Thursday, May 1, 2008
younger and younger...
I work at a private gym in West Hollywood where a lot of "top" celebrities workout. I haven't written about it before because it seems to me to be a bit of a violation to write about them, but what I saw yesterday has stuck with me and I think would be relevant for the class. There is a new client there who is 14 years old. She is making the "push" to become a starlet. There is something so disturbing about seeing a girl that age (she looks even younger than she is) doing weight lifting and running on a treadmill (for $200 a session). Call me old-fashioned (or midwestern), but I sort of feel that a child that age should be in dance classes or on a sports team. Watching her look at herself in the mirror as she lifted weights and talk about tone in her arms made me sort of sad, and concerned for her. If she is starting so young to be concerned with how "attractive" her body is, I can't help but think if she finds the "success" for which she is reaching, there will be some pretty serious psychological problems there.
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2 comments:
It definitely is disturbing to look at 13 and 14 year old adolescents and consider the pressure they put themselves under to conform to certain ideals of physical representation. I want to say that it is shocking to hear about a girl so young at the gym to 'sculpt' her body but looking back to when I was fourteen it really does seem to fit. I think we tend to consider young teens to be so naive and innocent but from what I remember about being a Freshman in highschool, you actually deal with much more 'adult' issues than we want to remember. (Just think about the movie "Thirteen".) What I think the problem is more specifically is that at that age the pressures to conform are more keenly felt and more psychological intense at that age. Perhaps it is because 12-15 are when girls typically go through puberty and struggle to assimilate themselves into the entirely new realm of sexuality. For the first time, they are dealing with their image in this new territory and trying to find out what it all means. To my mind, this is the greatest fault of our cultural iconography and discourse. We tend to forget about this stage of our development and not really think about how 13 and 14 year olds look to their 20/30 something idols for how to act and look as young adults. So what we get are entire generations of young teens looking up to the stars and narratives that portray and glorify "successful" images of adult sexuality - leaving them to believe that being an adult holds the expectation that they will emulate those ideals.
-Olivia E
so who is it?!?!
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