The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - you're 41, not 14

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

does it seem like everyone and their moms are 20?Join our glow up community🤍🧚⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://stan.store/dearunlimited/p/glow-mafia-email-list-⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🦋my 5 years of marketing notes (free) ⁠⁠⁠https://tapx.it/unlimitedyou-challenge ⁠⁠⁠🩷✍🏻FREE EMAIL LIST ⁠⁠⁠https://tapx.it/stanzoeunlimitedLearn & 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 Intro3:12 What is Baby girl syndrome5:59 Forever 219:34 Infantilization13:02 The helpless “girl”16:17 Inner child or 40-year-old baby?

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

This was Britney Spears at 16. This was Kylie Jenner at 21. This was Miley Cyrus at 23. This was Megan Fox at 29. And this was Paris Hilton at 42. You don't want to make Kunky do all you sand like that, right? Daddy, I want another pony. Does it seem like everyone and their moms aren't 20?

40s is the new 20s and 30s is the new 10s? No, this is not infantilization. This is the eternity of youth. Tantrum Tuesday, hot people don't work! Hot people don't work! While 8-year-olds are transforming their faces to 20-year-olds and 12-year-olds are tapping into their concept of womanhood by making Thirst-trap TikToks,

the girlhood they are so tired of has a much different appeal to the adults. All of a sudden, girls go from toddlers to full-grown women, but full-grown women only have one goal. To be a girl again. You know, you can't even a small tongue bar? I do.

Remember when you were a little girl? The gush of excitement you feel when you imagine what you'll be like as an adult. You can be anything. You can be a musician, a rocket scientist, a designer, a neurosurgeon. The possibilities are endless and the idea of being an adult having a real job is so cool you sneakily put on your mom's lipstick and try on her heels a grown-up woman is all you wanted to be until one point you realize that being an adult seems less glam than in the pink sparkling movies being a woman

is hard work isn't it easier if the answer to every problem in life? is, I'm just a girl. Why haven't you paid rent for two months? I'm just a girl. Why didn't you show up to work? I'm just a girl. Why did you spend $6,969 on a used Stanley Cup? Listen, I'm just a girl. Hello? Hey, I can't come into work today. Is everything okay? I can't see. You can't see? No, I can't see myself working today. Bye. sounding like a baby girl to now the obsession with anti-aging that begins at 10. Being an adult is almost un-woman-like. And aging is a horror story that only exists on the internet. I'm Gen Z. Get closer.

I am Gen Z and nobody ever believes me. There's some things that I do to slide on the aging process as a 14-year-old. People think I'm obsessed with this. But I'm okay with it. I am obsessed with it. Welcome to the never-ending era of Girlhood. Welcome to the Baby Girl Syndrome epidemic. Baby Girl Syndrome.

What she would do is, I missed you. I love you, baby. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. You gotta go on like that to get more. If you Google the term baby girl syndrome, you'll realize it doesn't exist because I created it. It summarizes many women's current sentiment

towards wanting to look and act like a baby girl. This can be seen in Gen Z and now Gen Alpha's obsession towards anti-aging when some of us still have a bedtime. This can be seen in the intentional behaviors of women in internet culture to act younger than their age. I scraped my knee and hunted myself. This can be seen in the girlification of everything. From girl dinner to girl math. I bought this purse for $38, which means it was $30.

Round down, not up. The rising girl core aesthetics with baby doll dresses and bowls, this can be seen in the rise of sugar babies, the rise of sprinkle, sprinkle, and aspiring stay-at-home girlfriends who just want to be taken care of as a little girl. Before we dive deeper into the physical, behavioral, and social aspects of the baby girl syndrome, I do want to note that aesthetics and lifestyles are completely personal. The goal of this video is to explore a general pattern occurring in popular culture and not, to condemn or praise anyone's choices in how to be a girl or woman.

But the question remains. Is what we're seeing all self-infantilization or is there much more to the rise of the baby girl syndrome? Let's begin with physical appearances. Forever 21. As a fast fashion brand implies, there seems to be something magical about staying at 21 forever. And there lacks no creativity to achieve that, mainly through two ways. The face and the aesthetics of fashion. Let's start with the face.

