Newsflash time, people: Little girls like to play with makeup. Shocking stuff, at least if you read yesterday’s Guardian.
The inappropriate sexualisation of young children is, of course, nothing to encourage. But the predictable calls for government intervention to prevent female children from being exposed to the radical ideas that girls often like to make themselves look as pretty as possible and girls often like boys that way are as ludicrous as they are predictable. Once again, we are told, it is not acceptable to entrust parents with the care of their children – we must step in and make new laws to restrict commerce. The likes of Bliss magazine should only be purchased with proof of ID and age. If we can just keep these magazines out of the hands of our (and other peoples’) daughters, we can raise a generation of females who do not think about their physical appearances or their feelings for the opposite sex. And if we can achieve that, then we will be a little closer to “equality”.
The Guardian also files this first-person account of a 10-year-old’s experiences with cosmetics and perfume. All of it is the same standard stuff that I remember from my childhood in the ’80s: hijacking mummy’s lipstick, ill-advised experiments with blue eyeshadow, spending pocket money on pink nail varnish and playing beauty salon with friends. Perhaps not finding any of this quite shocking enough to spur Guardianistas into joining the fight against big, bad commerce, the piece concludes with little Joanna’s confession that:
I like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and I’d like to be one of them. I like the way they dress. I’d like to walk down the catwalk. I’ve got Christina Aguilera on my wall.
Finally, something truly disturbing – and yet also not up to the state to control. Even if the idolatry of trashy pop stars or the normal, healthy female enthusiasm for boys and lipgloss could be legislated against, who would dare suggest that we should do so? Scarily enough, more people than one might think. In a nation where parents do not think it unreasonable to demand the state foot the bill for their child’s minding, healthcare, and education right through university, is it any shock that even those who themselves have no children expect the government to do yet more to raise them outright?
“In a nation where parents do not think it unreasonable to demand the state foot the bill for their child’s minding, healthcare, and education”
And don’t forget fruit….
“Over 80% of people say the government should subsidise the cost of fruit and vegetables to encourage healthy eating, a BBC survey (Link)has shown.”
Seriously, read the whole survey. It is enough to make a libertarian weep. People seem to have abidcated any notion of personal responsibility for their welfare and that of their children, in favour of tax-funded coercive intervention by the State at every level.
We’re having a bit of a week of that, aren’t we?
So far we’ve had the “ban drinking” survey (15%), the “ban smoking in public places” survey, today the “subsidise fruit & veg” survey… I’m left wondering what the exact wording of these were. Remember the conscription surveys suggested in Yes, Prime Minister?
Going tangential for a moment – I really don’t see why I should participate in market research if the researcher isn’t prepared to compensate me for my time. The surveys are worth money, the surveyors get paid… And I should give this information to them for free???
And who can forget getting one’s mother’s high heels and hats out of the closet and swanking around in front of the mirror, posing? And begging, age seven, to be allowed to at least have clear nail polish on one’s nails for a party?
This article was scary. Just imagine – an entire generation of girls raised to look like female Guardian readers! Aaaarrrggggh!!
This piece was a perfect illustration of socialist logic. Have women look as unadorned as possible so no one feels inferior. At the same time, these magazines for 10-yr old girls are full of extremely graphic advice on how to please boys sexually. So raise a generation of extremely plain, unadorned women who won’t threaten Guardian men, but will be available to them.
Did I miss the bit where they moralised about it? Sounded like reporting to me… If they did though, you’re right, that’s not particularly disturbing, though this is. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Did I miss the bit where they moralised about it? Sounded like reporting to me… If they did though, you’re right, that’s not particularly disturbing, though this is. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
(apologies if double post.. the link went wrong the first time round)
This is (another) illustration of the point that seems to slip past most people on this blog – the majority of the electorate WILL NOT knowingly vote for a libertarian platform or anything like it because they are quite happy to be dictated to in this (fairly mild) way.
People don’t noticeably want to exercise personal choice, at least not when it’s hard choices. Nor do they want to pay for everything, despite the fact they already do through taxation, because of the widespread perception that taxpayer funded services are somehow “free”.
I notice in the comments to the survey, someone said that only “the rich” can afford access to leisure centres. Interestingly enough, there is a leisure centre not 10 minutes walk from my house, adjacent to high density housing, which costs for general access about £32 per month. This is a lot less than I spend on cigarettes, which probably says a little too much about me, but it hardly puts leisure access into the category of luxury goods. Again, however, people seem to expect this should be “free”.
Unhealthy people will pay for booze. They will pay for cigarettes, they will frequently have a car with its attendant costs, but they will baulk at paying £1/day to get fit? I mean, if they stopped smoking, drank less and walked more this would probably have the same or greater effect and it would actually SAVE them money. But no, this should be provided “free” by Johnny bloody Taxpayer.
I read in a colleague’s tabloid rag today that some overweight squalid dole sponger who is apparently a TV “celebrity” after appearing on some reality show refuses to diet in order to qualify for free liposuction. No, this should be available for her anyway, however little effort she wants to make.
