News

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Girls' 'Botox' culture

Leading head warns of 'toxic cocktail'

A leading headmistress has welcomed the economic recession because she hopes it will lead to the end of the materialistic 'me, me, me society'.

Vicky Tuck, principal of Cheltenham Ladies' College – one of the country's leading independent schools – told a conference girls were growing up in a 'Botox and binge-drinking' culture. She warned teachers had to do their job in a society bombarded by the likes of internet excesses, coarse behaviour and language. ' Sometimes, surrounded by media reports on Botox and bingeing, it's easy to feel we live in a moral vacuum, we garden in a gale,' she said. 'But we must go on gardening. Am I alone in finding the economic downturn somehow bracing? Perhaps it will spell the end of the conspicuous and ultimately unfulfilling materialism of the me, me, me society. Let's hope so.'

She told the Girls Schools' Association: 'Prolonging the wholesomeness of childhood is often cited as a key reason for choosing a girls' school. Worried ? Aren't we all, about a coarsening of society and the toxic cocktail of binge-drinking, internet safety and the early sexualisation of girls.'

She also warned society had forgotten the 'craft of parenting' – parents often treated their daughters as their friends, she said.

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