It is not news that the obsession with anti-aging has been a topic trending so much for Gen Z's and millennials on TikTok and now causing Sephora to sell out anti-aging skincare to Gen Alpha 10 year olds. Where did this obsession come from? For starters, as many of us belong to a generation, raised by the internet, Our perceptions of womanhood has been much shaped by the faces we see on screens. Sure, celebrity legends like J-Lo, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian seem like they never aged a day since they were in their late 20s,

but we do know more or less that they have the resources to access the best places to get Botox, fillers, facials, and that the big screen and press shots are more or less photoshopped. But what about the quote-unquote everyday people? This is where it gets interesting. Because the quote-unquote normal 40-year-olds also don't quite look like the normal 40-year-olds you encounter at a grocery store. Yet, because an app like TikTok makes you feel that it is an app where realness is celebrated, you trust that this is exactly how one should look at 40.

With the minor assistance of anti-aging straw, face tape, filter, or all of the above. Here I am with the teenage filter. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business,

your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at our office. IG Private Wealth.com. I think it's completely fine to love skincare and want your skin to stay healthy and youthful. Heck, I personally love skincare. But it becomes a problem

when aging is no longer seen as a natural process of the human experience. And instead, the scariest thing that could happen to a woman to the point that Sephora kids are putting retinal on their faces. Thanks to this spreading fear, Girlhood is now a commodity you can purchase and it sells quite well. In fact, the entire collection of 50 Girlcore aesthetics on TikTok can be bought at ease.

But she was not just any girl. She was a fairing. The Girl Core aesthetic has been on trend since last year. For example, Sandy Leon's ribbons and more ribbons to every fit, Mumu's iconic ballet core silhouette, even Adida shorts have lace-trane. As Refinery 29 puts it, from an overindulgence in ribbons to knee-high socks and Mary Jane's and silhouettes reminiscent of schoolgirls, uniforms, girl core is here.

I do love how the general aesthetic shift is very unapologetically feminine. And it is the stylistic manifesto of the transition from pick-me culture to a girl's-girl culture. It's the combination of hyperfemininity and childlike aesthetics. There is something beautiful about incorporating elements of childhood into fashion. Baby girl hair and big bowls convey a nostalgia towards simpler times and a yearning to heal the inner child. But as it is now trendy to dress like a school child as an adult woman, it also raises the question. Does the general trend normalize or perhaps glamorize the infantilization of women? Infantilization. Infantilization is a prolonged treatment of one who is,

not a child, as though they are a child, when nothing about the adult's mental, physical, social, or intellectual well-being requires such treatment. Think of the helpless, innocent woman in the vintage ad. Don't worry, darling, you didn't burn the beer. Or the ketchup ad that says, You mean a woman can open it? Both emphasizing the helplessness of women and how the decorum of womanhood perhaps needs the element of childlikeness. To take a moment to dissect this ad a bit further, you can see that the lashes, neat eyebrows, hairdo, and feminine hem pose suggest maturity in womanhood.

But the pouty lips and amazed expression show childlikeness. If you think that this combination of maturity and childlikeness only dates back to 1950s ketchup ads, you'd be surprised of how much we are used to this concept in modern advertising, as you may have seen in this ad for Aldo or this one for America. and apparel, both showcasing a mature woman with somewhat prominent sexual traits, yet in an almost innocent manner with a confused look paired with a casual girl attire and a bubblegum. This idea goes even farther with Radio Shack's commercial that illustrates the idea of women must be youthful and girlish. If I didn't tell you, would you even know that it was a commercial selling beats?

The idea of childlike youth in femininity prevalent in commercials and advertisements compels many female models to lie about their age and go to whatever lengths are necessary to achieve an ideal that straddles between an innocent girl with no sexuality and a grown woman with full sexual agency. Another example would be Alicia Silverstone's Rolling Stone photo shoot that appears stereotypically childish things to emphasize a woman's desirability. But it goes way beyond just commercial advertisements or magazine photoshoots, to the way that women's everyday behaviors are changed by this girl identity, such as the baby talks that many mature women adopted as their quote-unquote natural voice. I don't know, I'm probably going to be able to be.

