Purity, Shame, and Surgery | How Hollywood Warps Our Perception of Puberty
Content note: This video contains mentions and discussions of eating disorders, dieting, plastic surgery, and purity culture. Please proceed with caution. *jazzy piano music begins to play - music is in the description* "This is the age of the teenager." *jazzy piano music begins to play - music is in the description* *record scratch and VHS tape insert sound effect* *dramatic electronic pop music begins to play - music is in the description* It's no secret that entertainment executives and studios tend to seize up when child stars go through puberty. Why is this? Because to the powers that be it means there's a cash
cow that's potentially on its way out. "And the truth is and you know this you may now be a little too old to be in a home alone movie... unless it's you know home alone with your wife." They don't know if this person they've invested so heavily in will effectively transition from child star to adult entertainer. And though a lot of stars can make that transition, it's usually ironically without any help from the studio that made them, and up to the former child stars or pre-teen entertainers themselves to break out of the image that made them famous. And depending on the support networks around these young people and the public's perception of them that transition from prepubescent teen to young adult is easier said than done. One of the most famous child actors of the mid-20th century, Bobby Driscoll, who was one of the first two actors to be signed by the Walt Disney company when he was just nine years old and starred in Song of the South, Treasure Island and inspired and voiced Peter Pan, was abandoned by the Disney company because at 16 "he no longer had that impish face that kept him gainfully employed as a youth. He was just another teen boy with a bad case of acne." And though they
did try to cover his face in heavy makeup, the pimples were just too much for Disney to handle. So instead of helping him transition into a teen and young adult actor they discarded him because a kid going through the woes of puberty just wasn't profitable. For other child stars of the early 20th century like Shirley Temple she was given fake teeth because any sign of her maturing would "destroy the illusion," even though giving her a full set of teeth as a five-year-old kid kind of does that anyway. However as time went on child stars appearing more real and relatable became in vogue. For example Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's lack of teeth in Full House made them appear 'cute'. And this new trend in hollywood of wanting child stars to become teen icons and grow up with their audience on screen I believe started for a few main reasons. The first being the advent
of the teen demographic and the embracement of youth culture beginning in the late 50s and continuing into the 60s and present day. The second being the rise of TV as an entertainment medium, which happens to coincide timeline wise with my first point. The third reason is of course profit and brand recognition. If you can hook an audience at a young age with an equally young star you have a consumer for life. Suddenly there was more room for kids to mature into teenagers on tv because brands and studios realize how lucrative this part of the population could be.
Not to mention that tv is a far more accessible and intimate form of entertainment as well as can host weekly sitcoms and variety shows for kids and their families at home to grow up with. For example Disney's first mickey mouse club, which was a variety show presented by kids as well as teens, came out in 1955, but just two years before in 1953 the additional two-year contract option Bobby Driscoll signed with Disney was cancelled weeks after Peter Pan debuted. It seems as though Disney's lack of future for Driscoll was not only due to his acne, but him being typecast as a child star, and they were afraid or didn't know if he could break out of that type casting, while also fitting in with the self-imposed kid-friendly disney brand, and maybe they just didn't know if he could make it from film to television. But instead of keeping him and using him as a draw for the mickey mouse club and using that as a vehicle to have him interact with other teen actors, he was thrown away. And this isn't to say that media starring teens didn't exist before the mid 50s and early 60s. Love Finds Andy Hardy a teen romp with Judy Garland who was 16 at the time and Mickey Rooney who was 18 came out in 1938, and they were among the most well-known teen idols of the 1940s. But just that with the popularization and accessibility of home media
and with the passage of time teens being teens and kids becoming teens on tv and in movies became more acceptable and more lucrative. However, though studios by the 90s and 2000s had found a way to make adolescence profitable, this didn't mean that they were accepting of their actors changing bodies nor was the general adult public very kind to teens who were growing up in the public eye. "American idol's Paula Abdul battled bulimia for 15 years, actress Jaime Lynn Discala nearly lost her role on The Sopranos due to eating disorders. If someone's been a natural weight for a long time and then they become increasingly famous and increasingly thinner you you have to wonder what are they having to do." And though this could be said about every generation of kid and teen icons
I'm specifically going to be highlighting the child and teen stars of the 2000s who were on Disney and Nickelodeon as those were the ones that I grew up with and who have influenced me the most. And one thing I've noticed looking back at shows like That's So Raven, Victorious, and Hannah Montana among others is how the teams behind the stars and the studios themselves tried to suppress their teen actors changing bodies to delay the appearance of puberty in order to keep them looking younger and thus profitable for as long as possible. This is mainly done through body shaming, so they don't start looking "too adult", by starting them on plastic surgery while they're still in puberty, and by making sure their image stays squeaky clean. In this video I will discuss each of those points and how that warps our perceptions of our own puberty and how our own puberty is supposed to look like and why that becomes a problem for the actors themselves as well as us as viewers. Part two the demonization of puberty weight gain. Hilary Duff was only 14 and going through puberty when the first season of Lizzie McGuire debuted on the Disney Channel in 2001 and some of the most memorable episodes of the show were about the titular character's growing pains like when she had to go shopping with her mom for her first bra. "I want a bra!
