“Miley has said she is ’so embarrassed’ by the photos and has apologized to her fans. But it may not be that much different from what regular girls are already putting up on the Internet, says M. Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect.

“It is pretty routine these days for girls to post provocative pictures of themselves online,” she says. “The sexual objectification of young girls is so normal in today’s media environment.”

From Miley Cyrus: A Cautionary Tale.

But acclaimed author Germaine Greer points out in an article of hers, “Kate Moss has been able to earn millions only as long as she could continue to project the body image of a 13-year-old. The appeal of her nude portraits derives from the heart-breaking curve of her narrow hip-line and the tautness of her barely perceptible cleavage, not to mention the sulky innocence of her unfocused gaze.

“The icon of the 34-year-old mother qua 13-year-old virgin is even more disturbing than the sexy image of the 15-year-old Cyrus, because it is so much rarer and weirder.”

Greer continues, “Sexually knowing 15-year-olds are normal. No matter how much energy Disney - which makes the TV show Hannah Montana, in which Cyrus stars - might put into denying the obvious, 15-year-olds are sexually aware.

“Any schoolteacher coping with a heaving mass of 15-year-old women knows that whatever their tribal culture or their religious affiliation, they are fascinated by sex. Girls’ magazines pay lip service to health and friendship issues: their real subject is boys.

“We train female children to be manipulative and to exploit their sex. From the time she is tiny, a girl in our society is taught to flirt…

“One thing we know about the Leibovitz photograph is that Cyrus saw nothing amiss in clutching a satin sheet to her apparently naked bosom, and looking at the camera over her shoulder. Girls are taught to look at the world in that sidelong fashion from the time they come to consciousness.”

From We like our Venuses young, by Germaine Greer, The Guardian, April 30, 2008.

Greer’s new book is Shakespeare’s Wife.

“The girl I’m playing is an intellectual and she’s sexy and has to find a way to balance those two things.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal added, in an interview about her role in “Mona Lisa Smile”, “And those are contemporary issues that myself and a lot of my friends struggle with.” [From the page Sexuality : teen/young adult]

In her article Sex and the Highly Gifted Adolescent, Annette Revel Sheely (a counselor associated with the Gifted Development Center in Denver) notes, “Many parents find it difficult to acknowledge their adolescent’s emerging sexuality. Yet they are the very people who can be most influential in guiding their teen towards a positive adult sexuality.

“In any family, this emergence can be quite a challenge. For families with highly gifted adolescents, however, it can be especially confusing.

“Some characteristics innate to the highly gifted can complicate an adolescent’s developing sexuality. These include asynchrony (either early or late sexual development), social isolation, sensual overexcitability, and androgyny.”

But gifted or not, and whether we are adolescent or older, sexuality is a central part of our identity, and impacts how we interact with others and make use of our creative talents.

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“I don’t consider them bad - they’re girls [laughs]. They’re going to make mistakes, but the films show the repercussions and show that they’re going to learn.”

[Interview magazine, May 2008; photo: Evan Rachel Wood left, with co-star Nikki Reed in "Thirteen" (2003)]

She continues, “A lot of people are made to feel bad for being sad, so on top of already being unhappy, you’re gonna hate yourself for it. I have my own demons, my own pain and darkness, but I choose to embrace them and look at them head-on and deal with them. Then it doesn’t hurt, and you learn from it.”

Asked about her relationship with musician and artist Marilyn Manson, Wood said, “I had been in a place where I was letting too many people dictate who I should be and what I should be, and I was trying to make everybody happy to the point where it was just killing me. I’d completely lost myself.

“It’s kind of funny now that people think I’ve completely changed myself for him, when this is actually the first time in my life that I took a stand and said, This is who I am and this is who I’ve always wanted to be, and I’m finally with somebody who lets me be who I want to be.”

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Relationships : teen/young adult
Self concept / self esteem articles
Social reactions : teen/young adult

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As profiled in a Today Show bio, “She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so. Her education continued at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. Sabur has taken up teaching math and physics courses at Southern University in New Orleans. She has been playing clarinet with orchestras since her solo debut at age 11.” [From article posted on www.aliasabur.com]

In an interview in 2005, Sabur said talked about her achievement attitude: “Things have been not exactly smooth along the way, but that’s how it is when you do something that no one else has really done before… not honestly so much with the actual work and the class work and practicing and performing, but with everything else along the way.

