Sex and the Single Tween

Sex and the Single Tween

BY ABIGAIL JONES / JANUARY 22, 2014 2:07 PM EST

Newsweek

You Go, Sexy Mama!”

Four best friends pile onto a couch in an attic playroom in a leafy suburb of Boston. It is the fall of 2009, just a few hours after school has let out for Thanksgiving break. The girls wear Uggs and Juicy Couture sweatshirts and are discussing boys, Lady Gaga and blow jobs. Every few minutes, someone screams, “Ewwwwww!” “Wait, you guys – what’s going on at school? Who’s dating who?” asks Madison, then 11, who had recently left the local middle school for a private school. She has long blond hair, arched eyebrows and a gigantic smile.

“I’m not dating anyone right now,” says Sarah, 11, who lives across the street and says she wants to be an interior designer. She has an innocent face and wears a pink fleece jacket and dangly star earrings.

“Me neither!” barks Brianna, 12, the athlete of the group.

The only girl who doesn’t answer is Cat, a bubbly, plump 11-year-old who has a boyfriend but won’t admit it, so Brianna shouts, “Cat dates Andy!”

“Ewwwwwww!” the girls squeal.

After practicing their supermodel walks and screeching comments like “Rearrrrr!” and “You go, sexy mama!” they discuss what sexy means.

“When you’re sexy, it means you show off your body,” says Madison, who wants to be either an archaeologist or a Victoria’s Secret model. “Boys look for boobs.”

“No they don’t,” Brianna says. “Boys look for hot.”

The girls don’t think any of this is good news, but they also accept it as fact.

“I think that, um, our generation of kids is more advanced than like, any other,” says Brianna.

“I think it’s influenced from the media,” says Cat.

“Did you hear what Adam Lambert did?” Brianna says, referring to the singer’s controversial performance at the recent American Music Awards. “He kissed a guy. He made out with a guy on national TV. He did a little” she pauses, lowering her voice “oral sex there.”

“Wait – what is oral?” asks Madison.

The girls erupt in laughter, then unanimously agree that Miley Cyrus is a bad influence (and this was years before her twerking episode). “In Party in the USA, she’s like, humping a pole,” Madison says.

“And she has a tank top on,” Brianna shouts. “And that’s it! And her black bra is showing. Her shorts are up to here,” pointing high up on her own thigh.

MOST SHARED

No matter what the topic, their conversation always seemed to come back to sex. And a lot of their questions were directed at me.

“Do men measure their penises?”

“Do the girls care how big they are?”

“Are you getting married?”

“Are you a virgin?”

“Do you want kids?”

“Of course you’re a virgin, right?” says Madison, looking at me. “We’re all virgins!”

“But you’re not,” Brianna says, to me, in a hushed voice.

Cat’s mom walks in with Madison’s younger sister, Emma.

“So we can um, talk about something else?” Madison says as Emma slides onto the couch. She looks around the room with the awe of someone just granted a backstage pass to a concert she wasn’t allowed to attend in the first place. She sits next to me and plays with a pair of magnets.

“You know when I was saying like, our generation is earlier?” Brianna says. “Most people know, like, thingsssss. And they know what they’re called, and they know how to do it. Like, grinding.”

“What is that?” says Sarah. “Or do I not want to know?”

Emma tries to look occupied, but she is clearly clocking every moment, every detail: the way these older girls talk, dress, laugh and tease. They realize it, too, and quickly migrate to the other side of the playroom, where they practice handstands and check themselves out in the mirror. At one point, Madison stands up and shouts at me, “We promise we’ll let you in on all the info.”

And then, to her sister: “Emma, it’s sixth-grade stuff. You’ll know soon enough.”

Today, 91 percent of 12- to 13-year-old girls have Internet access and 72 percent have mobile access

Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate

The hyper-sexualization of young girls is everywhere. Every Halloween, costume companies market somewhat provocative versions of skeletons, vampires, piratesand gothic ballerinasto tweens and teens. In 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch soldchildren's thong underwear embossed with the phrases "wink, wink" and "eye candy." Almost a decade later, the brand marketed"push up" bikini tops to girls. Victoria's Secret PINK has come under fire for its Bright Young Things line, which features undies and thongs decorated with phrases like "I dare you" and "Call me." The 2008 poster advertisements for the TV show Gossip Girlhad tag lines like "Every Parent's Nightmare" and "Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate" alongside images of characters in passionate embraces.

Rainbow Briteand Strawberry Shortcake have morphed from pudgy cartoon characters into slimmed down infantile sexpots, and even My Little Pony and Candyland- yes, a toy horse and a board game - got sexy makeovers. And as everyone with a TV, computer, smartphone or newspaper knows, Miley Cyrus proved she is no longer a Disney Girl by strutting around the stage at the 2013 MTV VMAs in flesh-colored latex underwear, her tongue wagging, her hips gyrating, a huge foam finger provocatively thrust between her legs.

