Glitter

The middle-school girls I teach are doing something weird.
Or, more precisely, not doing something weird.
And that's what's so strange.

I've had a front row seat to the seventh grade for about fifteen years now, so I kinda know what to expect from the kids on many levels.

The boys this year have not let me down. They are folding paper footballs and making origami Freddy Krueger fingers with wild abandon. They truly believe they invented both these things. And they are right on schedule in doing so. Every group of boys before them has done the exact same thing - and believed that they, too, had invented something new and wondrous.

But the girls - that's a different story.

As I looked at my students today, I noticed that something was missing.
Something scores of tween girls have brought to my room every single year.
That something is gobs of inexpertly applied glitter eye make-up.

None of my girls are ridiculously sparkly this year.

In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find many of them with anything beyond a tasteful (?!) touch of mascara. ('Cept the goth girls, but they don't really factor into this. They've adopted a lifestyle that requires eye make-up. Apples and oranges, people. Apples and oranges.)

Having noticed a trend (or it is a non-trend?), I must search for reasons.

I am currently working on two theories vis a vis the absence of tacky eye make-up on middle school girls at my school:

1.  Sasha and Malia Obama are already having a profoundly positive effect on girls thanks to their fresh-faced and stylish appearance. (I think of them as the anti-Olson twins.)

2.  The economy sucks, and extras like eye make-up for your middle school daughter are no longer in most family's budgets. What they used to spend on sparkles is helping put food on the table.

I'd be happier if #1 were the reason; girls could use some positive peer role models.

But I'm pretty sure it's reason #2, and, much as I mock the make-up when it's there, it makes me sad to see these girls missing out on a truly tacky right of passage that has marked seventh grade for so many who've come before them.

Maybe next year.

There's always hope.