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Padded bras for eight-year-old girls are big business these days. Valerie Lawson looks at the advent of the tween.
IN AN age of consumer scepticism and saturated markets, the 21st century has seen the creation of a great marketing idea: the tweenager.
Tweenage - somewhere between six and 12 - did not exist 15 years ago. It is a market thriving on padded bras for flat chests, dolls that look like prostitutes, electronic makeover games your six-year-old daughter can plug into the TV set and magazines that tell her how to look hotter, and older, faster - just like the tweenage heroines, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie.
Parents see the compression of childhood and wonder how their cute three-year-old turned into a "gimme that" six-year-old, then a sassy 11-year-old tween whose doll days are well and truly over. They may may mourn the loss, but it is too late. The marketing juggernaut has spoken, especially to the female tween.
If Katie or Ruby or Roxy has an almond-eyed, fat-lipped Bratz doll, then your daughter wants one, too. If you don't buy one, you're a mean mummy or daddy. If the other girls wear a padded bra, then your daughter nags for one.
Just as teenage, as a concept, was created in the 20th century, so the tween is an idea whose time has come. Julie Kearns, marketing manager of the Barbie marketer Mattel, puts it succinctly: "Someone identified this gap in the marketplace between the girl who is still a child under the age of about nine, and a real teenager of 13 or 14 who has reached puberty. They identified this girl getting older younger, [and thought] 'here's a market we could cater for in the right way and increase our sales'."
The creation of tweens, and the launch of the phenomenally successful Bratz doll, marketed in Australia by Funtastic, means Barbie is now aimed at three- and four-year-olds, while Bratz appeals to seven- to nine-year-olds. By 10, dolls are, well, so last century.
The tween market has been driven by MTV, the globalisation of brands, more money in the hands of children, powerful peer pressure and by the increase in separated families, with parents plagued by guilt and played off against one another by children. Belinda Payne, general manager of marketing and creative services at Funtastic, says "children, quite often, are the first to the letter box [for catalogues] and are circling what they want".
A survey in March by Dolly magazine estimates the personal income of 10- to 17-year-olds in Australia (with younger children's spending not measured) as more than $10 billion a year. The amount had almost doubled in real terms since 1992.
Roy Morgan Research Centre figures show children and tweens have a major influence on buying decisions; 54 per cent in the case of toys and 43 per cent for youth magazines.
While the median tweenage is about 10 (which is also the average age of the start of female puberty), the segment now stretches from the ages of six to 12. In Australia, that means a potential market of 2.23 million people - half that, if one counts only female tweens, the more susceptible segment.
This month, a group of 12 doctors and other professionals working with children warned that the compression of childhood, in the rush to turn them from toddlers to high-spending tweens, might have serious consequences.
Among them was Dr Louise Newman, director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, who is concerned with sexualised looks and images presented to the tween market, but also believes "there's also the broader risk, which is about the loss of childhood itself".
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, psychologist and author of The Princess Bitchface Syndrome: Surviving Adolescent Girls, says girls are growing up so fast they are missing the latency period entirely - that "waiting room en route to teen years".
He regards the craze for sassy (read sexy) fashion dolls with horror, aligning their look with "behaviour we see on morning TV video clips. It's all about sexualisation and the objectification of women … about being attractive to boys - and I hope there are generations of collective feminists rolling in their collective graves looking at his stuff because it's so retrograde. There is absolutely nothing positive about it, and I think it's sending all the wrong messages to an already confused and bemused bunch of kids - and what worries me is that it's the parents who are very often talked into buying these things".
He blames what he calls Tamagotchi parenting. "They put up a white flag, 'Too busy to get involved'." Biology is also a factor, he says, with children reaching physical maturity earlier. "The justification that parents go through is that the kids look like adults, so maybe they are."
Pester power, peer pressure and successful market positioning mean that the No. 1 fashion doll in the Australian market for the past two years has been the sultry looking Bratz and its little sister spin offs, Bratz Babyz and Bratz Kidz. The basic Bratz, a range of four girls, Cloe, Yasmin, Jade and Sasha, are pitched as fashion-crazed teenagers, and therefore aspirational figures for the main Bratz market, girls aged six to nine.
Holding 57 per cent of the $60 million retail fashion doll market, the Bratz brand is the second highest selling toy brand in the Australian market, after Fisher Price.