Okay? A bra. We want a bra. I want a bra!" Another puberty change besides the appearance of breasts that a lot of kids tend to go through is weight gain, which is a normal sign that you're getting older and that your body is growing and maturing. And Duff was never fat or even overweight she was just a regular 14 year old kid. Maybe she wasn't exactly skinny, but her body was still forming she was going through puberty and gaining weight as a natural part of that process that shouldn't be shame or impeded upon. But of course she was shamed for her weight throughout her career and ended up getting an eating disorder. And at 19 in 2007 said in an interview that she did feel pressure to lose weight. "'I did get skinny', she told Britain's Mail on Sunday. 'I felt the pressure like everyone else in my position.
When a newspaper comes out and says Duff puff she must have gained 15 pounds or something like that how would any normal person react?'" And is it no surprise then that not only Duff but Raven Symoné, Demi Lovato and Taylor Swift, all teen celebrities who went through puberty publicly, have all talked about their own struggles with food and restrictive eating? Gaining weight during puberty and keeping it on afterwards is a totally normal part of growing up but because there's no room for that awkward stage in hollywood both the teen actors and the children watching at home are shamed for when they go through something that's again totally normal. Raven was 18 in 2003 when she starred in the first season of That's So Raven and though she was already 18, it's important to note that puberty doesn't really stop until your early 20s, and your brain isn't fully formed until 25. Your body and mind can continue to morph and change as you become a young adult. Raven definitely did break the mold for disney channel stars at the time in that she was
bigger and non-white, but that didn't stop her show from becoming one of the biggest hits on disney channel. And some of the episodes of the series even focused on weight gain and eating disorders. For example the episode "food for thought" which aired in 2005 shows how an exploitative fast food chain takes over the cafeteria and Raven and her friends teach the student body and audience at home about eating a balanced diet. But of course being from the early 2000s there's still plenty of fat jokes and fat shaming as a way to persuade people to stop eating from the fast food chain. In the 2004 episode "that's so not raven" Raven wants to model her own dress and is seemingly accepted into the fashion and modeling industry, which is a big deal for her being both Black and plus sized.
But of course when the magazine cover comes out she's photoshopped to be thin because models can only have one look. Raven says screw that and rocks the runway anyway. And in 2003 The Cheetah Girls movie arguably one of the most famous DCOMs ever debuted with Raven as the lead and with other girls of different sizes and races and ethnicities as the co-leads. And even the theme of the movie touched upon the entertainment industry being fake and the need to be authentic and stay true to yourself. And though it seems as though Disney was taking a stand as a company to say yes bigger bodies do have a place in the fashion world and on tv and media in general, it didn't stop Raven specifically from being fat shamed and needing to take a break from hollywood after the series ended in 2007. It should be noted that Disney wasn't the only studio to pressure Raven into losing weight. She's been very vocal in that as a child star on The Cosby Show when she was just seven years old she was already getting messages to not eat certain foods which definitely impacted her relationship with her body and food. Other stars who gained weight as a part of puberty were Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus. And this could be seen through them growing up on their respective tv
shows. But then suddenly in the early 2010s they lost the weight and their rather extreme weight loss was blamed on them becoming vegan. And I'm not vegan but I find that explanation to be total bs. "That's my opinion!" I'm not saying that they have an eating disorder or a negative relationship with food, but what I am saying is that they're not being fully transparent about how and why they lost their gained puberty weight. I don't think we should force them to come out about anything or that there is something wrong here, but just that like I said in my kardashian video it really irks me when celebrities don't acknowledge how they both participate in and benefit from a system that also victimizes them. And before I go on I want to make it clear that I'm not blaming them or shaming them for losing weight. I'm well aware it's a very much damned if
you do damned if you don't situation. There is no winning. You're either too thin or you're too fat. But I'm not saying that they looked better one way or another, just that they would probably have different bodies if we lived in a less fat phobic society where teens weren't pressured to lose the weight that comes with growing up. I'm more angry at the fact that they blame their weight loss and simply going vegan and exercising more because I find that highly suspect. I know this was a long time ago they were in their late teens and early 20s and they don't need to answer for it now and I'm sure it's a really sensitive subject for them. Celebrities aren't immune to fat phobia not to mention their publicists have a lot of control over what gets said and what stays quiet but I still do think that young people and their teams owe it to their fan bases to be more open with them about sensitive subjects like weight loss for example. If it really was just going
vegan and exercising more make it known that as a celebrity it's easier for me to lose weight healthily because I have the resources to make it happen. This reasoning also ignores a lot of the anti-fat rhetoric and conditioning were brought up with that they probably weren't even aware of as kids that they internalized. And again they don't need to answer for this now, it was a long time ago, but it just still really bothers me. It's just one of my hang-ups but let me know what you think down below. I also want to add that I think we should blame the adults who perpetuate fat shaming in media and entertainment and not the child and teen celebrities or their young fan bases. Demi Lovato on the other hand has been very open about how dieting and having an eating disorder was normalized during their time at disney and working on their show sonny with a chance. "'I kind
