Story by Ruby Foudy
Staff Writer
Photo by Sunny (Sunhye) Choi
Staff Photographer
Frappuccinos, slime, and Claire’s are all classic hallmarks of late 2000s tween culture. In 2024, the majority of those things are now deemed “embarrassing” by their target audience. Slime has been swapped with Sephora; acting your age is out and acting 21 at 12 is in. Thanks to social media, tween culture is dead, and their hypersexualization has been born. Young girls are being hypersexualized online and are forced to mature at a young age, erasing the tween phase and jumping head-first into adulthood.
Shopping at trendy stores and buying makeup at a young age seems harmless, but it leads down a much more sinister path. The common sexualization of teenage girls in the media, although unsettling, has been normalized by society. However, it seems that with every year that goes by, the bar for objectifying underage girls sinks lower and lower, beginning with even young girls aged 11 to 13. This, like many issues, stems from social media.
The male gaze often manipulates content directed to girls. This suggests that the only way to be romantically attractive is to be seen as sexually mature. The “hot school girl” trope perpetuated by the media and the objectification of childlike features is alarmingly normalized, leading young girls to see being sexual as a usual aspect of being 12. Thirteen-year-olds posting harmless videos online host comment sections not unsimilar to those under the accounts of sex workers. TikToks of 12-year-olds wearing a full face of makeup go viral, buoyed by hundreds of suggestive comments by 40-year-old men. AI-generated pictures of minors’ nudes are circulated on the internet. Deep fakes of child pornography are all too common.
Girls are given the illusion that they are in control and that they want to be viewed as being mature and attractive. In order to justify this behavior, girls are typically assured that they are being “sexually liberated.” This is not the case. To be sexually liberated, they would have to be sexually oppressed and make a conscious decision to embrace their sexuality. When it comes to underaged girls, it is just hypersexualization.
Sexist ideology is also a factor alongside social media. From a young age, many girls are told how much more mature they are than boys, and how they are practically “all grown up.” The idea of acting older than their age has already been planted in their heads by their own parents before they get to third grade. Of course, it is not done with malicious intent or ulterior motives, but in the end, the parents set their own children up to be sexualized. They lead little girls to believe being seen as mature is always a good thing, and that it is what is expected of them. This mindset only makes young girls more susceptible to being influenced by their constant sexualization and playing into it, desperate to be seen as mature.
The concept of maturity has deviated into the hypersexualization of young children. Tweens are told to act like teens, and teens are told to act like adults. The once innocent and juvenile culture of young girls has been erased by social media and replaced with hypersexualization. Young girls are not toys for grown men to play with. They are not sex symbols for the media to tout across screens. Society needs to denormalize sexualizing tween girls and let them drink their frappuccinos and play with their slime in peace.