Among the many "little hotties", as The New Yorker called them recently, is a talking Bratz in knee-high, high-heeled boots, a miniskirt that flicks up to reveal bikini briefs, gold earrings that reach to the shoulder line, a faux-fur bolero, a T-shirt labelled "Pretty" and streaked hair that falls to the knees.
The American-accented doll says her name is Yasmin, "but you can call me 'pretty princess"'. She has bedroom eyes, pink, bee-stung lips lined with red and, like Barbie dolls, long and skinny legs out of proportion to her torso.
Since Bratz was created in 2001, the American manufacturer, MGA Entertainment, has sold 125 million dolls worldwide amounting to sales of $US2 billion ($2.54 billion).
In Australia, Payne said, Funtastic had "a calendar of launches and themes, so there is newness for key promotional times and to keep children interested in the latest toy".
An "entry-level" doll, with one change of clothes, retailed for $19.99, with Bratz Diamondz retailing for $79.99.
Licensing takes the brand much further than the toy shelves. In the US MGA Entertainment has 350 Bratz licensees but in Australia the brand is licensed by an intermediary, Haven Licensing, to about 25 marketers, including Breville (with a new Bratz hair styler), and Playworks, which sells Bratz pencils, lanyards, watches, diaries, book labels, lever-arch folders, scrapbooking kits, clocks and library bags.
Hot Springs, a Sydney clothing company, markets Bratz outerwear and swimwear, and Lil' Bratz underwear, including tiny bras.
Payne denied the dolls looked like sex bombs. Rather they were "teenage and fashion-focused" and resembled animated characters. Their lips and eyes were accentuated, she said, which removed them a little from reality and took them into the realm of anime and manga. "They are not real looking people," she said. "It's adults that perceive them as real people."
Mattel, MGA's rival, and maker of Barbie dolls for four decades, is fighting back for the tween and sub-tween hearts and pockets.
Four years ago it launched a vampy range of My Scene Barbie dolls, including My Bling Bling dolls, whose packaging promises "totally blinged out jewellery, super fabulous fashions" and includes a plastic tiara for the girl owner. The Bling Blings wear high boots, pelmet-like skirts and skimpy tops, and come with a range of jewellery, mobile phones, and rings for the dolls owner.
Another themed doll, the "My Scene Fab Faces", wears a tiara and fake-fur scarf and changes expression if one pushes buttons on her upper back. An ad in the current issue of the top tween magazine Total Girl translates the expressions as "no way", "bummer", "don't go there" and "love it".
Mattel's marketing director, Julie Kearns, said: "My Scene is part of our fashion dolls range, launched to combat the entry of Bratz. It's positioned quite differently. Barbie is very much for younger girls, a princess line, dream time, fantasy" - with the target group two- to five-or-six-year-olds. My Scene was aimed at six- to eight-year-old girls and "very much driven by fashion".
Kearns, like her counterpart at Funtastic, said "we do not target any of our products in an overt sexual way".
The company no longer sells a Lindsay Lohan Barbie. It didn't work then? "Correct." The only celebrity Barbie that did sell, and then only moderately well, were the Olsen twins dolls.
Nor does Mattel still market its Barbie Lingerie doll, a collector's item that wore a black bustier, matching robe, golden hoop earrings and high heels.
"Our mission statement," Kearns said, "is about fun, fashion and friendship, so we do not endorse sexual overtones."
The most favoured magazine for marketers of female tween products is the Pacific Magazine title Total Girl, with a readership of 287,000 tweens in the year to September.
Total Girl, whose circulation in its four-year life has grown from 55,000 to 80,000, has a core market of eight- to 11-year-olds but its readership ranges from six- to 12-year-olds.
This month's issue is a perfect example of tween marketing, carrying full-page ads for My Scene dolls and Barbie perfume and five full pages for Bratz products, including the new Bratz hair styler. One ad promotes a Total Girl Bratz Diamondz competition. The prize: a real diamond pendant. The competition ties in with this season's top-of-the-range Bratz line, Diamondz dolls.
Following three consecutive full page ads for Bratz is a 12-page Christmas gift guide that includes Bratz diamond jewellery and an LG Boost mobile phone, Pretty'n'Pink, which is also advertised in the issue.
Total Girl also carries an ad for Optus's new Broadband "Disney Connection" with the headline "I Want! I Want! I Want!"
Within the magazine is a Target store voucher that reads: "Your mission, if you choose to accept it: Spend $50 or more, Get $5 back".
