Sexing the Political: A journal of Third Wave Feminists on Sexuality : Neerly a ‘Tween

Volume One Number Two, June 2001

Nearly a ’Tween

Patti See

“You’re so lucky you have a boy,” Karen says. “No cliques at school. No pressure for the right clothes and the right things. I’m so tired of Brittany wanting stuff. Nine years old and she thinks she should have everything. We were never greedy.” Her mother’s rant can only be let loose around a close friend. I remember Karen’s battles with her cowlick; she remembers my first father-picked glasses.

We have known each other through first boyfriends and first husbands, pregnancy scares and babies. I remember the good old days when we used to sit in a bar and talk about sex. Now we sit at her kitchen table or on my porch over a few Bud lights and talk about boys and girls.

“Times have changed,” I say. “I don’t remember boys from when we were kids to know if they’re any different today, but the girls seem to be.”

I know Brittany best from what her mom tells me. Nice godmother, I buy what’s on her Christmas list. I recognize simply from a “want list” that she lives in a different world than my son.

If our kids’ bedrooms were on fire, Brittany would grab her newest Britney Spears CD, and Alex would grab the blanket he has slept with since he was a baby. Our children are both third graders in the same small town school system. The few times a month they see each other they compare math homework and a recent science unit. Born nine months apart, Alex is still every bit a boy, a child, and Brittany is on her way to womanhood.

So how did this happen? Gender is an easy answer. I remember from towering over boys until tenth grade that girls mature much earlier than boys. I know the maturation gap is widening. Girls begin puberty as young as nine, while boys for the most part still hold off until thirteen.

But it appears that girls also get an “attitude,” as Karen calls it, much quicker than boys. Alex is still content to listen to his parents’ music. He dances in the living room to Bob Dylan and does homework to Billie Holiday. Brittany climbs into her mom’s car and immediately changes the station.

In some ways, after a night talking with Karen, I think I’m raising an anomaly. Or worse, a freak without cable, Internet access, or his own CD’s.

By all accounts Brittany is already a ’tween every bit representative of the subgroup of children age eight to fourteen that marketers have recognized as enough of a consumer group to name. All 27 million of them—the largest number in this age group in two decades—make this a powerhouse of the kids’ market, spending almost $14 billion a year.

As the name suggests, ’tweens are too big for child’s play and too small for teenage entertainment, so they hover somewhere in between, buying all they can or guilting their parents into it. Consider why Pokemon: The First Movie outsold other movies three to one and made over $32 million itsng weekend.

Brittany talks about a cute boy on her bus, and she knows enough to tell her mom We’re just friends. Alex had a brief crush on a fifteen-year-old babysitter last summer (yes, the one with the cool dog who gave him her older brother’s toys each time she visited). He once mentioned some fifth grade boys who started a garage band called “Girls Suck,” but he didn’t quite understand my laughter at the band’s name. Other than that, he hasn’t seemed to notice girls.

Brittany already has tangible angst. She worries about her weight and has nightmares about a gunman coming to her school. Most days Alex’s biggest concern is a lost action figure.

I have considered that the differences in our children may be based on parenting styles and values, as well as gender. Karen gets her hair and nails done; I go to my husband’s barber for a tri-yearly trim. Before our kids started school I told Karen that I hoped Alex would always ask why and question the world for the rest of his life. Karen said, “I just want Brittany to be polite.”

I went to the experts for more information: parents with boys and girls.

A father tells me his six-year-old didn’t smile for her school picture this year. He says, “She told me that models don’t smile.” This is the same girl who fussed about wearing a winter coat last year because it made her look fat. His sons still wear his hand-me-down sweatshirts.

Another father with a teenage daughter and son says that raising a boy is “more comfortable” than raising a girl. He says, “I didn’t worry about Michael as much. His body type is closer to the ones in magazines than Eva’s. I didn’t worry about him getting hurt by other kids in the same ways.”

As adults raised on cable TV, we are conditioned to believe we have succeeded at ignoring the influence of media and are thus not affected by it. Yet our girls are more susceptible than ever to buying into the perfect body image and the idea that consuming and adorning themselves brings pleasure.

It’s more than the average parent recognizes. Our culture values boyhood. Look around any college classroom at the number of male students dressed like eighth grade boys. Look around any junior high dance at the number of eighth grade girls dressed like female college students. The message to grow up, it seems, is only heard by girls. And they do. Too quickly.

Patti See's work has appeared in Salon, Women's Studies Quarterly, Southeast Review, and Wisconsin Academy Review. She co-authored with Bruce Taylor Higher Learning: Reading and Writing About College (Prentice Hall, 2001). Patti teaches developmental education, English, and women's studies courses at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She recently taught a course on third wave feminism.