The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - you’re 12, not 21

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Having a digital personal brand is a cheat code to life 💡so I made a FREE 7-day branding course + (🎁)challenge for you. LIMITED SPOTS: https://tapx.it/unlimitedyou-challengeThank you Stan for funding the challenge! ✍🏻FREE EMAIL LIST https://tapx.it/stanzoeunlimitedWhat happened to girlhood? 10 year olds dominating Sephora & 12 year olds making thirst trap tiktoks are just a scratch to the surface. The idolization of a romanticized "womanhood" is getting out of hand.Learn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/💜 TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/zoeunlimited🛒 Essentials https://www.amazon.com/shop/zoeunlimited📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail]//🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro2:41 10 year olds at Sephora5:19 'let girls be girls' - what Sephora children are made of 5:57 1. Internet parents 8:30 2. Beauty Giants: Let them start young12:26 Idolization of womanhood & sexual liberation

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Maybe you have no friend. Pink eyeshadow. Pink lipstick. Ready with me one? Tell me how I went to Sephora yesterday and there was like a whole bunch of like little friends. This was Billy Irish when she was 19. This was Kylie Jenner when she was 14. This was Paris Hilton when she was 13.

And now this is a new generation of 12 year olds making thirst trap TikToks and 10 year olds dominating. Here's to the death of girlhood. Do you have a phone, Gallupin? I want to make a smoothie. Whenever I'm at school, I'm like playing at recess, where I'm literally just sitting in the classroom. Oh, brandy of... Shrapery.

Oops. Sephora is the new players and preteen girls can't wait to sexually liberate themselves. The world is not ready for the next generation of beauty gurus. Where mean girl behaviors are normalized. She points and laughs and she's like, you're so wrinkly, you're so wrinkly. We need it. this and then I sneak up from behind her and take the sunscreen. Anti-aging skincare begins when you still have a bedtime.

For some things that I do to slide on the aging process as a 14 year old. I started doing most of these things at 12. I started doing most of these things at 12. Full face makeup is required for you to get ready for elementary school. Sephora Hall. And better money spent on $1,000 Sephora Halls than future education. Is it just me where to the speed of girlhood to womanhood? accelerate 60,000 times.

Does it seem like all of a sudden, girls go from toddlers to full grown women? And is this new wave of culture pushing young girls to mature before they are ready? There is so much to unpack here, including 10-year-old's Rooney Sephora all over the country. Why is this happening? Whose fault is it? And how this only scratches the surface. Of the pattern of girls growing up so fast nowadays, not only in entry Sephora as a badge of idealized maturity,

but also in wanting to appear mature by sexually liberating themselves. Is this what girls are wearing now in high school? I just, oh my god. Go change. Bro, why the fuck you always pick it on me? Like, it's always me, you never except for me, bro. Is this the death of girlhood? 10 year olds at Sephora.

I just saw a girl on my 4-page talking about how Sephora has become the New Clairs. There's a bunch of 10-year-olds running around feigning for a drunk elephant and like looking for rare beauty as if Selena Gomez is, in the building. These 10-year-olds are crazy. Like literally the most feral. I was a camp counselor. The Sephora kids are different than any type of kids. As she's walking back to our friends, I realized that I'm being recorded. So if you guys see a video of me on TikTok, basically getting bullied by a group of girls, um, yeah, that's me. Hmm. What was your life like at 10?

Did you do a sport, read a paper book? Yes, those still exist. Or had fun daydreaming at a playground. This sounds really dumb, but at age 10, I was still super entertained by the idea of going into Toys Raws or Oz or just playing by myself at a playground. I don't know, I think the magic of being a child is that everything and anything could be interesting and fascinating. And indeed, fascinating it is for this generation of 10-year-olds, the gen Elfas play in Sephora and they play seriously. As some may call this an epidemic,

regular Sephora shoppers are horrified to find testers destroyed by the kids who believe it is totally okay to do whatever they want with these free products and not only that rudeness is an understatement for the ways the gen elphas are behaving what do you think it's so preppy in here is it just as preppy as you imagined yes as it seems not only is going to sephora a trend for the gen alpha girlies but being mean to other women and bullying store associates has become a new trending pastime trying to make everything in my hands fall out and i literally looked at her like this and she looks at me and she says is there a problem i was like no no no i'm sorry that was my fault i'm so sorry after i says that the girl goes pussy i'm like what the actual

i'm spending my money and giving you a paycheck that's all that should matter okay that's okay that's not okay that's not we'll ring it up to make matters worse the reactions to these behaviors are just as harmful there are people chasing clout by going into sephora to film these kids We're just straight up hating online. Both sides exemplify a lot of problematic behaviors, so let us unpack them one by one. Why is this trend happening? Are the 10-year-olds really to blame? And what happened to the pre-teen era?

