Purity, Shame, and Surgery | How Hollywood Warps Our Perception of Puberty

In this video I talk about how kid and tween channels, like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, have warped our sense of puberty since the early 2000s by getting rid of the preteen phase in order to control their young employees changing bodies to get more time and money out of them, and how that not only is detrimental to the stars themselves, but to the audiences that look up to them.

So let’s take a look back at Hilary Duff in Lizzie McGuire, Raven-Symoné in That’s So Raven and the Cheetah Girls, Miley Cyrus in Hannah Montana, Ariana Grande in Victorious, and many others to see how this entertainment has twisted what we think puberty and growing up should look like.

TIMESTAMPS:
Content Note 0:00
Part 1: Making Puberty Profitable 0:09
Part 2: The Demonization of Puberty Weight Gain 6:03
Part 3: The Normalization of Hiding Plastic Surgery 14:34
Part 4: Purity Culture and Exploitation 17:10
Part 5: The Lack of Appropriate Preteen Media 20:19

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My last three videos: (◕‿◕✿)

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Music (from the YouTube Audio Library):

[CheyenneLin]

*Correction*

Though Miley does identify as nonbinary she hasn't appeared to state her pronouns publicly and uses she/her.

In this video I used they/them pronouns to refer to Miley and that was wrong.

[conbini]

Speaking of tween media, this is why I was so upset when Netflix cancelled The Babysitter's Club and Anne with an E. It's like the media isn't interested in stories about preteen girls if it's not oversexualized. The creator of BSC said, "It seems like girls are expected to go straight from Doc McStuffins to Euphoria." It's heartbreaking.

[ollygaetheirnandez]

it's wild to me how Disney has such a positive image to the general public when they have always been perpetrators of subtle child/teen abuse and homophobia

[treacherous-doctor]

One part of all of this that really stands out to me is the sexualization of underage girls in teen media. The obsession with making 13-17 year-old girls more attractive and adult-looking from a young age highlights a major problem with how film and television views girls and women. Young stars are treated as sexual objects when they're still literal children.

[harriyanna]

it's honestly baffling how nasty victorious is.

[harriyanna]

we live in such a fatphobic world that weight gain is something that is normal, is seen as something ugly. i worked on a tv show for a few years and i was wondering why there weren't many plus size people there, turns out plenty of costume departments in the film industry don't carry clothing bigger than a size 8. that's just mean now.

[gabriellerza]

The 2000s was a hard decade to be a child in, especially a chubby/fat one.

I remember Raven Symoné said in a commercial that she preferred comfortable, stretchy clothes, & since I was easily influenced by my favorite Disney stars, I decided I also preferred clothes that were comfortable for my body type.

If these teen stars weren’t pressured so much to lose weight & to look a certain way, maybe body neutrality would actually be promoted for kids, which is what I wish I had back then. Fat kids were made fun of so brutally in the 2000s & they didn’t have much to look to since everyone wanted to be skinny. Literally in 5th grade there was a group of girls who were on a “diet” & never ate lunch. I just hope it’s better now.

[IshtarNike]

As a teacher I think it's definitely something that's not talked about enough. We talk about breasts growing, and "hips" widening. But we seldom talk about weight gain and fat gain enough to make it normalised.

There's also often a point where a teenage girl has reached her full height, her breasts and thighs have matured, but she's still pretty darn slim. This can approach the "slim thick ideal" of present times. I've no doubt a lot of girls get issues from passing through this phase and realising (or failing to realise) that that wasn't their fully developed body and they spend so much time trying to get it back when it was only ever a transitional phase for most. Very few people maintain that past their mid twenties without a lot of work in the gym.

[Silvermoon]

Ugh, I remember how awfully people talked about Raven Symoné for not being super skinny and not fitting into the early 2000s mold of what "acceptable" body standards looked like. She's so pretty and it was such good representation to have her on Disney (for both black girls and bigger girls in general) but she was torn down so much for her appearance.

