Fashion and Female Youth

Today’s fashion market is adversely targeting the young female population, teaching youth to adopt altered values and standards compared to those taught twenty years ago. The industry is becoming less focused on certain physical and social needs, and more so on adornment and self or group identification. Clothing and accessories are no longer for practicality; they have become more secular and do not reflect the twenty-first century’s social standards of society. Fundamentally, modern clothing styles have negatively conditioned young minds, which has had an affect on their attitudes and perception of self. We, as a society, have tactlessly created a generation whose appearances are at the forefront of females’ young existence, by demonstrating that it is appropriate to do so. Fashion influences young girls’ attitude towards their sexuality, inherently diminishes their self-confidence and perception of self, and alters their morals and values.
The way one dresses as a young girl is directly related to their attitudes, thoughts, and feelings towards their femininity and sexuality. Appropriate dress codes are becoming ambiguous, and the wrong messages are being sent to young minds. Girls are “adopting external cues of womanhood” before they even hit puberty, through the marketing of beauty products and mature clothing. This trend has migrated to ever-younger age groups, and the scheme of finding every inch of a girl’s body to adorn contributes to the “eroticization of girlhood.” Fifteen years ago, there was a large distinction between “girl” and “woman,” as the appropriate clothing choice for six year olds were overalls and turtlenecks, while their mothers were the ones wearing nail polish and thigh-highs. As the years go by, however, implicit fashion trends have brought together the two styles, causing female youth to embrace their sexuality at an increasingly