“I mean, there are a lot of people who told me that I couldn’t do what I’ve done. And if I had listened to them, then I wouldn’t have done any of it.

“I would say that if you have a goal, you should fix it in your mind and not let anything stop you on the way. Because no matter what you try to do, people will tell you that you can’t or you shouldn’t. And especially for other girls, who are really discouraged in the sciences, that you can be just as good at it or better than boys.

“You can’t let people bring you down. That’s basically all there is to it.”

[CNN SUNDAY MORNING April 17, 2005]

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Where Are All the Good Kids?

It’s always a pleasure to interview child actors and their parents for our annual Spotlight on Young Performers. Most of the child actors we meet are bright and courteous, and the parents work hard to provide the best for their children.

It’s such a contrast to the stereotypical child-stars-gone-wrong stories we hear about almost every day. The tabloid travails of Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears, Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, Brad Renfro, Mischa Barton, Gary Coleman, Danny Bonaduce, et al., feed the impression that all child actors are destined for lives of addiction, depression, and even early death.

The truth is that most child actors grow up just fine — even happy and successful. Of course, the entertainment industry is full of stars and behind-the-scenes pros who began as child actors: Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Brooke Shields, Ron Howard, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Connelly, and Christopher Walken to name a few. There’s also Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story), executive producer of the upcoming superhero flick Iron Man and other films, and writer-director Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter), who was nominated for a best adapted screenplay Oscar this year for Away From Her.

And what of those who’ve gone on to success in fields beyond show business? Shirley Temple Black — arguably the most popular child star of all time — has served as a delegate to the United Nations, was ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Ghana, and was the first female U.S. chief of protocol. California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) — an outspoken advocate for the civil rights of children, women, and gays and lesbians — was once best known as Zelda Gilroy on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. And let’s not forget Little House on the Prairie’s Melissa Gilbert, former national president of the Screen Actors Guild.

Many child stars go directly from early stardom into classrooms at Yale (Foster, Claire Danes, Kellie Martin), Harvard (Kuehl, Portman), Princeton (Shields), Columbia (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anna Paquin, Julia Stiles), and Stanford (Connelly, Picket Fences‘ Justin Shenkarow).

Danica McKellar, best known as girl-next-door Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years, not only graduated from UCLA with a degree in mathematics but also co-authored a paper proving an original math theorem (the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem). Dubbed a math “superstar” by The New York Times, she penned Math Doesn’t Suck, a best-selling nonfiction book that encourages girls to cultivate an interest in mathematics. Blossom’s Mayim Bialik is also a UCLA alumna with a doctorate in neuroscience.

>> Continued on BlogStage.

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Acting: teen/young adult
Books: acting
Danica McKellar on the power and beauty of math
Gifted / talented arts celebrities

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When I was young growing up there were so many things I dreamed of being or doing but there was no one stop place where I could find out everything I needed to know about achieving my dreams which were at the time becoming a Radio Presenter or a writer.

So I wanted to build a website where any aspiring talented young person could come and find out helpful tips and information to help them on their quest to fulfilling their dreams.

I grew up in the rural county of Cornwall in England which was miles away from the big cities like London where a lot of people go to fulfil their dreams so I wanted a website that would bridge the gap between the big cities and the little towns a website that would help remove barriers that were put in their way.

This is why we have the spotlight section on the website as I want to showcase people who have had barriers in their way to achieving their dreams the ones that can’t afford to go to twenty million auditions or those that have done hundreds of gigs but still not got the recognition they deserve.

I want to promote the best in young talent and help them get on the map.

Continued at Talented Young People.

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“I do think that now people go straight out of college and straight to the work place faster, but regardless of the career choices, the years in between 20 and 30 are really crucial and really transformative, and generally kind of confusing whether or not you want to admit that to yourself.

“It’s like, on paper, to the rest of the world, at 25 you’re an adult. But you may not feel like that. For me, I graduated from Harvard and was going to go to graduate school and ended up going to Hollywood, but as soon as I graduated, my family was like, ‘Okay! You’re on your own!’

“And there’s this weird sort of confusion where you want to go back to being protected but you can’t anymore.”

Bitsie Tulloch - New York Magazine 11/15/07.

quarterlife sites :
www.quarterlife.com
www.nbc.com/quarterlife

Related post: Making good use of your quarter-life crisis.

