Advertising...still continued

Today, girls are more focused on making sure they have lip gloss on than learning how to read. “According to a NEWSWEEK examination of the most common beauty trends, by the time your 10-year-old is 50, she'll have spent nearly $300,000 on just her hair and face” (Bennett). Girls are being taught by the pop culture of today that anything can be upgraded and the more they have the better off they will be (Bennett). It has also been made clear that girls are taught at a very young age what the perfect body type is, and they begin to do just about anything to get it. “A recent study conducted on college sophomores in California found that over 60% have tried to lose weight by dieting…of the 60%, an alarming number of girls started dieting by the time they were eleven, and an overwhelming 84% had dieted by age fourteen” (Adams).  On the TLC show Toddlers and Tiaras, girls as young as two are taught about the importance of wearing makeup and constantly being aware of their appearance. Little girls admiring themselves in the mirror is a common image on this hit reality show. In the pageant world, girls are taught to always be perfect. Moms on the show constantly remind their daughters that the judges look at their whole appearance from head to toe. According to Belinda Luscombe author of the article “The Truth about Teen Girls,” girls learn from a very young age what it means to be sexy. She claims that in one generation, girls seem to have moved from Easy-Bake to easy virtue. “Sounds extreme? Maybe. But this, my friends, is the new normal: a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor” (Bennett). Yet moms still continue to spend money to please their daughters. Perhaps the reason for this is that the moms are just as sucked into the advertising as their daughters.