I want to see a lot of heart. That's my new baby voice. The purpose of using this voice is to sound docile, to sound subservient, submissive, and really just to come across as being like almost like a little lamb. Why do adult women mimic characteristics associated with young girls or even babies? The key to infantilization is not merely resembling childlike traits and behaviors, but for girls and women to perform and conform to the same level of sexual maturation as an adult woman while maintaining a level of naivete and submission.

where our bodies must resemble in adults, but we cannot surpass them intellectually if we want to be socially attractive. Implying that women are incapable of being adults, which creates a level of desirability. That sounds like... And hence comes the surge of the helpless girl in their 20s, 30s, 40s. The girlification of internet culture has a lot of the her to take on the quirks of modern women as we assemble the weirdest combination of snacks and call them girl dinner and defy the laws and math to justify purchases under girl math while it is a fun and cute way for women to connect with each other and nevertheless re-emphasizes the theme women are perhaps incapable of being adults or rather many women prefer not to be adults

I'm also just a girl. Daddy, I want another pony. Who can blame the sentiment? When it comes to the unglammed side of being an adult, paying bills, working, cleaning, every woman wants to be a girl to be taken care of again. And there are several ways to achieve this, of course. Beyond simply looking like a girl through rigorous,

anti-aging and girl core aesthetics, to truly feel like a helpless girl again, you have to be, well, just, a girl. It's a bit easier if you were born into wealth and can always be just a girl at 14 or 41 and a tad harder if your dad isn't worth 300 million. But rest assured, the internet's got you covered. The sprinkle sprinkle lady teaches you to wear nice dresses and go to high-end places alone to let men come pay for you. If you don't want to make a cardboard sign to find a rich husband or boyfriend in the middle of the street, You can also seek a glucose guardian who will make you feel like a baby again.

Hello. Hi. How are you? Sorry, sorry, sorry. There's a Chanel store there. Can you make me happy and buy me a bag? Where to meet sugar daddy? Where to meet sugar daddy's and wealthy provider men?

So I'm going to start off with go old. Go old, old is gold. As I said earlier, the lifestyles that we choose are ultimately our own business. And there is really nothing wrong with wanting to be treated well. In fact, if someone doesn't treat you well, drop them ASAP. I do think there's a bit of confusion between someone treating you well as a person versus seeing you as the baby girl to take care of. The difference is in the level of respect in proportion to the level of dependence.

With so many ups and downs of ugly political turmoils and world events in the past five years, it is beyond attempting to forego the jarring adult women identity, and escape back to girlhood again, to seek salvage in something that resembles more of the peace and sweetness of girlhood. To be protected from bills, stress, inequities, while owning every item that the consumerism craze tells you you should own as a successful woman. Be it or not you love or hate 35 inch cups with a straw. Or if you even have enough wrinkles to apply the 10-step anti-aging routine. Look at how clean my face looks. Youth and naivete are no longer just a phase that everyone experiences through growth.

They are now the hot commodities that symbolize luxury, the luxury of helplessness that only exists when protected from the burdens of adult responsibilities. Inner child or 40-year-old baby. I am not at all against aesthetic and culture of Girlcore. In fact, I do see how it could be a healing response to reminisce about the short-lived youthful times full of innocence and trouble-free and serves as a reminder to the new generation that there is no rush to grow up so quickly. Jump straight from childhood to adult womanhood. As seen in a 10-year-old Sephora kid epidemic. But when the manufacturing of naivete and innocence is overdone, where powerlessness is seen as the new aesthetic,

and secret to youth in womanhood, this is where it becomes troubling as it sets the benchmark of behaviors for much younger girls, learning about how to become women from the internet. The both socially and self-induced infantilization of full-grown women are creating an internet-wide fear of aging, something to prevent as early as the age of 10,

instead of a sign of growth to be celebrated. With that being said, for me, girlhood is, a spirit, a bridge of tapping into the inner child, to be brave and bold enough to dream. Which is why I love how a 10-year-old can be a girl, but so can a 50-year-old woman. Girlhood does have the magic of creating that authentic connection between women of all ages. But when the term becomes abused, to create a false helplessness that mimics naivete or as an excuse from adult responsibilities, That's when the celebration of girlhood turns into baby girl syndrome. That's my two cents on the explosion of girlification culture.

Girlcore aesthetics as well as the obsession with anti-aging. Do you think the rise of girl core is more of nostalgia or a wave of infantilization? Share this video with a friend, it will mean the world to me, and let me know where you stand in the comments below. Subscribe for more video essays and I'll see you next week.