To say it was the absolute best ten minutes of my life (up until that point in time) would not have been an exaggeration: after an especially glowing school report, my mum rewarded me with a crisp ten pound note and ten minutes with which to go utterly ham inside our local Claire’s Accessories.
As an entrenched tomboy and army veteran, who last wore make-up on her wedding day decades prior, my mum chose to hover outside – as I tore through the sparkly pink and purple paradise of my ten-year-old dreams. The resulting loot? A clip-on, three-foot-long ponytail… the colour of which matched not a single hair on my head. It’s giving goddess! A tub of gloopy body glitter. A school disco hates to see me coming! And a precious collection of (surely 100% authentic?) gemstone rings. The Kardashians could never! One for each finger, please.
But now, fast forward almost twenty years and Claire’s Accessories has officially closed every one of its 154 shops for good – and with it, alongside the loss of 1,300 jobs, we’re also waving goodbye to the end of low-stakes girlhood.
Things are hitting differently for the generation of girls coming up behind us, and we urgently need to pay attention to that. Instead of experimenting with haphazardly smeared electric blue Barry M eyeshadow, tween girls today have been raised in a world of eight-step skincare tutorials with no margin for error. Retinol should not be in a primary school-aged child’s vocabulary, but it is – and it’s on some of their Christmas wishlists too. The British Association for Dermatologists was even forced to issue a warning against it, explaining luxury products seen on social media could cause damage to young skin.
The rite of passage, of seeing how many butterfly clips you could physically handle digging into your scalp before it felt like it was on fire, is no more. Instead, it has been replaced by monogrammed water bottles, attempting to start (or dreaming of having) a YouTube channel, offering yourself up to the internet like a sacrificial, performing lamb. Lip gloss is a firm status symbol in schools now – ideally a £20 one from Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, according to youth trends newsletter, After School – rather than something you begged your mum to buy mostly because you liked the taste of it (shout out to you, watermelon Lip Smackers, and your negligible price tag).
While all of this might sound frivolous on the surface, the dearth of opportunity for unbridled, judgement-free, silly joy that tween girls now face is having worryingly real consequences: by the age 17, 77% of girls now report numerous mental health issues (like anxiety and insomnia), with around half presenting before the age of 14. English teenage girls, estimated to spend nearly 5 hours a day on social media, consuming narratives about who they should and shouldn’t be, and how they ought to look to avoid ridicule or being labelled ‘low value’ by the manosphere, are now officially the most miserable in all of Europe.
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It goes deeper than screentime: what sort of adults will emerge from a generation who grow up minus an pressure-free, semi-private space in which to experiment, be anonymous and get things wrong? We’re watching in real-time as girlhood is transformed into something intently watched, measured and monetised, and which has a shockingly short shelf-life. Tween trends are being increasingly overthrown by adult ones (see: the retinol obsession and muted fashion tones) as culture becomes a globby melting pot online, dictated by the algorithm rather than genuine happiness or age appropriateness.
Thankfully, there are green shoots and attempts at reclamation in the works. W magazine has just launched its new WYouth offering in an effort to rebuild the now defunct tween magazine market, formerly populated by the likes of Mizz, Bliss and, of course, CosmoGIRL!. The conversation around allowing phones in schools and how teens access social media is well and truly underway, with experts loudly sounding the alarm that the harm caused could well be akin to that of the tobacco industry’s previously unknown damages.
Claire’s Accessories was a cultural phenomenon built solely for the girlies, a rare physical space to gather; a spot where queuing up to get your ears pierced with a mate on a Saturday morning was peak excitement. Spending hours stroking sequinned pencil cases and fluffy keyrings in-store was a genuinely acceptable pastime, borne from true girlish thrill as opposed to what we’ve been sold online. It offered up a space to bond, as well as delight in frippery.
So, thank god then, that a smattering of Claire’s Accessories concession stands will at least remain open – for those who want to wear novelty earrings and velvet scrunchies, and to enjoy the silly innocence of plastic hair clips, before irreversible maturity gets the better of them.
Follow Cosmopolitan's Features Editor, Jennifer Savin, on Instagram
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
