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The value of personal attractiveness is established much younger than you might think. But what does this mean for girls growing up in an image-obsessed era?
We check our appearance around 38 times per day. That pastime was once reserved for mirrors, and now extends to every reflective surface in our vicinity. Phone screens are the obvious preference – whether via their front-facing cameras or shiny black lock screens.
Social media has added to the layers of self-observation that shape daily life. We curate ourselves for others (and ourselves) in a series of clips and images, and if we’re not pouring over those we’re analysing the content of others’.
Even at work, remote meetings have given us an excuse to watch our own faces while engaged in conversation, a phenomenon that would be utterly bizarre IRL. All this staring at our faces feels like a symptom of existing online. But the truth is, humans are programmed to care about their looks from an early age.
Quite how early, however, may be cause for surprise. Recent studies have shown girls are aware of beauty standards by the age of three. Yep, toddlers are already considering and comparing their appearance before they start school – drawing influence from cartoons, gender-based marketing and the behaviour of their peers.
If that makes you squirm, it should. We like to think of children as innocent to the whims and worries of adults. Particularly when it comes to physical appearance. But the National Library of Medicine (NLM) reports that young girls are ‘appearance tracking’ before they even enter the classroom. Many of these toddlers view attractiveness as a requirement for belonging to their gender.
It’s partly a reaction to highly-gendered marketing, which identifies male and female image markers from the moment we’re born. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Action figures hang on one shelf, wrapped in earthy coloured boxes with flame illustrations. On the opposite side of the store, Barbie dolls and ballerinas are swathed in pink satin bows. Even our toothbrushes are categorised by gender. And it continues through to adulthood.
But women and girls are disproportionately impacted by this messaging – most likely because of the way products are framed through an aesthetic lens. Boys are told to feel strong and hold in their emotions (equally damaging, albeit for different reasons), while girls are affirmed through comments about their ‘beauty’ or ‘ladylike’ attributes.
In the study by NLM, girls scored higher than boys in all five tests about valuing personal attractiveness. The biggest difference was in their attention to gender-typed clothing, with girls scoring 80% and boys scoring only 46.4%.
As well as shaping how they view themselves, these behaviours are also impacting how young girls understand the people around them. Of all 3- to 5-year-old’s examined, 31.4% of girls reported liking a fictional character solely for their appearance, compared to only 11% of boys.