Over the past two decades, the rise of the Internet and social media initiated a dramatic shift in popular culture: Almost everything that could be sexualized has been sexualized, producing a new generation of girls racing toward womanhood before even finishing puberty. The result terrifies many adults: American women, age tween.

Exactly what – and who – is a tween? Tweens range in age from 10 to 12 years or 8 to 14 years, depending on whom you ask. The U.S. Census estimatesthat there are more than 20 million tweens in the country; just under half are girls, and they are the primary focus of this story. The nickname “tween” references a vaguely defined life stage (somewhere between childhood and adolescence) but it also delineates a dynamic marketing niche. At the same time, the word tween has become so common that it allows many adults to distance themselves from this radical transformation in the sexualization of young girls, as if it were just another life stage. Normal, even.

For the last few years, I have been following this stunning transformation, talking with girls, parents and experts. When I met Brianna, Sarah, Cat and Madison in 2009, social media had not yet infiltrated tweendom; Instagram didn’t exist, nor did Snapchat and Vine. Facebook and Twitter were still the province of teenagers and adults. And yet it was clear even then that tween girls were totally plugged in to popular culture, trends and sex – an education their parents were constantly – and sometimes desperately – scrambling to monitor.

It is impossible to write about the representative tween, since each girl has unique experiences, interests and points of reference. Geographic, racial, religious, socioeconomic and familial factors vary, too, and play key roles in development. Because they have ready access to the technologies, social media, fashions and culture that play such a prominent role in their sexualization, I have focused on the experiences of middle- and upper-middle-class girls. (Unless first and last names are given, all names have been changed for confidentiality.)

Today’s tween is no longer a child but not yet an adolescent; too old for Barbie dolls and Disney Junior, too young for Facebook and to understand the search results that pop up when she googles “sexy.” She is old enough to text, want designer jeans and use Instagram, but too young to have her own credit card and driver’s license. Still, she is a malleable thinker, consumer and marketing target. Each day, she is exposed to eight to 12 hours of media, depending on her age, that hones her understanding of how she is supposed to act. She spends a significant portion of her day plugged in – communicating, posting photos, playing games, surfing the web, watching videos and socializing. When TV, music, social media and the Internet are used as baby-sitters – when adults don’t ask girls questions or encourage them to think critically (and sometimes even when they do) – a dangerous scenario emerges: The media start to parent.

The tween years are a period of learning and acclimation, yet the lessons of gender and sexuality begin much earlier. Forty-five percent of 6- to 9-year-old girls use lip gloss or lipstick, 61 percent wear nail polish (up from 54 percent in 2008) and 42 percent use perfume or body spray, according to a 2013 study by Experian Marketing Services. Those numbers jump when girls hit their early teens: 65 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds use lipstick or lip gloss, 84 percent wear nail polish and 78 percent wear perfume. And according to a 2009 Newsweek article, girls ages 8 to 12 each spend approximately $7,170 on hair, face, hands and feet during their tween years. Among 8- to 11-year-old girls, 46 percent like to keep up with the latest fashions and 35 percent think it’s important to wear “cool” clothes, according to Experian.

This desire to dress up is learned from parents, older siblings, friends, toys, magazines, books, computer games, apps, social media platforms, Disney characters, parent-approved celebrities, parent-disapproved celebrities, pop music, shopping malls, advertisements, billboards and more.

For decades, Disney has been raising girls on cartoon princesses of effortless beauty, impossible proportions and a penchant for crowns and mirrors. They are good and chaste, sexy but not sexual. As girls grow up, they graduate from those cartoon movies to shows like Miley Cyrus’s seminal Hannah Montanaand, later, The Bachelor, a reality series on Disney-owned ABC that pairs a modern-day prince with a parade of interchangeable Miss America lookalikes who are sexually attractive but not sexual, educated but not overtly intelligent.

“The TV tweens are watching is getting racier,” says Jane Buckingham, founder and chief executive officer of Trendera, a consulting firm with expertise on younger generations. “It used to be all Nickelodeon and Disney; now Pretty Little Liarsis a huge hit among tweens. That is a scary show with a lot of sophisticated content.” The show, on ABC Family, is rife with sexual innuendo, mature language, stealing, lying and murder, plus a high school student has a sexual relationship with her teacher. “Even the language on Disney and Nick is getting more sophisticated, because the 8- and 9-year-olds are getting more sophisticated,” Buckingham adds.

Today’s preteen girl is a new breed. “The way kids dress when they go to school is just beyond me. They come into my office barely clothed!” says Barbara Daley, a child and adolescent psychologist in Boston who has worked with patients for 25 years. “They’re wearing a little cami, and if they are among the developed kids, you know, who let you out of the house? It’s all designed to be provocative, but I don’t think they really know what they’re provoking.”

