The entertainment industry attempts to represent all people across the board.
From African Americans to the LGBTQ community to suburban families to busy politicians, Hollywood and other media platforms make a pure effort to cover all the bases.
However, students and minors are left out of this equation. And no one seems to care.
Many movies and TV shows revolve around the high school scene, playing to the interests of younger audiences and attempting to be more relatable to the “TikTok Generation.” Some could even say teenagers are the sole focus of the silver screen.
Yet, casting directors aren’t bending to the age restrictions of high school: 13-18 years old. Most actors who portray these students, these teenagers, have long left behind the glory days, focusing on parenthood and marriage and filing taxes.
All things that aren’t even on a kid’s radar.
“Gossip Girl” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” are prime examples of this phenomenon, where decade-older actors dominate the social scene in a high school classroom.
Blake Lively, who played 16-year-old Serena van der Woodsen in “Gossip Girl,” was 20 in Season 1. Isabel Conklin, who was 15 in Season 1, was played by 20-year-old Lola Tung. While both of these ages are generally close, the growth in intelligence and physical appearance is astronomical.
As a sophomore, you’re still a kid, fresh out of your first year of high school. At 20, you’re looking at your junior year in college, ready to leave the traps of education and get out into the “real world.”
In “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” Daniel Radcliffe is portraying a 17-year-old kid, meanwhile enjoying the freedoms of 21. Potter is still barred by the expectations of childhood; Radcliffe has a free world at his fingertips, jumping from full adulthood to legal alcohol consumption.
This trend makes sense in the entertainment industry: high school kids are notorious for the parties and substance abuse and fraud. And Hollywood feels the definite need to show that side of the teenaged scheme. Minors simply can’t portray these illegal acts due to their age.
However, these companies and directors and producers fail to recognize the fundamental flaw in their system: their TV Shows, their movies, their montages of lust and addiction and violence are tailored for kids.
Why would we want to establish this agenda anyway? Sex may sell, but it shouldn’t be normalized at 15.
America’s beauty standard continues to climb year after year, causing most physicalities impossible to achieve. Everyone needs a perfect face with perfect features and perfect facial harmony and the perfect wardrobe. Don’t even get me started on the necessary perfect figure.
And who better to represent this expectation than the beautiful actors, all fresh out of puberty and ready to take on the luxury of brand deals and professional makeup artists to make the ugly go away.
Like a kiss, wrapped in dollar bills, furthering the disease of perfectionism and self-loathing.
Now, kids can’t see themselves on that screen, actors plastered across streaming platforms and social media accounts. They’re not pretty enough, not hot enough, not cool enough. They will never be enough for this world of demons, feasting on the fear of exclusion.
High school may be the prime scene for teasing and cliques and judgement. However, Hollywood wrongly uses this stereotype to continue the trend of self-hatred in kids as young as 13.
Equality for all races, religions, sexualities, and cultures must come first in this world of acceptance.
Yet, students, kids set on the precipice of hormones and suicide, are neglected in this reality of understanding, rejected by the entertainment industry time and time again.