of looked around and had a moment where I was like wow this is so terrifyingly normalized', Lovato said detailing that they used to be given watermelon with fat-free whipped cream in place of a birthday cake each year." In addition Taylor Lautner was only 17 when he had to bulk up for his role in new moon or else. God forbid we expose young people to what 17 year olds actually look like. And I think this is what really irks me about this whole demonization of puberty weight gain or just weight changes in general during puberty. It makes young people at home see people who are going through what you're going through gaining weight looking bigger maturing, but then just nips that in the bud through fat shaming and in turn both the audience and the actors tend to have really bad psychological problems when it comes to their relationship with food and their bodies. I wonder a lot of the times as someone who started having an eating disorder during puberty what my life and body could and would have been like if I didn't screw it up at such a crucial growth moment in my life. I would probably have a lot less acid reflux and not have wasted my teen
years consumed by thoughts of what I ate, when I ate, and how I looked. Being a huge Hannah Montana fan and seeing Miley grow up on screen and gain weight during their adolescence really validated a lot of my own weight gain, but after the show was over and they debuted their new look and talked about going vegan and had their new body celebrated I felt betrayed. I felt the same way when Ariana Grande looked totally different and victorious after she dropped 25 pounds when she was just gaining regular puberty weight. And I know now that I shouldn't base my self-worth on what
celebrities look like but i was 14 and Disney and Nick marketing really worked on me and I had real parasocial relationships with these people. And it shouldn't be surprising nor shocking that a lot of young kids look up to these people and buy into their lifestyles because that's kind of the goal of these products in the first place. And in turn because I saw that gaining weight during puberty is something abnormal and something that should be lost I had 15 years old started to diet and restrict my food intake and developed really bad eating habits and a really negative relationship with food and my body image. That's the power that these adult curated images have on kids watching
and on the teen performers and I don't think that should go overlooked. Part three the normalization of hiding plastic surgery. One thing I and I think a lot of other people are tired of hearing is that "they didn't get plastic surgery they just went through puberty." Blaming facial changes on puberty when you actually went under the knife is so tiresome because again it adds to this lack of transparency, like when those celebrities say they just went vegan and dropped x amount of weight like that. I know not everyone agrees with Lorry Hill, but like I said in my Kardashian video
I do like her videos because they do demystify celebrity perfection and take power away from them. In her videos about Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus she notes how they both got plastic surgery during puberty and it was done in smaller segments and not all at once. Because of their age there really is no rush and because again they're still going through puberty doing a little at a time and seeing where features settle into place later makes more sense than doing huge procedures. Not to mention operations like rhinoplasties usually need to be done more than once to get the desired size and then shape of one's nose. Hill notes that Cyrus particularly looks as though
they have been doing botox since their late teens and early 20s as they have very little to no lines or wrinkles and that if you start botox young you'll need less of it in the future. Hill also says that Cyrus probably had back braces put on their teeth in order to hide their braces from view as they were growing up on camera and how painful those probably were for them and honestly if they ever own up to that later on I think a lot of people would respect them for it because that sounds awful. Another benefit of getting plastic surgery as a young celebrity is that you can blame it on puberty and not have to own up to getting procedures done because the changes happen so slowly they're almost undetectable. The earlier you get plastic surgery the easier it is to hide it. Both Cyrus and Grande have never owned up to getting any plastic surgery and the most Kylie Jenner has owned up to is getting lip fillers. I just don't understand the lack of transparency when it comes to celebrities because at this point plastic surgery is an open secret and I don't think that there's as much shame around going under the knife as there used to be. I think we all understand the pressures of societal expectations, but then again there are still very vicious people out there who will exploit celebrities getting plastic surgery as scandals and unfortunately that has never really gone away and it's probably scarred the celebrity community forever. But I will say again that when celebrities are more transparent about the work they've done
I respect them for it and I think most people would just breathe a sigh of relief to know that we don't need to keep up this ridiculous charade anymore. Part four purity culture and exploitation. Puberty doesn't just come with physical changes to your body it also comes with emotional changes. There's this feeling when you're a teen that you want to have more independence be taken more seriously and do more adult things especially if the adults around you are telling you to grow up and be more mature and to start acting your age, especially if you already have a high paying job like being an entertainer where you might be supporting your entire family.