[chelmrtz]

Jennette McCurdy’s memoir talks a lot about eating disorders and the pressure of being a young girl in Hollywood. It’s a really difficult read but worth it

[please_im_a_staaar]

Veganism doesn't make you skinny. I'm vegan and I gained weight. I think it comes from ppl's ignorance about nutrition and thinking that veganism is eating carrots and spinach all day along lol. And I'm over here eating vegan lasagnas, pizzas and sushi, and becoming chubby.
You can be skinny on both vegan and non-vegan diets and you can be fat on both vegan and non-vegan diets. Also malnourishment is not a "vegan thing", it's an extremely non-balanced diet thing that non-vegans are prone to developing too. In fact most ppl in US and the world who suffer from malnourishment are not vegan.

[lynne]

I hate when people say that Tweens don't exist anymore because as someone who is considered Tween age I am in my awkward stage and so many other people I know are as well. There are a few people who aren't and that's fine, not everyone needs one, but for the people who are and have, it's hard for us to hear that tweens and being awkward doesn't exist anymore.

[chronostoad]

It’s really upsetting watching The Lizzie MacGuire movie then seeing Hillary in Cheaper by the Dozen 2 knowing how close those two movies were filmed from each other. Like the difference between a normal teen girl and an adult who is finally able to make her own diet choices…

[operaanimelover]

Back when I was fourteen and starting the eighth grade, my initial dream was to be a Disney Channel star and anime voice actor, while being blissfully unaware of how insidious Disney Channel and even Nickelodeon were to their young actors. Looking back at the shows and movies airing on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon as an adult, I will never watch them the same way again, and I thank the Lord that I did not end up becoming either a Nickelodeon star or a Disney Channel star. My heart continues to go out to Raven-Symone, Hilary Duff, Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, The Jonas Brothers, and many other former Disney Channel and Nickelodeon stars for being commodified in that manner. Furthermore, Bobby Driscoll continues to have all of my compassion because of what happened to him at Disney after his year of portraying Peter Pan.

[diana-mwuk]

Something we don't talk about enough is how different puberty can look like for everyone. We all have different genetics and body types. When I was a teenager, I used to think something was wrong with me because my hips stayed the same and my boobs didn't grow that much. But I had changes in other parts of my body... There's a pressure to "glow up" in a very standard way during or after puberty. I think it also has smthg to do with how we link the changes of these stars (that you mentioned) on their puberty instead of plastic surgery Idk... Thanks for the video !

[Lorena-ehcl]

YES thank you for touching on this! Media seems to slowly be moving in the direction of realistic portrayals of kids. I’ve seen a couple shows lately that had kids with acne, and my automatic thinking was how bad it looked. It’s taking time to retrain my thoughts, but as long as we continue to get genuine representation in media, all of us who have grown up with those awful depictions (as well as younger people) can overcome that perception.

[kellylynn]

I never knew about people bashing Hilary Duff’s weight. I remember thinking she was one of the most beautiful girls in the world. I can’t say I even noticed her body change which is even more upsetting. How many children wouldn’t have noticed something so harmful if not for it being pointed out to them.

[oliviadauber]

What's so bizarre to me is that Raven was never particularly large or ever seemed to even be overweight? I was a little kid when she was on the air, but even as an adult, yeah, she's short, she's curvy... weird for her to be the token fat girl.

[dinosaysrawr]

What's truly weird, I realize, is how the media simultaneously tries to hide or deny the signs of puberty in young performers, while simultaneously creepily sexualizing them. I tend to notice the latter more than the former, but now that this video has drawn my attention to the former as well, I *really* feel for the kids who are caught in that no-win bind.

I'd say my perception of adolescence was warped primarily by 20-to-30-year-old adults consistently portraying teenagers. Once I became a teenager, I think part of me felt worse about myself because I didn't look 25 at 16.

[annotherdemon]

The purity ring thing gave me such whiplash back then. Because in my country there is a teen magazine that has an entire section dedicated to sex ed... Teens can write in and talk about concerns and have professional educators answer them without judgement. Special spreads about masturbation or how to listen to their bodies to feel and stay safe. Safe sex is PREACHED in that section. And a few pages prior an interview with not Nick Jonas talking about how rad his purity ring was...