Perhaps they may shop at Target in Bondi Junction, which this month stocks the retailer's range of bras for three- to four-year-olds, Bratz bras for three- to four-year-olds, Saddle Club bras for four- to six-year-olds, and a lightly padded Target brand bra for eight- to 10-year-olds.
Target also offers a wide range of imported make-up collections, some made by Markwins, a US company whose website shows heavily made-up little girls. It promises "trendy fun cosmetics and collections packaged for young girls to teens" as it is "building a bridge of beauty into the teens".
Target is not alone in marketing such items. Big W's girlswear department at Pagewood includes a Just Girls padded bra for eight- to 10-year-olds and a My Little Pony bandeau bra for two- to three-year-olds. Bonds is now marketing My First T-Shirt Bra, for ages eight and up.
Should parents just stand by and shrug their shoulders?
Carr-Gregg said: "As someone who grew up in the anti-tobacco lobby and in public activism, I don't think we should sit back. People can be outraged but not shrill. I give as an example a group of parents in the US who hit the roof when Teen Vogue ran an ad for pills that were breast enhancers. They successfully lobbied and kicked the ads out".
But once a market has been created, it is hard to un-invent, especially as the tweens products are creating an early appetite for shopping. (In Dolly magazine's latest issue, Holeproof advertises "new sassy knickers". The words "shopping makes me happy" are printed across the back of one pair of knickers.)
The Herald asked Target and Kmart if they would comment on the tweens market.
Six days after the initial approach, both declined. Target's corporate affairs manager, Deb Johnson, said there was "very little time" to answer. The questions were "too broad" to answer on the phone. She was trying to find someone to talk "in a meaningful way" - but in the end no one was available.
Kmart's corporate affairs manager, Lynn Semjaniv, was sorry to "have to decline the opportunity due to a lack of resources to pull the information together this close to Christmas".
Melinda Smith, controller of hard goods for Big W, was more relaxed, agreeing that tweens were "a very important part of our market. That tweens age group has quite a fair amount of purchasing power, particularly female tweens". Reducing the price of technology, she said, "has helped it [the market] grow".
Tamagotchi, for example, retailed at Big W for under $20, Smith said.
In the new Big W brochure, Girl Tech Digi Makeover, an electronic makeover gadget for girls aged six and up, is priced at $96, compared with the recommended retail price of $149.
Girl Tech Digi Makeover, promising "hours of entertainment for even the most discerning young fashionistas", has sold well this year, becoming the 18th-highest-selling toy in the market, with retail sales of $733,700 in the 11 months to November.
Asked if the product might exacerbate young girls' insecurities, Smith acknowledged "a risk inherent with many types of toys and cosmetics".
Julie Kearns at Mattel, which will market Girl Tech next year, said no such risk existed.
With the Digi Makeover toy, "young girls are trying to emulate their older sisters, the girl next door, and some of the celebrities", Kearns said. "It's not about making themselves look better, but looking like an older person. It's not about lacking esteem in themselves. It's like this fantasy of being."
The product is being promoted in girls' magazines, but stand by for a more sophisticated approach.
At a time of declining circulations in many kids' magazines, tween marketers are increasingly using the internet for promotions.
At Mattel Kearns has recognised a big change in "the way you communicate to this generation. They are spending so much time on the internet, on websites, and talking with each other electronically. We are spending on the internet and subscription TV."
Funtastic, in turn, has linked up with Total Girl's website in its "search for Australia's favourite Bratz doll".
Readers are asked "do you you own any Bratz dolls" and if so, how many. If not, "why don't you own any Bratz dolls?" Answers include "I don't have enough money" and "my parents won't let me".
They are also asked to give their name and address with their answers.
Funtastic's Belinda Payne said the company would not have access to this information.
In the face of the tween onslaught, Dr Louise Newman is worried that an "unnecessary focus on physical appearance at the expense of other qualities is an issue of values that, as a community, we need to think about. We have enough problems with anorexia and other image body image related problems without this."
So the juggernaut rolls on? "Yes," Newman says. "It's huge and it works."
GIRL POWER
- The tween market targets children aged six to 12.
- In Australia this means a potential audience of 2.3 million people, half of them girls.
- Since 2001, 125 million Bratz dolls have been sold worldwide, worth $US2 billion ($2.54 billion).
- Personal income of 10- to 17-year-olds is estimated at over $10 billion a year.
- Tweens have a big influence in choosing magazines and toys.
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