In the digital age, we’re under pressure to attain certain beauty standards and trending aesthetics. The need to glow up and conform to these standards can especially be seen in young girls. Last semester I took a women’s and gender studies course and the lack of spaces for children to simply exist and just be kids are far too few and so it became a topic of discussion. The concept of “glowing up” has to do with fixing your previous appearance and becoming more beautiful and the best version of yourself. Now this doesn’t sound like a harmful thing to want to achieve, as self-improvement is great at any age, but it also ties in with the idea of transforming one’s appearance to meet societal standards of perfection. Glowing up has become a trend seen on almost all social media platforms such as Tik Tok, YouTube and Instagram. This has led to an influx of aesthetics that people try to conform to and label themselves as. Every two weeks new aesthetics are made that have their own name, style, fragrance and lifestyle such as the clean girl aesthetic, soft girl aesthetic and many more. These aesthetics with no personality behind them can be seen as a search for identity when you don’t know who you are yet.
From an early age young girls are bombarded with this type of media on all social media platforms where they can see celebrities and influencers promoting a certain lifestyle complete with flawless makeup, seemingly perfect bodies and trendy outfits. This creates unrealistic expectations in impressionable young people who have yet to grow into themselves and figure out who they are. Lately in the media I’ve seen how there have been kids in Sephora being rude to workers and asking for retinol and other products not needed for their skin at such a young age. This media bombardment creates pressure on young girls to mimic these standards for them to feel that they fit in and are valued by those around them. The pursuit of glowing up for the wrong reasons ends up stripping young kids of their innocence and childhood a lot of the time. These tweens might be trying so hard to appear grown up because there are no spaces for them. When I was growing up there were stores like The Children’s Place and Justice whose target demographics were tweens and young kids. These stores still exist but are not as popular with younger kids today and so nowadays when you go to the mall, here aren’t a lot of tween centered stores for that age group to buy from. If there are more space for these kids to exist in, then it’s likely they won’t feel the need to grow up as quickly and instead enjoy where they currently are in life. A focus on external beauty at an early age can lead to the overshadowing of personal talents and developments such as creativity and education. This can lead to young girls prioritizing their appearance over their talent or intellect.
Since tweens and kids have access to the whole world at their fingertips, not much restriction seems to be placed on them. As mentioned previously, this causes them to be exposed to more media catered towards adults, which makes me wonder whether that should then be the responsibility of the parents. A lot of the time, some of these desired aesthetics are also made to make women only feel valued when they are desired by men. These trends are then seen by younger girls and because there aren’t enough spaces or social media influencers catered towards tweens, so they take on these older trends and it becomes what makes you cool or not. This is why it’s so important to get your own boost of confidence not from others but from yourself. Instead of striving for perfection, self-love and self-acceptance should be embraced as there can’t be beauty without diversity.