What might you find on a 10-year-old girl's birthday present wishlist?
A colouring book.
Fidgets.
Slime.
Sloth things.
Cute.
How about...
Fairy lights.
Earrings.
New shoes.
"Trendy" clothes.
Sounds about right. So what about...
A ring light.
A loft bed.
A second piercing.
A skincare fridge.
Squirming yet?
Welcome to the world of the new tween.
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In the case of this list, specifically Australia's tween queen, Pixie Curtis, daughter of the indomitable Roxy Jacenko, the Sydney PR boss who has masterfully turned her hustle into a very successful business, or seven.
Pixie has her businesses, too. There was Pixie's Bows, and now there is Pixie's Fidgets, and both have been extremely lucrative, supercharged by Roxy's skill at leaping on a fad at speed, securing a quick supply line, and deploying her top-notch social-media savvy.
People enjoy having a lot of opinions about Roxy's pursuit of success and conspicuous consumption, and about her daughter's public profile.
And of course, people have had a lot of opinions about Pixie's birthday present wishlist, seen in full, here:
But to those who are wringing their hands of what has become of the innocence of youth, I say that anyone who's particularly horrified by this little girl's material dreams hasn't spent much time around one lately.
Pixie is 10 in a month. My daughter is 11.
And what I learned when I read this post was that she would bloody LOVE Pixie's list. So would all her mates.
Sure, my daughter has no idea what a skincare fridge is, but she's been nicking my cleanser ever since I said a facewash might be a good idea and that mine was fancier than hers so she should leave it alone.
She campaigned hard to get a loft bed in her room when we moved house last month. I gave in, most likely out of relocation guilt, and now she sleeps two metres off the floor, almost bumps her head when she sits up, and misses snuggling the dog.
Of course, I doubt the loft bed that might end up in Pixie's mansion will be a self-assembly job from IKEA, but hey, same, same.
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My daughter asks me daily if she can get her second ear-piercing. NO, you can't, I say with conviction, although for the life of me I can't really remember why.
And fidgets are such a depressing obsession in our house that every time I walk past that mountain of landfill-in-waiting, I die a little death. Yet, they keep showing up.
My daughter doesn't yet have a phone of her own, or any social media accounts, but would she like to? Hell, yes.
She's spent a lot of the lockdown-school-holidays using her dad's phone to make videos on Zoomerang, an app that makes little clips exactly like TikTok's, except they don't go anywhere. Hair-flicking and lip-syncing are essential.
If she knew they would look better with a ring light, that would be on her list, too.
Are you clutching your pearls about my daughter yet? Does her desire for frivolous stuff make you think she's a bit of a shallow dingbat?
Well look, she's also a vegetarian who has refused to eat an animal in three years, despite the rest of us chowing down on chicken and steak all around her.
She decided to join her school's all-male cricket team, loves to tackle in AFL and adores chasing balls of all kinds.
She's a feminist, unafraid to call out her male friends for what she thinks is "sexist" behaviour.
And she has a fierce sense of social justice.
She also loves filters that give her puppy ears and eyes that spill sparkles.
Pixie Curtis lives in a different world to most "ordinary" children.
A day after her mum posted her birthday wish list to Instagram, a full-sized, professional ring light arrived at her house. For free.
Along with a swag of skincare and lip glosses. Watching her unbox all that on a Wednesday afternoon makes you wonder what Christmas morning must be like at the Jacenko/Curtis house.
But that's celebrity. And privilege. And, frankly, PR.
Demonising little girls for wanting the things that they see signalling womanhood all around them is as old as time.
It's the 2021 equivalent of a toddler stumbling in her mother's shoes, or a six-year-old raiding a handbag to paint on a lipstick smile.
Pixie's stuff-stuffed birthday list doesn't make her a symbol of a values-bereft culture. It makes her a typical tween living a not-so-typical life.
Except for the skincare fridge.
That's just bonkers.
Feature Image: Instagram / @roxyjacenko
Top Comments
You're probably right that Pixie will get it all, and I wish her all the luck in the world with her skin care fridge, its kind of adorable. I really hope we get to see the tiny glass coffee table.