Get ready to me to do my makeup. Or more importantly, would future generations of children only mature faster? Let girls be girls. Does anyone still know the definition of a girl in this day? age. I certainly don't anymore. A toddler is a girl and so are corporate girlies in her 20s and 30s, thirst-trapping 12-year-old TikTokers, 16-year-old Britney Spears and her debut album in schoolgirl uniform, and 10-year-olds at Sephora putting anti-aging assets on their faces. Put that down! Why is 10-year-old girlhood suddenly defined by going to Sephora?

It comes down to two parts. First, internet parents. It is a parenting problem. Not saying that it is only a parenting problem, but it is a parenting problem. It is a parenting problem for shoving an iPad to your kids' faces ever since they are a few months old that they grew up chronically online. And whatever is online is what they begin to model their behaviors and identity after. From the perspective of developmental psychology, roughly 80% of parenting is modeling. Meaning all the rudeness in stores, bullying, destroying products, hyper-sexualizing oneself online, have been emulated from somewhere.

Are these children copying their parents? Maybe. But since a wave of millennial parents did not want to do the work of parenting and let the iPads do the job instead, that is where the problem began. Although platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube put age restrictions and advised parents to monitor their children's online activities, they have zero monetary incentives to a decrease profit-driving content,

the branded Get Ready With Me, skincare, makeup, makeup, everything and anything consumer product related videos, B, decrease in platform ads that also drive desires for certain products. C, decrease to active user counts. The more people becoming chronically online and on their platforms, regardless of actual age, the better. Let's go to the park tomorrow and get some fresh air, okay? There is nothing wrong with copying behaviors from others. As humans, that is literally how we learn and develop. And this is so natural and essential in so many ways, such as how we we learn a language or adapt to a new culture.

And fundamentally, I don't think there is anything wrong with young girls looking up to online role models and getting all excited about womanhood. That is literally how I fell in love with fashion by admiring my mom's wardrobes and reading Team Vogue. Different medium but same idea. The issue arises when there is an overwhelming amount of behaviors that could be copied online. And there is absolutely no filter or protection for these young minds. where for some it could be getting into reading, but for others, it could be trying to look sexy when you are 12, or owning the whole collection of drunk elephant, the beginning of a spiral down to the idealized and romanticized womenhood. I immediately started to panic.

I picked up the phone to call my mom and tell her what a horrible mother she was. She should have bought me more skincare products for Christmas. When I was done cross time to drive me to Sephora, I needed new beauty products immediately. Second, from the beauty giants, let them start young. There are winners to this whole chaos. And no, they're not the regular Sephora shoppers. You can at least say excuse me. She's like, well, I try to, but apparently you're dead.

Not the store employees. I have been so lost. Not even the kids. You have the mini-glow recipe, like blueberry ginger and stuff? It's the cosmetic companies and maybe even Sephora. Although a chaotic mess to clean up, this teenager came in and destroyed our store. The drunk elephants and other viral beauty product companies aren't taking

not only do some of the 10-year-olds actually talk their parents into buying $500 worth of products The beauty giants are also building a cult of the next wave of cash cows starting at 10 It is just crazy to me how the power of media and marketing could sell anti-aging products to 10-year-olds from a skinkin perspective Not only is it completely unnecessary and wasteful to apply these products to children's skin that is already so vibrant and healthy, but it will also potentially lead to weaker skin barriers, which will lead to the demand for more skin products to protect the sensitive skin in the future. In five years, they're going to be spending hundreds of dollars begging mommy and daddy to take them to go get facials because they've destroyed their lipid barriers from acid.

AKA more cash flow. And the way drunk elephant responded in an Instagram post, can kids and tweens use drunk elephant, quote, yes. Many of our products are designed for all skin, including kids and twins. First, I would say stay away from our more potent products that include acids and retinoles. Their skin does not need these ingredients quite yet. Sounds super responsible, right? But it's the next part that got me.

