children BUYING beauty

In our current society the value of good character has been replaced by the importance of image and beauty.

There was an article in Newsweek a while back called Generation Diva noting the trend of younger and younger girls using more and more beauty products and regiments. Here are some interesting quotes from the article:

"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.

Eight- to 12-year-olds in this country already spend more than $40 million a month on beauty products, and teens spend another $100 million, according the NPD Group. This trend seems unaffected by the tanking economy: cosmetic surgery procedures dipped slightly last year, but cosmetics sales have increased between 1 and 46 percent, depending on the product, according to the Nielsen Co.

New statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that cosmetic- surgery procedures performed on those 18 and younger have nearly doubled over the past decade.

A lifetime of manis and pedis could cover four years at a public university; hair and face treatments would pay for a private college."

I'm not sure what your stance is on young women and beauty products (or even older women and beauty procedures), but I continue to be concerned that our society's main focus for girls is appearance. I recently read all of the works of Jane Austen and there is a striking difference between the heroines of Austen and the heroines in today's stories. Notably, Austen's famous characters are consumed with good character, while the girls in today's stories seem to be consumed with outward appearances.

This is of course, no accident. We live in a consumer driven economy, and young women are being marketed to with an increasingly greater vengeance. Yet I keep asking myself....

"Is this the legacy that we want young women to aspire to? Endless physical beauty?"