Project Proposal: Major Project 1

My goal with this first essay is to point out that sad reality of children these days trying to act older and older at a younger and younger age. My audience is the parents of these children, tweens, and teens. I am arguing that these children of all ages, until they reach adulthood should not be allowed to be slaves to this over-aged hype that is calling thier attention in all directions. I am going to persuade these parents of young chidren and teens to not buy into the ads. I am going to focus on the parents drawing the line and taking back control of thier youth no matter what the child asks for. The parents are the ones with the pocketbook and they can decide if that 12 year-old girl gets designer clothing and make-up, or if thier 15 year-old "needs" breast augmentation. These parents also need to build self-esteem and value into the girls and boys. The young boys parents need to let them know that having a rock hard physique at the age of 13 is un-natural and its OK not to look like the men on the covers of muscle magazines! The parents need to preserve innocence and appropriatness of age as long as they can. Yes, it is hard with all the "branding" and how easily chidren are targeted, but with a little support of the parents...I think this can be managed a little better.

So far i know that marketers focus and rely on the fact that tweens ages 9-13 are desperate to look, act, and "be" older. It is the cool thing to be older and now these tweens are already not considering themselves children anymore. Now, younger and younger tweens and teens are wanting plastic surgery to look like people in magazines and body image is extremely distorted today. Lavish, adult-like parties are now the norm for tweens. Such as Bar/bat mitsvahs and sweet sixteens. These children spend thier parents money as if it is their own and want things that most 21 year olds think about having at thier big bashes. Alot of this is brought on by celerbrities throwing huge parties for birthdays, and it became a trend and then eventually a competition between affleunt (and sometimes not) parents to throw bigger, better parties for thier 13 year old. It also consists of children being exposed to adult comedy such as "Adult Swim" on the cartoon network for example. It starts playing at 9:30 pm and most kids are still up absorbing these shows that are meant to only appeal to adults but kids, even very young ones laugh right along because they have developed even sense of humors beyond thier age. Its a growing trend and very hard to escape, but if the parents weren't such a huge contributor, I think the issue could be a little more managable.

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Branded by: Alissa Quart