I’m scrolling through TikTok to find two girls around the ages of 8 through 10 filming a ‘Get Ready with Me’ style video. Throughout the segment you watch both of these girls apply multiple makeup products and curl their hair.
A ‘Get Ready with Me’ is a video in which a creator shows the steps they take while preparing for an event or just for fun.
Watching young girls not only put on inordinate amounts of makeup for school, but seeing that they’re filming and posting it, reminds me of the way social media impacted my sense of beauty and self-worth at a young age.
I was shocked to see such young kids posting that kind of content on TikTok. I have seen children on TikTok before, but it would be a random account where there’s only 4 likes and the kid would just be using a silly filter.
I was shocked to see the two friends’ interactions and language towards each other. One of
them pulled out a makeup bag showing expensive brands such as Tarte’s concealer, bronzing drops, and Rare Beauty blush. The other showed off the curls she just styled in her hair. The girl who recorded the video had highlights in her hair as well as fake nails.
I do not blame these young girls, they’ll just repeat what they see and find appealing and entertaining on TikTok. There are no issues with older creators creating these ‘Get Ready with Me’ videos in the first place.
The main issue is why are these young children able to have a TikTok account to begin with? TikTok’s age restriction is supposed to be 13 years and older, but there is no second step verification to make sure that’s your real age.
I was either 10 or 11 years old when I secretly downloaded Instagram and Snapchat because I knew my mom would be furious if she found out I had these apps on my phone.
As I became familiar with these platforms, I started noticing a lot of the same kinds of ads that would come up every so often.
“LOSE 10 POUNDS IN 3 DAYS!”, “GREEN TEA SECRET PILL TO LOSE WEIGHT!”, “ERASE INCHES OFF YOUR WAIST,” read ads that would appear on my Instagram.
When I was 11 I remember standing in the checkout line at a grocery store with my mom, I looked over to the magazine stand to see multiple magazine covers being centered around women’s bodies.
The front page read just like any other 2014 celebrity gossip tabloid.
Headlines like “so-and-so celebrity lost her pregnancy fat,” were plastered in front of a line presumably hundreds of people walk through each day. Another magazine showed a before and after of a celebrity’s face with cosmetic surgery and face-fat removal.
Walking around the mall and seeing posters of girls with big thigh gaps, clear skin and tiny waists showed me all qualities that I had wished I had at 11 years old.
With all these advertisements of what women’s bodies are supposed to look like, I became very insecure at a very young age because this media was drowning me with ways to hate my appearance.
The precedent was set in my 11-year-old brain that if my thighs touched, or if I had stomach rolls when I sat down, I was not up to par with the beauty standards of a “conventionally” attractive woman, which I already wanted to be at that age.
What hurts the most is that these standards glamorize femininity, and this skewed sense of what is considered beautiful is ingrained into young girl’s minds so early.
Even though I have grown up and out of the mindset that my insecurities define me, that doesn’t mean current tweenagers aren’t going to have the same insecurities I used to have.