There's this weird expectation that teens face which is that you're an adult when it's convenient for the adults around you and a kid when again, it's convenient for the adults around you. Some teenagers use this time to experiment with more adult things in order to feel more adult and use their newfound freedom. This can mean experimenting with substances or more risky behaviors and of course sex. However this element of puberty doesn't really jive with the Disney brand if you're a teen star. Disney has embraced this branding of family entertainment and wholesome traditional values aka their conservative company and their employees must also tout those beliefs. The Jones Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez all wore purity rings, and keep in mind this was after the whole "is Britney still a virgin?" exploitation so this was a strategic move for Disney to put their foot down and say our stars are clean and definitely saving themselves till marriage so don't ask. But ironically this just made everyone even more curious. Of course nowadays we all know it
was a big publicity stunt and that no one really wanted to wear them to begin with. With the Jonas Brothers it was a bit different because their father was a pastor and they did come from a pretty religious background, but they're very clear nowadays that even back then that wasn't what they were about even though they were being heralded as like these abstinence heroes at least to some people. Rather than teaching young teens that experimenting with sex when you're a teen is part of some people's adolescent journeys and this is how you can practice it safely, it was ignored and frowned upon and I'd even go as far ahead to say it was shamed. And even making these purity vows and wearing these rings got them made fun of and later made them resent the disney brand even more. My favorite comment to come out of this is Miley's when they said in 2019, "I wanted to stop being Hannah Montana once I was 18 because it felt ridiculous. The minute I had sex I was kind of like I can't put the effing wig on again. It got weird. It just felt like I was grown up."
And honestly the disney stars talking about how they're waiting for marriage kind of led to them being even more sexualized in the media. Joe talked about how some people thought they were in a sex cult. At Nick studios on the other hand due to one producer and writer who kind of ran the studio back in the day they had their teen employees really lean into oddly sexual and fetishistic scenarios. It was just really disturbing to say the least. In the end hollywood capitalism essentializes every part of their young star's lives from their bodies to their personas because under such an economic system even sex is perverted and is used as a selling point for kids entertainment, no matter if it's under the guise of crude and inappropriate humor or purity culture. Part 5 the lack of appropriate pre-teen media. There's this weird thing of not wanting your teen actor to grow up too fast, but also when it is time for them to grow up to skip puberty altogether and you do that by restricting what they eat, changing their face, and restricting their bodily autonomy.
And this leads to as many video essayists have pointed out, the death of the tween and tween media. There is no more awkward stage. And I do think that there is a severe lack of good tween media or at least was when I was a tween. You'd think that shows on channels like Disney and Nick back in the day would have had shows to help reflect adolescence, and in a lot of ways there were some that do that or that did that, but in a lot of other ways tween entertainment back then was extremely childish and tended to talk down to kids rather than help them realistically deal with what life has to offer them. And creating good tween media is especially difficult when the studios
themselves don't even respect or trust the young people in their employment and care. I feel like before we can have good tween media that lets kids gain puberty, weight embrace their natural features, and lets them experiment with their bodies and identities, we need to handle society's issues with teenagers and with how we see growing up in puberty as a whole because it's not something that's shameful or gross or better left untouched. It's something totally normal that capable adults can help you get through. I think with the advent of streaming it has opened the door to more like
teen and tween friendly programming like Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever or the film series To All the Boys I Loved Before, the Anne with an E series, and even the Babysitter's Club reboot and of course Pixar's Luca and Turning Red. So there is hope for better representation and understanding and where kids and their issues aren't talked down to. I'm glad celebrities are opening up about their eating disorders and the effect the entertainment industry had on them as kids because I think it'll help other young entertainers and also young viewers know that not everything they see on the screen is as perfect as it appears and that that's okay. As one teen icon once said nobody's perfect. "Nobody's perfect" So that's it for this video thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one bye! "This is the age of the teenager." *jazzy piano music plays in the background - music is in the description* *record scratch*
2022-08-04 17:47
