Graphic by Natasha Nagarajan ‘26.
By Hailey Balinbin ’26
Staff Writer
From Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in “Lolita” to Britney Spears’ sexy schoolgirl in the music video for “...Baby One More Time,” the media has an extensive history of sexualizing female youth and girlhood. American society in the 21st century puts constant pressure on women to look and behave as young as possible in order to be deemed desirable or worthy of attention. The increasing influence of the cosmetic industry as well as pressures from popular culture and Hollywood push certain associations between beauty standards and youthfulness. The infantilization of women is seen in many aspects of media, products and popular culture, which perpetuates gender roles for women and has led to women going to lengths to look as youthful as possible. However, this desire for women to stay young promotes ageism, infantilizes women and is detrimental to gender equality.
The desire for female youthfulness can be seen in the popularity of the plastic surgery industry and in the lengths that some women go to to alter their faces with cosmetic surgery. In a New Yorker article on the so-called perfect Instagram face, author Jia Tolentino writes, “In a world where women are rewarded for youth and beauty in a way that they are rewarded for nothing else — and where a strain of mainstream feminism teaches women that self-objectification is progressive, because it’s profitable — cosmetic work might seem like one of the few guaranteed high-yield projects that a woman could undertake.” Several female celebrities in Hollywood have undertaken this plastic surgery project to battle aging. Some popular celebrities, as listed by Kiki Meola in US Weekly, include Courtney Cox and Chrissy Teigen. As we see celebrities or influencers praising looking younger and criticizing aging, it further teaches women and young girls to follow a similar aspiration of looking more youthful.
Additionally, we can see the pressure for women to alter their appearance when it comes to body hair and shaving. Tavisha Sood wrote in an article for Queen’s University Belfast’s The Verdict, “The idea of a hairless body being feminine is inherently infantilizing since it imitates the body of a prepubescent girl and directly ties femininity to physical appearance.” Society associates a smooth, hairless body with femininity and body hair with masculinity. We can see this in the countless targeted advertisements from hair removal companies Gillette and Veet. One Gillette advertisement posted in 2015 advertises their razor. It reads, “Smooth skin. No pain. No chemicals,” alongside a video of a woman with an already smooth leg, shaving nothing. This reinforces society’s desire for women to be hairless and therefore infantile. This social norm is the driving force of the hair removal industry. According to Fortune Business Insights, “The global hair removal products market size was valued at 4.01 billion [dollars] in 2019 and is projected to hit 4.94 billion by 2027.” Because of its profitability, the social norm of women staying young will likely always be perpetuated in media and advertising.
The more society portrays women as younger than they are, the more it objectifies them and reifies gender hierarchies. It continues to give men the ability to hold power over women since they are equating femininity to childlike qualities. In her article for The Verdict, Sood writes,“Infantilizing language is often used against women in the professional workplace where women are called ‘Young Lady,’ ‘Girl’ or even ‘Missy.’ The use of these childlike nicknames reinforces the internalized bias about what women are capable of — and how much they should/can be taken seriously.” These terms call attention to the way society views women in an infantile manner, where youth often equates beauty. Because these pet names reinforce the power held by men, they uphold gender roles that say a woman’s role in society is to stay young and beautiful rather than be intelligent or ambitious. The pressure on women to be young exists to keep them docile and keeps men in positions of power in the workplace, school and in family dynamics.
The pressure for women to stay young is clearly reflected in the United States’ entertainment industry. Taylor Swift spoke about her experiences of aging in the entertainment industry in her documentary “Miss Americana”: “We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35. … The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times or more than the male artists. They have to or else you’re out of a job.” Swift builds on how men in the music industry do not face the pressures to look a certain way like women do. If women do not adhere to these certain beauty standards of looking youthful, people will get bored of them and inevitably lose interest in them. They are constantly pressured to be youthful and beautiful while men can retain their persona for years and keep a fanbase.
Swift’s discussion of beauty and women being discarded is paralleled in recent popular culture discussions of actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating tendencies. Insider cites a Reddit user’s graph collated from British tabloid data, reporting, “DiCaprio, 47, has never dated a woman over the age of 25, and the average age of his girlfriends is 22.9.” The internet widely analyzed Dicaprio’s dating habits this past summer after his breakup with model and actress Camila Morrone, aged 25 at the time, hit headlines. Dicaprio’s tendencies reflect society’s attitude to women when they reach a certain age, a viewpoint that has a negative impact on young girls who have access to social media and information about popular culture at their fingertips.
Beauty industries and popular culture trends teach that a woman's worth is measured through a standard that youth equates beauty. They are valued more when they make efforts to be more youthful. It is understandable why some women view aging as a decline in their value, and therefore take lengths to grasp onto their girlhood or youth. However, the resulting culture is dangerous. It reinforces patriarchal structures by constructing women as lacking adult maturity. The mentality that women are more desirable if they look and act younger simultaneously oppresses them while men remain in positions of power. We must do better to recognize value and beauty in all women of all ages — only then will we be able to move toward deconstructing power that men have long held.