Grown Up Little Girls: Are Our Beauty Standards Making Younger Generations Grow Up Too Quickly?
“We should be celebrating the fact that young women get to grow up and experience these different stages of their lives, not pushing them towards adulthood without letting them truly live.”
- Kaya O’Rourke
Over Winter Break, I went to Sephora with my mom to get a new eyeliner that I wanted to try. I left shocked by what I saw. The store was packed with pre-teen girls who pushed and shoved their way through crowds of people, searching for Drunk Elephant products, anti-aging creams, and everything in between. I have heard about the phenomenon of Gen Alpha infiltrating Sephora stores, but I did not know the severity of the situation until I was right in the middle of the war zone.
TikTok coined the term “Sephora Kids” at the end of 2023 with multiple videos of young girls shopping in groups in Sephoras across the United States. The girls were rude to the employees and other customers and left the display and sample counters in shambles, and used ridiculous profanity, the kind that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap as a kid. Their actions seemed to imply that the world exists purely with the intention to serve their needs and nobody else’s.
Similarly, I have loved makeup since I was younger. I have always been “girly” and “feminine” in terms of beauty. I was allowed to use simple products like mascara and lip gloss when I was in middle school, but it was never anything beyond that. As I transitioned from “girlhood” to “womanhood” I started experimenting with makeup and skincare, finding out what my style was. Yet, I could not imagine getting so heavily into makeup at such a young age, like young girls today. The irony of this is that these girls act like this because people online are teaching them to be anxious about growing up.
When I was thirteen, I realized that I was not happy with how I looked. I told my mom, who reminded me that I was beautiful and took me to the store to get some makeup. It was nothing crazy, just a cheap tube of mascara and some clear lip gloss, but it was the perfect confidence boost for me. However, girls in our current society are taught that they need to retain their youth for as long as possible. This means using products with retinols, glycolic and lactic acids, or any sort of intense exfoliation scrub, all of which can be harmful to the skin of young girls who are just starting puberty.
If we look at this issue from a non-scientific perspective, the use of makeup and rigorous step-by-step skincare routines for younger girls is just sad. I have always been taught that beauty comes from within, and whether this lesson came from a Disney Princess or my mother, it was nonstop. As cliché as it sounds, I feel as though nowadays the lesson of inner beauty is being skipped over.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting older, especially in appearance. We should be celebrating the fact that young women get to grow up and experience these different stages of their lives, not pushing them towards adulthood without letting them truly live. The young girls of our modern world shouldn’t be worried about wrinkles or laugh lines or eyebags.
We live in a society that is keen on taking away the experience of girlhood. There is no more need for Lip Smackers chapstick and no necessity for those huge foldout kits with brightly-colored eyeshadows and the pinkest blushes you have ever seen. Now, children only want the Drunk Elephant bronzing drops or the Rare Beauty Blush. Everything comes full circle eventually, so of course, this is just a natural part of growing up; however, it is disheartening to see these younger generations of girls, who are impressionable, gullible, and innocent, grow up too fast. Rather than letting tween girls run free in Sephora, we should remind them that they are beautiful just the way they are, makeup or no makeup.
I know my eyeliner will run out eventually, but while I wait for the world to become kinder to our next generation of leaders, I will just avoid Sephora and order online.
Strike Out,
Kaya O’Rourke
Saint Augustine
Editors: Maya Kayyal, Jessica Giraldo, Emmy Brutnell
Kaya O’Rourke is a writer for Strike Magazine, Saint Augustine. She’s a big fan of film and art houses, curating the perfect Spotify playlist for every occasion, and spending time with her besties. When she’s not shelf-reading at the library, you can reach her on Instagram at @kayaorourke.
