10 Things Girls Need Most: To grow up strong and free. Steve Biddulph

       “Selecting an outfit for the day ahead. Little Miss Two was at my side as usual, watching my every move. I chose my super-slimming high-rise black jeans, the ones that take a fair bit of jiggling to get on. It’s about then that I notice my little blonde-haired girl waving her rear-end at the mirror. She’s peering over her shoulder, gawking at her nappy-cushioned bottom, just like I do. The good old ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ move. I was shocked. I could’ve cried.”

       Claire, 39

      About fifteen years ago the corporate world discovered girls. Marketers realized there was an untapped demographic that was the softest target in the world. Large corporations routinely hire child psychologists who advise them on better ways to exploit and, if need be, harm children. Yes, big tobacco, big alcohol, and today’s equally conscience-challenged corporates all had psychologists to help them. And it all ramped up with science behind it. In Third World countries, they dress mid-teen kids in smart clothes and expensive-looking trainers, and these kids give out cigarettes to other kids for free. And they don’t worry about low tar. Just last year, in Australia, a wine company released a fizzy red drink in plastic bottles with little hearts printed on the label. And 8 per cent alcohol. Luckily alcohol products aimed specifically at the young are now illegal, and this new product was quickly withdrawn. (But it took us almost twenty years to get those laws passed.)

      By the early 2000s it really got serious. What these hired experts told the companies was that girls are different to boys in an important way. They are wired for social cueing. If two girls are friends in primary school and one of them frowns or scowls, the other one will worry about it all day. If two boys are friends, they will sometimes have a big fight – blood will flow – and in minutes it will be all over! Boys forget. Or more to the point, they barely notice in the first place. We have to teach our boys to be aware of other people’s feelings. Most girls think about them all the time.

      With this information, and some other insights I am not going to tell you, the advertisers focused millions of marketing dollars onto a new target – the pre-teen girl. In fact it was advertisers who invented the ‘pre-teen girl’. As if being eleven is only about waiting to be a teenager, and not a worthwhile age on its own. (Children are not pre-anything. They are who they are, and should be allowed to be so.)

      Those advertisers succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Forty per cent of ten-year-old girls now worry about their weight and actively modify their food intake in unsuccessful and harmful attempts to change their size and shape. It’s sad because all girls get chubbier in the six months before puberty begins, and this is necessary for sufficient oestrogen to be built up. All old societies knew this and welcomed it. (Looks-conscious mothers and thoughtless fathers today say ‘Whoa, you’re getting fat!’).