America’s Tweenophelia And Why It Has To Stop

The time has come for someone to stand up and scream at the top of their lungs, “America, stop being disgusting and sexualizing 15-year-old girls!!” and I’m not afraid to be that someone. Because the media can longer be counted on to have a brain, because adult celebrity bloggers see it fit to go after girls who can’t even drive yet, and because we as a nation are still. fixated. with. high. school, the cloud of obsession seems to have blinded everyone to the fact that there is something inherently wrong with stalking little girls.

Because these ARE little girls we’re talking about. Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Taylor Momsen. When we’re not urging them to slather on the eyeliner and hike up their skirts, we’re glamorizing their world, turning high school into a multi-million dollar soap opera where everyone is scheming or talking like 30 Somethings or having sex with anything that purses it’s lips. For those of us who remember high school without the Hollywood Glasses, you’ll recall that no matter where you went, it was decidedly unglamorous. It was boring, sometimes lonely, a lot awkward, and stuffed to the brim with tests, feeble attempts to fit in, and college application essays.

Ask any mother today who isn’t on crack if she’d be happy with her 15-year-old having sex, and she’d blurt the word no faster than you could think it. When Ms. Cyrus’s cellphone is hacked into and her frighteningly-too-old half naked poses are stuffed onto the world wide web, we’re “horrified”. But when she walks around with a full face of makeup, hair extensions, high heels, and revealing clothing, she’s just being a “teen star”. The Lolita posing is too overtly sexual; while the “Disney Vamp” is just subtle enough to keep us from feeling guilty.

These thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for a long time, ever since it hit me that I knew more about certain Disney shows than I did about what was happening in Iraq, but what has got me calling bullsh*t is this article by the New York Observer. The fluffy piece is all about the aforementioned Taylor Momsen, the 15-year-old actress who plays Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl. Journalist Sara Vilkomerson obviously has fallen prey to America’s tween obsession, because the way she describes Momsen is so overt it should make ALL of us uncomfortable.

“Ms. Momsen has emerged as the show’s true It Girl: admired, lusted after and, of course, scorned.”

“Boys and men—in their teens and 20s and beyond—can’t help but be drawn to her coltish beauty…”

“She is tall and striking, and that day was dressed like other young teens out on the street—jean cutoffs, a white T-shirt that hung casually off a slender shoulder…but with that indefinable shimmering charisma that had fellow Pinkberry patrons of all ages doing a double take”

“Her legs are epic, long and stretching out from here to forever.”

The more I read, the more freaked out I became. We’re not describing some of-age starlet here, we’re describing a child. A child. A child who’s practiced talking to adults and smiling in a way that makes people believe she’s mature enough to be treated like one of them. But she’s not. Neither is Miley Cryus, or any of those tween stars we follow around with cameras and microphones. Neither was Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. No 15-year-old girl is ready to be seen and treated like a sexpot. She may think she is, but it’s our job as an adult nation to tell her to “march right back upstairs and put on some clothes that actually fit“.

Right now, we’re not doing our job. We’re looking the other way, or passing them push-up bras under the table, or handing over a bottle of beer. We’re allowing their hormones to not only run their lives, but run ours as well. A country so dead set against mixing religion and politics has been praying to the God of Tweendom ever since a barely legal Britney burst onto the scene in a belly-baring top calling us baby and asking us to hit her one more time.

I won’t even ask why underage boy stars aren’t being targeted by widespread adult lust. It’s a question too obvious to need an answer. But I will ask — no, plead — with everyone who remembers the first wave of stirrup pants and the screeching sound of AOL on 56K modem to stop what they’re doing right now and admit that our Tweenophelia has gotten out of control. Only after we admit we have a problem lusting after girls we should be protecting can we start wiping the red lipstick off their mouths, and the half naked photos from their iPhones.

Really, America, let’s stop being That Creep Who Sits On a Park Bench With a Pocketfull of Lollipops. It’s not a good look for us…and people are starting to stare.