Little girls and make up.

Right great. Got some anger stored up for my first post, so ready to go.

What the fuck is wrong with parents (primarly mothers) who let their daughters do make up videos on Youtube? I'm talking about four year olds... Although anyone under the age of sixteen should probably be verbally attacked too. I'm not some crazy conservative nun but like many, I've always had a problem with things like beauty pageants for little girls because it's pretty clear they feed off gender ideals which should be condemned rather than encouraged. However that's not even what annoyed me about the videos I watched today.

I've always struggled personally with how I use make up; I do use it to cover up, I do use it to feel better, and I do use it to change how others see me. So there have often been times where I feel it is unhealthy or going against my own beliefs. It has only been in the last year my opinions have changed and I have realised make up isn't some anti-feminist tool, well not for me anyway. Yes if a girl feels she SHOULD NOT leave the house with it on then there are problems in her thinking, but I enjoy make up. I like the process of putting it on, I enjoy how I feel when I have it applied; I enjoy it as art as fucking bent as that sounds. I can change the shape of my eyes, lips, cheeks and essentially use make up as a power tool. As I mentioned before though, when a girl can't speak to a man without a full face of make up on, or wears it because he tells her to, then I feel this is when I feel it becomes suppressive.

Back to why I'm angry though. In an ideal world, if I was to have a little girl, I would love for her to be a tomboy. Playing outdoors and not caring about how she looked at the age of four... But it's inevitable that some little girls are just girly girls, maybe due to the thousands and millions of gender role messages that are pumped into our heads from birth. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this either, girly girls are cute aren't they...  But I just feel there is something worrying about a four year old girl who has a bigger make up collection than the average woman. Or am I getting old, perhaps this isn't as bad as I'm making out?

Among some pageant videos and make up tutorials by 5-11 year olds which I suppose are meant to be adorable or whatever? I found a video of a girl around nine. The video was called 'My MAC Cosmetics collection'. What the fuck is this shit? Surely at nine the only thing you are going to consider make up is some vaseline and bits of glitter from your glitter pens? But no this girl had MAC products. She even had MAC brushes. Fuck knows who's paying for these things. I couldn't afford my own MAC products until I was 20. I love MAC, but I think for a little girl to even know that brand is pretty sickening. I want to stick my hand in the screen, steal her away and force her to play outside on her bike. She probably doesn't have or want a bike though. Fucking weird children of today..

There are too many points I want to make but they are almost all subjective anyway so they are pretty much meaningless. I just don't understand why you would encourage your very young daughter to embrace such ideas about appearances and then allow them to post it on Youtube; perhaps making other nine year old girls think they are abnormal for not adopting such behaviour. It reminds me of a BBC3 documentary I saw about beauty pageants for children last year. It showed bright orange, pushy mothers coercing their little girls into activities which were really their own personal dreams. The usual stuff you see in these kinds of documentaries. However the worst bit was an interview between the film maker and a six year old pagent girl. He asked her what the most important things in life were and she replied "looking good and getting a good looking boyfriend. Not a geeky boy though, one like David Beckham". Fucking lovely. I hope someone smashes her parents’ skulls with hammers. Heavy fucking shite. Goodbye bastards.