Reeling in the Tweens and Teens

Sadly those days are gone or at least on their last legs. The sexualisation of children by the media is not about to abate, with padded bras for girls as young as 8 years old, frilly knickers with adult-themed slogans on for toddlers, spa treatments for pampered little princesses and now the adult female market for beauty products is saturated, cosmetics companies are increasingly targeting our young. As psychologist Dr. Jean Kilbourne said to me, all these trends are,

“imposing an adult sexuality on children in a very freakish way. What it is really about is making sexuality sell products and getting that connection in peoples’ minds very early in life so that sexuality and products become very confused. Making that link is essential to capitalism because then you have people lined up at the mall for the rest of their lives.”

This is not some kind of crazy conspiracy theory, marketers strive to create a perceived need for products, which in the case of beauty products are rarely unique. Most beauty products contain the same or similar ingredients, perhaps with the odd botanical in to persuade us that the product has some kind of therapeutic effect. 

In the 2002 Grayson Report, produced by professional marketing gurus Suzanne and Bob Grayson they point out that competition keeps margins tight, so the only way to increase profitability is to create a need for newer products of greater benefit. However, they admit that truly new products

“with benefits that are both perceived and significant, are difficult to come by,” and “while products may be different from brand to brand, they are virtually equally satisfactory.”

It’s quite simply the branding that differentiates one product from another. Making children and teenagers insecure about their appearance is the cosmetic industry’s meal ticket to greater profits and happier shareholders, because if they can catch them young, they will be tied into a lifetime of fear-based consumerism. As the industry news site Cosmetics Design states, an increase in spending power has made teens and tweens “a profitable market for many companies.”

Kids’ Superbrands claim in a marketing industry publication,

“The very best kids’ brands create strong relationships that accompany the child through to adulthood when he/she will become the key decision maker.”

The cosmetic industry is determined to ‘educate’ tweens and pre-tweens about looking after their skin (with a bucketload of beauty products I might add, as opposed to living a healthy lifestyle). According to Cosmeticsdesign.com a recent NPD report valued the market for products aimed at girls between 8 and 12 at $500 dollars, and Packaged Facts estimated in 2007 that annual US sales for the teen and tween categories had reached $6.9 billion. 

According to industry magazine Advertising Age,

“Marketers are scrambling to develop new products for retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and K-Mart, which industry observers note are looking to aggressively focus on tween girls.”

Manufacturers are particulary focusing on skin care, colour cosmetics, body sprays and fragrances. Playing on childrens love of premium brands, Bratz (the dolls with a passion for fashion and obviously lashings of mascara and lipstick) branded cosmetics and toothpastes are now available.

Lotta Luv have brought out Bubble Yum lip gloss, which I am sure children will love chowing down on. Let’s hope they don’t contain traces of the neurotoxin lead which is often present as a contaminant in lipsticks. It’s already been discovered that children born between 1960 and 1980 have lower IQs because of the presence of lead in petrol. If our young start gobbling their pleasant tasting but noxious cherry flavoured lipsticks perhaps we’ll see even more incidences of ADHD.

Cosmetics Design notes that research has indicated that teenage personal case use is driven by a desire to,

“establish a sense of individuality, tempered by a need for belonging or acceptance within society in general or by a particular peer group.”

As if being a tween and teen isn’t difficult enough without having to worry about fleeting fashion trends, what shade of eye-shadow to wear and whether you’ve got enough pocket money to buy a premium-priced bottle of celebrity-branded eau de toilette. Children and teens simply don’t need all this rubbish, or to be worrying about cosmetics and deodorant at 8 years old. Apocrine sweat glands, associated with the dreaded B.O. don’t develop until mid-puberty anyway. Eating healthily and cutting down on meat can alleviate some undesirable odours once you hit puberty. 

What is more, children are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products for a number of reasons. Just recently it was discovered that women who were regularly exposed to high levels of hairspray containing phthalates during pregnancy were twice as likely to have babies born with genital defects known as hypospadias (where the urinary tract is along the underside of the penis in males instead of at the tip). In 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found the known carcinogen 1,4-dioxane in dozens of children’s bath products at levels twice the US FDA’s recommended maximum.

With cosmetic manufacturers increasing targeting children and teenagers, they are potentially putting them at risk of developing serious health problems, and diminishing their self-esteem to record low levels. What sort of society is it going to be where we have millions of appearance obsessed adults who can’t face leaving the house without applying hundreds of chemicals to their bodies and who value themselves only for how they look?