Over the past decade, an increasing number of adolescent girls have been featured in runway shows and high-fashion advertisements. Slate magazine notes that an Australian modeling agency recently announced it’s search for thirteen-year-old models, since sixteen-year-olds were allegedly “too old.” A now banned Marc Jacobs perfume ad features seventeen-year-old Dakota Fanning posed with the bottle between her thighs. A photo spread in the December issue of Vogue Paris displayed ten-year-old Thylane Loubry Blondeau, who modeled in a Jean-Paul Gaultier show at the age of four, and other young girls dressed provocatively in full makeup and heels. These girls, barely tweens, looked like they were well into their twenties.
These are just a few examples of a disturbing trend that has spurred worldwide controversy and concern. What exactly has caused the average age of runway models to drop so significantly over the years? Slate magazine explains that considering what the fashion industry is all about, it makes sense that models are become younger and younger. From the impossibly small sample sizes that only the undeveloped can fit into, to the desire for novelty and the “fierce need to snag the next hot thing before anyone else does,” younger girls are becoming much more sought-after in the fashion world.
This trend reflects not just the desires of the fashion industry, but also of our culture at large: namely, youth and thinness. Our standards of beauty and womanhood have become so skewed, that they are only attainable at the age of thirteen. How are women in their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond supposed to feel when they see clothes they should be wearing instead featured on the tiny bodies of girls young enough to be their daughters? It’s no wonder how many anti-aging products there are on the shelves.
And what about the impressionable young girls seeing these ads? Are they meant to ditch their sneakers for heels and start caking on the makeup too? Worse, what effect will the sexualization of younger and younger girls have on society? Countless studies have shown how harmful the sexualization and objectification of women in the media can be, yet instead of moving toward ending that trend, the media is just picking younger targets.
It’s human nature to want to be old when you’re young and want to be young when you’re old. But the fashion industry, and the media overall, is warping those feelings to an unhealthy, dangerous degree. Action should be taken to combat this trend before newborns wearing red lipstick start crawling down the runway.
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