the brunt of how they’ve raised their kid. However, and this may be difficult to hear, but it’s on us too. As a child is in development, they look to the world to learn how to be. You want to ask why kids aren’t reading? Why aren’t we? Why are little girls buying anti-aging cream? Why are we so obsessed with aging? I know we like to think that if you don’t have children in your life, you live in a completely separate sphere, but that is not true. My solution is going to be asking something from you, but I think it will do good. Those Gen Alpha campers I worked with got better. Each summer I came back, the kids were doing better. Less breakdowns, less crying. More friendships, more teamwork, and more independent problem-solving. Simply through having real, in-person, screen-free, interactions with kids and adults. It’s hard work, but straight-forward. And the reward is so great. To see young girls be able to play, share, work together, have conflict and solve it is so uplifting.

This is my big ask: show kindness to young girls. To all kids. To teens. To people just five years younger than you. Try to understand them. Reimagine what life was like for you then. While you’re at it, show kindness to pure strangers of all ages. Give up your seat on the bus, help someone picking up trash, hold the door open. It’s so easy to think about yourself, but it only takes a little bit more effort to think of others as well.

And for those that have younger sisters, cousins, nieces, or daughters of your own: please spend time with them and give them the support and lessons they may be missing. Even if that means an age-appropriate, play-makeup kit.