American girls are entering puberty earlier. For decades, it was generally accepted that girls hit puberty at the age of 11. In 1997, a landmark studyof 17,000 girls found that the mean age for the beginning of breast development was 8.87 years for African-American girls and 9.96 years for white girls; for pubic hair, it was 8.78 years and 10.51 years, respectively. Then, in 2010, another studyfound that by the age of 7, 23 percent of black girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls and 10 percent of white girls had started developing breasts.

“If you’re 11 and you look 15, people will interact with you like you’re 15 – but you’re only 11. And you’ll interact back like you’re 11. You’re more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviors,” says Dr. Frank Biro, director of research, adolescent and transition medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, whose 2013 studylinked early-onset puberty with obesity.

“Kids seem to be developing earlier and getting more sexually focused earlier,” says Daley. “They are sexually active a lot earlier, too; as early as 12 or 13 is not so unusual, whereas before, I’d say about 10 years ago, it used to be really unusual.”

In our media-saturated world, this sexualization seems unstoppable, and for many of the people involved – marketers, image makers, entertainers and corporations – desirable.

Like a Virgin

Adolescence as we know it was born in 1904, with the publication of G. Stanley Hall’s groundbreaking book of the same name. What was once regarded as a biological process of maturation came to be understood as an entire life stage: “Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born,” Hall wrote. “Development is less gradual and more salutary, suggestive of some ancient period of storm and stress when old moorings were broken and a higher level attained.” In 1950, Erik Erikson integrated developmental and social psychological concepts into his major work on the stages of life, Childhood and Society. Emphasizing the “identity crisis” of teenagers, Erikson defined for generations the struggles of adolescence.

By that point, middle-class girls were already a discernible target for marketers. In the 1940s and 1950s, Helen Pessel sold her Little Lady line of cosmetics to 6- to 14-year-olds, and Munsingwear and Teenform marketed bras to young girls. In 1959, Barbie arrived. Dressed like a sunbathing glam goddess, she was a transition toy for girls too old for baby dolls and old enough to image having boyfriends. Barbie had the hair, the breasts and Ken, teaching girls what to desire while showing other marketers and businesses how to reach them. In 1960, Earnshaw’s Infants’ and Children’s Merchandiser, a leading publication of the children’s clothing industry, devoted a column to what it called the “subteen world,” describing the “subteen” as “half-girl and half-woman” – bold yet demure, sassy yet chaste. Thus began the gradual yet persistent sexualization of girls: the selling of girls, to girls, by advertisers, the media and, one might argue, their parents.

In the 1980s, sexual tension and virginity invaded American girlhood in the forms of Madonna, MTV and the AIDS crisis. The infamous 1980 Calvin Klein adsfeaturing Brooke Shields, then 15, epitomized the union of youth and sex. In a series of commercials, Shields seduced the audience with lines like, "Mama said he's only interested in my Calvins" and "You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Her body, face and poses were seductive, and although she looked older than a teenager, she also looked like a girl playing dress-up. By that point, Shields was already an established brand of pedophilic adoration. Five years earlier, at the age of 10, she posedfor provocative bathtubphotos. With her prepubescent body oiled up and her face thick with dark eye shadow, thick mascara, blush and red lipstick, she faced the camera naked, washing herself with a sponge. The photos, which Shields's mother consented to, appeared in Sugar and Spice, a Playboy Press publication, and large prints were exhibited by Charles Jourdan on Fifth Avenue in New York City. When she was 12, Shields had played a child prostitute in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby. The Calvin Klein ads (shot by renowned photographer Richard Avedon) simply capitalized on Shields's persona, and in return, Shields proved that sex, girlhood and marketing sells (in this case, jeans).

By the 1990s, the Internet made pornography instantly accessible. Girls started wearing low-rise jeans, thong underwear and bellybutton rings. Sex and the City, which famously featured the Brazilian in a 2000 episode, glamorized the successful single woman with her bachelorette pad and trail of suitors, making the privileges of adulthood accessible to young women. A decade later, Gossip Girlbestowed those privileges upon teenagers.

Sex was not simply a pillar of the entertainment industry; it permeated the news coverage of politics, too. In 1998, President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky brought sex talk to the dinner table. Later that year, Viagra arrived.

In the mid-1990s, the cynically infantile British girl band, the Spice Girls, leveraged the purchasing power of millions of preteens and teens by selling music under the guise of girl power. In doing so, they primed the public for a crop of fresh-faced teenage Lolitas; Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Christina Aguilera quickly transformed from parent-approved good girls to sexed-up pop stars. When Paris Hilton’s sex video leaked in 2003, right before her first reality TV show, The Simple Life, aired, sex was so integral a part of American pop culture that the scandal boosted her career, much like a hot music video would have a decade earlier.