How do you do it? How do you all manage to look like 18-year-olds who just stepped out of the Victoria’s Secret PINK catalog? When I was your age, I was dressing myself from head to toe in Limited Too clothes full of sequins, sparkles and creepy looking characters. I would be ridiculed for thinking I was “too cool” if I occasionally wore anything Hollister or Abercrombie to school, wore a hint of makeup, or owned a cell phone. I remember all of my friends not speaking to me for a week when I got my first phone and started wearing eyeliner because they all thought I believed myself to be better than them.
These days, all of you girls are wearing Victoria’s Secret, American Eagle, and even designer brands like Michael Kors and Coach. Your hair is perfectly straightened or curled, and you’re wearing immense amounts of makeup contoured to perfection. So many questions run through my mind when I walk into the local mall or even the grocery store and see all of these adolescent girls looking like they’re my age or sometimes even older. It makes me question a lot of things, but it mostly makes me question their innocence. I know that the way you dress doesn’t have to say anything about your character, however, overhearing conversations between young, adolescent girls and having my younger cousins tell me stories about what their young friends do just absolutely blows my mind.
When I hear about some of the things you kids are doing, I honestly feel sorry for you. Yes, my generation was known for having our intense ugly, awkward stages around your age, and yes, I am super jealous that you girls don’t seem to be going through those stages, but as I asked before, how do you do it? And more importantly, why? I’ve heard so many sad stories about girls as young as thirteen having sex, doing drugs, smoking, drinking, and skipping school to hang out with their older boyfriends behind their parents’ backs. Adolescents younger and younger are beginning to take part in mature activities that are just destined to hurt them.
Here’s what I have to say to all of you,
If you’re trying to grow up this fast just to fit in with your group of friends or to get the attention of an older guy, please don’t. Sit back and think about what’s really important. You’re thirteen! There is a 98% chance that the boy you’re crushing on right now will not end up being your husband. There’s an even greater chance that you’ll break up next week. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just how middle school relationships work. All middle school relationships ever did for my friends and me was give us something to laugh about when we got older. Nothing real ever came from them, especially those that you were only in to “look cool” or “get ahead.” These aren’t the things that make you “cool.”
