Tween skincare: why are Irish 12-year-olds are terrified of ageing?

Targeting advertising to children

Jessica DeFino is a brilliant ex-beauty writer now addressing the damaging impact of the beauty industry. In an interview on her Substack, DeFino addressed the nature of the anti-ageing marketing and why it’s both shallow and deeply effective.

“Anti-ageing is a beauty standard,” writes DeFino. “Plain and simple. Youthfulness is not a health goal. It is not a moral goal, no matter how often brands equate younthful skin with “good” skin. This is an aesthetic goal only. The history of this standard goes back centuries, it stems from systems of oppression. Patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism for sure. Anti-ageing is the ultimate capitalist goal, because it can never be met, right? It’s physically impossible to anti-age. And to try to anti-age is to be a consumer for life. So this is a very capitalist idea.” DeFino continues by addressing the nature of brands and companies that market anti-ageing products, writing “I don’t know that there is any way to ethically sell products that target signs of ageing. I don’t know that there is any way to ethically promote aesthetic changes without buying into beauty standards and therefore, perpetuating those standards.”

While none of these companies or trends in isolation started the anti-ageing panic amongst tweens, they helped build the foundation of a consumer base that was prepped and primed to be told that their natural skin wasn’t good enough. Enter companies like Drunk Elephant, Tower 28 and Good Weird, whose marketing deliberately started targeting tweens with their bold graphics, quirky “cool” designs, bright colours and young models have been embraced by younger and younger customers. In 2023, American parents reported that Drunk Elephant peptide creams topped many of their 10-12 years old Christmas lists – and these young consumers are set to spend millions on anti-ageing products over the next few years.

Data from Statistica shows that the baby and child skincare market is expected to experience an annual growth rate of about 7.71% until 2028, when it will reach €380 million in market volume worldwide. This increase isn’t simply because mothers will be buying more moisturisers that their kids will be messing with in the bathroom, it’s because the number of product users is expected to grow and reach 160.7 million worldwide by 2028. The beauty industry is deliberately targeting younger people to create a newer, much younger generation of consumers who will be spending their pocket money on anti-ageing skincare before they’ve even left secondary school.

Choice Feminism

But while companies and the beauty industry are jumping to sell anti-ageing products to literal children, the question remains of why tweens have developed such a fear of ageing in the first place: and millennial women, we have to accept some of the blame here.

Millennial women were the first generation for whom Botox and fillers were an affordable, accessible way to combat the signs of ageing – and we jumped all over it. Watching TV shows or films from the 1980s or 1990s compared to now, it is frankly remarkable how rapidly we erased wrinkles from the faces of women on screen. The number of famous women over 30 who have noticeable wrinkles is so small that it’s a news story when actresses such as Emma Thompson and Jodie Foster speak out about resisting the pressure to use Botox and erase any evidence that they have lived past thirty, moved their face or physically expressed an emotion. Growing up, Gen Z saw as millennial women defended getting “baby Botox” on their lunch breaks or used filler to fill in the natural lines beside our mouths or plump up naturally slimming cheeks. They listened as women used the language of feminism to defend their decision, saying that anything that makes an individual woman feel confident and empowered on a daily basis has to be feminist, right?

Well, no.

So-called “choice feminism” is based on this logic, claiming that a feminist life is lived when a woman makes decisions in line with her own desires, even if that involves harm to other women or perpetuating patriarchal ideas. And millennial women’s obsession with anti-ageing is peak choice feminism: sure, looking more attractive by the standards of patriarchy may boost one woman’s confidence levels on the daily. But as a generation, it conveys a message that ageing as a woman is unattractive, unacceptable and requires money, intervention and chemicals to combat. And Gen Z has received that message, loud and clear. How could they not? By erasing all public representation of what naturally ageing women look like, we’ve taught them to fear their own ageing process, wanting to postpone and prevent it by any means possible.

Now, I’m not here to blame individual women. I consider myself pretty clued in to the mechanisms of patriarchy; the ways in which women’s looks are constantly scrutinised and devalued; and the cynical, systemic way by which women are made to feel terrible about their appearance and natural ageing which is designed to keep us using our time, energy and money fighting ourselves rather than the real enemy of patriarchy. However, this intellectual awareness does not erase my own insecurities on a daily basis; I still fight an endless battle with my own appearance, wishing that I was more in line with conventional beauty standards while also wishing those standards could be burned to the ground. I completely understand individual women’s desire to bypass even one of those daily battles by getting some Botox or filler or more elaborate cosmetic procedures to look a bit younger and feel a bit more desirable – and I recognise how hard it is for an individual to resist the systemic pressure to look a certain way when it’s coming from all sides. There’s even an aspect of political and cultural control that cannot be overlooked; in a society where there is a political backlash to women’s rights with abortion rights being withdrawn in the States; a rise in misogynistic influencers demonising independent women; and economic factors such as the housing crisis and childcare costs stealthily pushing women out of the workplace while claiming we’re more empowered than ever, the world can feel like an overwhelming and unwelcoming place for women. Taking some control over our appearance and doing something to make us feel more confident in our appearance is an understandable response as we wrestle back some sense of control and worth.