Quote, here is a list of our products that are safe for kids and twins to use. We've also created a simple routine that doesn't require many products. Not many products. In the evening, cleanse with Best Day and follow up with a few drops of virgin marilla oil with one pump of Lala Retro for balance and moisture. In the morning, apply a drop or two of virgin marilla oil or Lala again. Followed by Umbreshear. Sunscreen Daily is a must. Use lippy on the lips day and night.

That was already seven products for one of their routines designed for kids. Personally, I love Drunk Elevents products, but I don't really know how to feel about them. expanding their targeted consumer base to children. Get ready with me. Get ready. Get unready with me. Get unready with me if it's a 4 or 10 year old. More like get it right.

Girls obsessively buying skin care products suggest a greater preoccupation with appearance at a younger age and relates to the growing concern for teen girls' mental health. A report from the CDC in 2021 found that one in five teen girls felt persistently sad and hopeless, a 21% increase from 2011. The cycle will only continue as companies find more and more ways to target and market to even younger consumers. Drunk Elephant's Little's Kid and Mama set as examples of products designed to appeal to children,

Charlotte Tilbury reimagined the Disney processes as makeup looks down to the moisturizer. The cosmetic industry will only keep expanding. In 2022, the global market was valued at $429.2 billion, and projected to be $864.2 billion by 2037. Thanks to the wallets of the millennial parents and the future dollars in Gen Alpha's pockets. But this is only a scratch to the surface of repackaging the idealized womanhood, sold as girlhood. Idolization of womanhood and sexual liberation. The pre-teen era does not exist anymore.

Adult and teen content have emerged in one space and overtime just became content. The hypersexualization of teen girls is not only normalized, but also commercialized. To become a woman back in the Disney way is to join the pipeline of Miley Cyrus's adult persona to Lindsay Lohan's to railment. To now the TikTok versions of girls maturing by adopting the quote unquote adult ways to dress and act. To look closer to the ideal woman. The hypersexualization of teen girls and entertainment is nothing new. The schoolgirl trope in movies and music videos,

such as Britney Spears' debut album to Kill Bill's Crazy 88 girl, to the movie Lolita, to anime's full of schoolgirl characters, to K-pop girl groups with members under 18. There has been so much infatuation with the youth of women, which ties back to the obsession with anti-aging skincare. But the way that these tropes have begun to be normalized, and projected back into reality is quite concerning, especially with the powerful TikTok algorithm as the modern parent for Gen Alpha Girls.

Even during the TV days when psychologists were growing and concerned for TV's impact on children as more than 50% of children saw television as their role models, instead of actual people in real life, such as the parents. The damage from TV cartoons, however, is insignificant, compared to the damaging impacts of the unfiltered social media influences for young girls. 12-year-olds are trying to be 21 by dressing like adult women, using skincare like adult women, and trying to appear quote-unquote sexy like adult women. This is not news.

With no lack of traditional Hollywood examples of girls desperately trying to prove themselves as women, young celebrities always appearing more sexual than peers of their age, such as Kylie Jenner in her teenage years or Billy's past vote cover, either expected by the industry or as a way to prove themselves as more mature. I'm not a kid. Yes, you are! And with shows like Gossip Girl or Euphoria, the monotony of teenagehood somehow seems childish, compared to an aesthetic dream of pills, orgies, and parties.

Children are shaping their underdeveloped appearances to match older women, as they may see it as a sign of sexual awakening, of owning their sexual liberty but are more so playing dress-up and holding up a costume of quote-unquote adult women on the outside. But internally, they are still 12. Their prefrontal lobes have at least 10 more years to develop. Although it is normal and perfectly fine for young girls to fantasize womanhood, the over- idolization of an unrealistic concept of womanhood shaped by the media and TikTok is making 12 and 10-year-olds desperately trying to close the gap of of trying to make themselves mature in every way possible,

of trying to grow up so fast, of catching up to a fantasy version of womanhood. That doesn't even exist. The picture perfect, photoshopped, and minorly surgically tweaked faces and bodies drenched in a cocktail of the hottest trending products. Is this a death of girlhood? As every girl from 16 down to 10 just want to be that woman they see on the internet,

the woman who doesn't even exist in real life? Maybe. Maybe the notion of what is a girl shrinks smaller and smaller as it gets so overused to lose its meaning. And maybe the internet is the new parent of the future. So hopefully all of us can contribute in making it a safer and more loving space. Let me know what your thoughts are on 10 year olds at Sephora and girls growing up so fast. Like and subscribe for more commentaries or personal growth videos and I will see you next week.