Make-up or Make-down for Young Girls?
Comments(0) This week I read Felicia Firdaus’ blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/ffirdaus/), about Walmart’s new “Geo Girls” cosmetics line for tween girls between the ages of 8-12 years old. This is not something new as there has been make up products available to tweens before, such as the “Stuff by Duff” line by Hilary Duff.
Image from perfumezilla.com
Felicia brings up a good point/issue regarding the appropriateness of selling the “Geo Girls” line, or make up in general, to such a young audience.
I agree with her statements on the implications and problems that arise from selling the product to young girls. Certainly there are many media influences that young girls are especially susceptible to that make them feel not pretty enough and insecure about their looks. There are models in ads who are covered with pounds of makeup and young girls may aspire to become like them and this often leads to girls thinking that “looks” are everything. These are some reasons why young girls might start using makeup and I’ve noticed in recent years there are a growing number of girls wearing makeup at a very young age.
I find it shocking though for “Geo Girls” to target eight year olds, that’s a third grader! I believe makeup is something that someone older uses to look younger. So I don’t think there’s much use for an eight year old to look any younger than they already do. I mean how much younger can they get?
What I think is that “Geo Girls” should advertise to the parents and not to the tweens through mediums such as ads on a kids tv channel. It should be the parents who determine whether their tweens should use the product; parents should have the final say in the decision.