And people say I am wrong to have a low opinion of the competence of the general public. I don’t know.
This country is f**ked, honestly.
*** end of rant ***
EG
People seem to have abidcated any notion of personal responsibility for their welfare and that of their children
And this is it in a nutshell – even for people like me who accept some role for government (minimal but still probably more than most people here).
“we must step in and make new laws to restrict commerce”
Who said that?
Actually, I don’t believe I ever did such a thing…
Peter
Matthew: The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, that’s who.
Lordy lordy, if people want to get lardy & die early, that’s their own business. As for reducing the fees on leisure centres, there are always ways of taking exercise that don’t involve those dire places; running, cycling, even walking regularly. The drinking situation is similar; some poll last night on the bbc conceded that a majority thought it was up to the individual how much they drank… like, & that would not be the case when exactly???
I’m not as rabidly anti-statist as many here, but people in the UK really, really, really need to realise they are responsible for their own actions. The very fact you can ask the question “is how much a person drinks their own business?” indicates a sickness in society.
Money quote:
It’s alright for the State to encourage kids to lose weight, but God forbid a magazine preaching dieting.
A few years ago, the cause de jour was skinny women being promoted as glamorous, with the attendant hurtful pressure on people to lose weight.
The the cause de jour was obesity, with the attendant non-hurtful (because state inspired and taxpayer funded) pressure on people to lose weight.
Now the cause is the harmful effects of girls wearing make-up.
Tomorrow it will be the lamentable decline in the femininity of British women, because they don’t wear enough makeup.
I think what sums it up is a statistic in the survey – 57% of people think it is right for the government to try to influence what people eat, but 65% of people think what a person eats is his own business.
EG
The mindset behind the choice of topic for this grand remonstrance from the BBC on behalf of public opinion in advance of the political conference season is neatly encapsulated here. (Link)
The best bit is the peroration:
Banning is not the New Labour way. But this new opinion poll suggests deep anxiety about public health as the government prepares to publish its White Paper on the subject this Autumn.
Britain wants something done.
Banning not the New Labour way? Plainly the Beeb’s authoritative man must be right. Blairism is a non-interventionist, laissez-faire sort of creed, and I have been living in a paranoid delusion for the past decade.
Oops.
“Britain wants something done,” was intended to be part of the quotation, in case anyone is in any doubt.
A_T
“I’m not as rabidly anti-statist as many here”
Give it time 😉
It’s alright for the State to encourage kids to lose weight, but God forbid a magazine preaching dieting.
The state knows best. Capitalists cannot be allowed to influence anything.
For what it’s worth, when I was a kid, we were already reading about sex in our mothers’ copies of Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal and so forth. Cosmopolitan was a lot more explicit, and I remember it being passed around as far back as age 10. (Indeed, our public library had subscriptions to Cosmo, Mademoiselle and all those similar titles – I and other girls used to read them there, too.) I guess my generation is highly infected with STDs and parents to millions of aborted babies because we read magazines. But gosh, that’s nothing compared to the fact that so many of us wear makeup and perfume.
Since a principal selling point of many young women’s magazines is to flatter the reader’s sense of her own maturity, age limits are going to put them neatly out of business. Never mind 17 year-olds, no self respecting 16 year-old girl is going to be caught dead reading J[ust]-17–though a few sadly mistaken boys might be.
drscroogemcduck writes:
“When Mad About Boys, a glossy magazine aimed at nine- to 12-year-old girls, was launched in 2001, MPs warned that it portrayed them as sex objects…”
Wot?? Portraying MPs as sex objects to teenage girls? There should be state laws against that sort of thing! 😉
well I do have this bizarre fascination with Edwina Currie…
From the main post:
Well, heck, if they want “equality” with men, the girls should be encouraged to think about the opposite sex all the time, or at least once or twice a minute.
From Jackie:
This is as it should be. The functionaries of the state have your best interests in mind, whereas the capitalists are merely grubbing after filthy lucre.
The solution for the little girls is perfectly simple. Wrap them up in burqas. No more worrying about makeup and nail polish.
In fact, run the whole society that way. Why not emulate the religious tyrannies of the Middle East? No possibility of inconvenient thought or behavior then. Everyone a perfectly controlled, perfectly behaved automaton. Utopia, eh?
Rebecca – V good! Rebecca hit the nail on the head.
I wonder if little girls in Saudi Arabia parade around in front of mirrors in their mothers’ army socks, sandals and burquas. Maybe not. Could attract stoning.
Surely this magazine ‘Mad About Boys’ is portraying boys as sex objects for girls not the other way around. I also suspect that if a publisher produced a magazine aimed at nine to twelve year old boys called ‘Mad About Girls’ the outrage over ‘sexism’ would be deafening. Though of course no such magazine would ever be so launched as nine to twelve year old boys are not in the least interested in girls.