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Earlier this morning Anastasia sent me an article from the San Mercury News on the age old subject of puberty, reminding us that in spite of the glam mini-fashion plate tween types we see plastered across TV and magazines today, for real girls, entering into the tween years still marks a pretty daunting transition fraught with emotional and physical changes. The article is really well-written, takes you right back to that time and has some good tween stats at the end. From the article:

Puberty is the hormonal hothouse where children take their first harrowing steps toward becoming grown-ups. It is a period when the minds and bodies of 10- to 16-year-olds erupt in erratic and unpredictable ways. During puberty, children encounter for the first time many of the influences and pressures that will preoccupy their adult lives: sex, social stratification, fashion, peer pressure, sex, raunchy language, being judged for their looks, sex. And through it all, they must rely on some adult born during the Pleistocene Era for a ride.

It was only a hop, skip and a leap before our conversation turned into a virtual gushfest over the reigning YA queen of adolescent angst Judy Blume. Each of us had our personal favorites (mine was Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, Anastasia’s was Sheila the Great), but we agreed the same quality drew us to both. That “this is so me” quality. Whether you were an aspiring actress with an overactive imagination, or a suburban camp kid. And as cheesy as the subject matter was — periods, boys, pimples, etc. — it resonated with the often awkward, at times painful, experience of growing up.

Call it the “Disney Effect,” if you will, but tweendom today tends to look a whole lot more glamorous. While characters like Sally only attained fame and fortune in their wildest dreams, “Hannah Montana” and contestants on “American Idol” get to live these fantasies out for real. And while, yes, there are still depictions of average tweens in pop culture, i.e. some YA fiction and even on TV (Nick’s “Unfabulous” for one)  the cultural shift  away from normalcy and towards superstardom is undeniable, leading to questions about whether the model is setting up unrealistic expectations for the real tweens out there.

For more coverage of the tween space, check out the Ypulse Tweens Channel, sponsored by the Tween Tribune.

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Categorized under: Tweens

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