Do you ever cringe at all those girls whose sole aim in life seems to be either becoming a Page Three model (that's basically a Playboy Bunny for you non-Brits) or the girlfriend of a footballer?
Ever wondered where those ideas come from, why so many girls out there seem to just aspire to nothing more than beauty, fake tits and a new designer handbag every week? Well look no further, it might just be brainwashing.
Last week I met up with Abi Moore of PinkStinks, who thinks that girls today are growing up with lots of bad role models and are swamped with stereotypes about how they should behave.
According to Abi, girls and boys learn their place from an early age. She says that women today seem to have taken a step back from the '70s and '80s, when body hair wasn't shunned and there wasn't anything shameful about being a feminist.
If you look at the products and celebrities being marketed to young girls, it's hard to disagree. Abi says that even the toys in toy-shops are stereotyped and that girls usually have an illusion of choice, but it's ”between six different princess outfits”.
Girls' make believe is about being princesses. It's about being pretty and passive, while boys' make believe is about action, adventure, pirates and cowboys, says Abi.
She wants to show girls that there are alternative role models out there and that girls can be whatever they want to be. That's why she started PinkStinks with her sister Emma. At first Abi and Emma were branded as crazy feminists who wanted to ban the colour pink. Now they're just ignoring the hate-mail and are getting more positive feedback to boot.
And they don't actually want to ban the colour pink, they just want to even things out a bit. The name PinkStinks comes from the unusual amount of pink stuff that is thrown at girls from an early age. According to Abi it's through this colour that girls learn their place.
It's a colour that leads girls down a certain aisle in the toyshop and in the clothes shop. I thankfully had parents who shunned the colour pink and don't have any experience of this myself, but I can see how it's a subtle way of teaching young girls that they have to conform to a stereotype and a uniform.
Abi and her sister aren't the only ones who have picked up on this. Last week there was a report in British media on how young girls feel like they're being forced to look and act a certain way in order to fit in. The report warned that there is a glamourization of sexiness that might not be very healthy for young girls.
The numbers back it up as well, over 65 percent of 20-year-olds say they would consider having plastic surgery - which makes me wonder if we really need to have all of those make-over shows on TV.
Abi talks about the coverage of one of the American athletes at the Winter Olympics and says that the commentators were discussing her many gold medals and how ”she doesn't look half bad either”. It might be nit-picky, but I wonder if they'd ever say that about a man.
Probably not.
I agree with Abi and think girls need all sorts of role models, brainy ones, pretty ones and brave ones. Growing up idolizing Paris Hilton, Jordan and the likes isn't probably doing anyone any favrous.