It’s with horror I register the growing number of “tween blogs” that consist of make-up, fashion and teenage pregnancy. I can partly see the need for young people to express themselves, but what I find repulsive is the business that make money by exploiting young, naive girls who suddenly find themselves on the rise to online fame based on a rating system relying on their looks and popularity. It’s a phenomenon I wasn’t quite aware of until I moved back to Norway. If you look at the blog platform, blogg.no, there is a “top list” that bloggers apparently strive to be on. What’s interesting is that the majority of these blogs don’t contain timely commenting on news articles, society or culture, but instead a creepy obsession with achieving a certain “look”. The tanner, taller, thinner, prettier and richer you are, the more readers you’ll gain and the more attention you’ll get from companies that will shower you in products and money if you write about or pose with their product on your blog; – be it make-up, teeth whitening, hair extensions and whatnot. Most of these bloggers aren’t yet 18, so why on earth are their parents allowing them to get their lips pumped full of restylane, getting boob jobs or letting them post pictures of themselves in sexy poses?
Take a look at one of the current teen-queen bloggers, Sophie Elise, whose parents apparently have given her the permission to undergo a seemingly extreme makeover…
I mean, geesh, what is the world (wide web) coming to?
