To What Extend Is Today’S Society’S Obsession With Beauty Responsible For Changing Our Children? Essay

“Generation Diva” by Jessica Bennett from Newsweek explains how our obsession with beauty is now changing the behavior of our children at a younger and younger age. They are spending more and more money on beauty services and products. Children as young as toddlers are putting make up, going for pedicure and manicures. This is fuelled by the youth obsessed media that brainwashes us with their standards of ideal beauty that is almost impossible to attain, causing these children to look for “imaginary flaws”. (Bennett)
            Bennett’s article attempts to persuade the reader that the beauty is important but this obsession is going overboard, and is now distracting our children away from what should be more important such as their school work, and are spending unnecessary money. She included many statistics on young children’s thoughts and behavior to prove her points. She also uses real life examples that she personally encountered, as well as interviews from mothers as case studies to make her arguments more convincing.
            My essay will evaluate Bennett’s arguments and information, in which the main focus is the change in children’s behavior towards beauty needs. I will expand on her ideas as well as introduce and analyses other factors that is causing the change in these children. The aim of my essay is to suggest that it is not only our obsession with beauty, other factors such as the change in lifestyle, economy and methods of parental guidance nowadays that has affected and created the difference between children in the past and now.
            As Bennett has analyzed, the behavior of pre-teens now are much more extreme when it comes to beauty and pampering themselves. A survey conducted by NDP group in the USA reported that 4 years ago, on average, women began using beauty products at 17. Today, the average age is 13. And according to market research firm Experian, 43 percent of 6 to 9 year...