"Teenage Girls Haven't Been Living, They've Been Performing" - Metafilter

Metafilter has a better comment section that most websites - as in, the chances of your blood pressure spiking are only 1/3, instead of a guarantee.

This small collection of articles from across the web is about teenage girls, the internet, and the instinct to self-brand. Basically, in this digital day and age, teenage girls have become their own PR companies. They photoshop photos of themselves; they track the number of "likes" on their pictures.

This is tricky. It's hard to talk about, because the easy response is, "...but the girls WANT to go wild! They like it! That's just how teenage girls are - shallow! Look at them, reveling in their power."

...And, maybe. But wouldn't it be great if it wasn't the only kind of power available to a teenage girl? Which means the flip side of that "power" coin is "pressure"...

The crux of the problem for this girl, let's call her Susie, is that she's stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one side, there is the crushing pressure to be sexually desirable. She is aware of this pressure even before she caves to it, and at a much younger age than adults would like to believe. Why do you think we cake make-up on toddlers, sell push-up bras to 9-year-olds, or suggest that tweens get bikini waxes? We are preparing them for what we know is coming. They are smarter than we think and they know these tricks and tips are not for their benefit, but for the benefit of people who look at them.

On the other side, Susie knows that she loses the desirability game if she caves to the desires she has inspired. Though "sexual capital" isn't a phrase she will run across until her gender studies classes 10 years later, Susie intuitively understands that she loses hers if people think she's too accessible... The wiggle room between the rock and the hard place-that sweet spot between being wanted and being respected-is all but non-existent.

From What a Gross Facebook Page Tells Us About a Woman’s Need to Be Desired