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“Meaningful work. I’m not interested in studying just to get a grade.

“I’m trying to understand what I’m doing and why it’s important—in class and on earth.”

Gisselle Callejas

Bard College at Simon’s Rock - “the nation’s first institution devoted to early college.”

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The article Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals [page 2] notes that psychologist Dabrowski “was keenly interested in self-mutilation as a phenomenon suggestive of higher than average sensitivity.

“His Ph.D. dissertation, first published in 1934.. showed the co-existence of self-mutilatory tendencies, creativity and strong developmental strivings in a select group of creative individuals.”

A recent news report: Self-Injury Found to be Common in High-School Students suggests that “teens are harming themselves at rates higher than previously suspected”

A study indicated the most common reasons included “to get control of a situation,” “to stop bad feelings,” and “to try and get a reaction from someone.”

“This suggests that adolescents are engaging in NSSI [Non-Suicidal Self-Injury] for several reasons, including both regulating their own internal emotional states and trying to manage situations in their environment,” says researcher Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson, PhD.

“Once thought of as a phenomenon only found in teens with mental health issues, the results support the notion that many adolescents in the community are self-harming as way to cope with emotional distress.”

A BBC News article Self-harming since the age of 15 says “It has been estimated that 10% of young people in Britain have self-harmed. There are no official figures, but hospital records show that nearly 500 adolescents a week are treated for deliberately injuring themselves.”

The article describes Tor: “a country girl who grew up surrounded by ponies and public school life. She had a normal childhood, with a normal family.

“But mounting pressure to achieve the entry grades for an exclusive sixth form college caused her to crack, and self-harm became a large part of her life.

“I think this is when it occurred to me that this could be a way of helping myself and letting the pain inside disappear,” she explains. “When you drag the blade across your skin it just feels a release.

“It’s like when you hold your breath, hold your breath. You just feel you are going to blow up. Self-harm is like when you breathe again.”

By age 20, Tor had dropped out of agricultural college and was homeless.

“She first began to turn her life round when she was given support by a Community Psychiatric Nurse who taught her different coping strategies. She also joined Safe House, a drop-in centre for vulnerable young people in Southampton.

“After nine years of self-harming and now aged 24, Tor has found a career she loves and hopes she can move forward with her life.”

[Photo: Tor's best friend Gary understands self-harm as he also cuts himself.]

Related articles:
Self-Injury, by Clay Tucker-Ladd, PhD
Adolescence and gifted: Addressing existential dread

Also see the Highly Sensitive site.

Pages:
Cutting / self-injury
Cutting resources: articles sites books

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“I couldn’t quite handle the high school thing, and I wanted to leave as soon as I could. So I suppose I never really wanted to explore it, whereas I did want to be a woman. Some of the teen flicks can be great, but it wasn’t the story I wanted to live in. Apart from Natalie Wood’s character in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ [1955], where she plays a teenager, I just couldn’t imagine doing it. I wish I could have. I think I would have been a much better person for it.” [Interview mag., Dec/Jan 2008; photo from 'Atonement']

Many other talented and creative people “couldn’t quite handle the high school thing” and felt like outsiders, finding their teen years to be difficult and emotionally challenging.

“The passage through adolescence was a lonely, involuted time for me,” said writer Maxine Kumin. “I had no one to eat lunch with, and took my sandwich to the locker room, where I pretended to be busy writing an article… I took refuge in scholarship… At Radcliffe, epithets with which I had been branded — bookworm, greasy grind, brain trust — became a badge of honor.” [From book: Jane Piirto. My Teeming Brain: Understanding Creative Writers.]

Anthony Hopkins was dyslexic and hated rugby, and so was treated as an outcast in his native land - but he claims the treatment from his peers gave him just what he needed to become a movie star: “It gave me the fire and anger to become an actor. I wasn’t afraid of anything. The acting covered up the loneliness.” [imdb.com 1.30.01]

As a teen, Nicole Kidman towered above most of the others in her class and has said she thought of herself as “the ugliest person alive on earth.”

On weekends, when most kids were at the beach, Kidman was often alone on the stage of the school theater. “I would just lock myself in there,” she says. “I thought it was fantastic having that stage all to myself. I’d be teased about going off to the theater instead of the beach with everyone else.

“I felt like an outsider, but it is character building not to be a pretty child who just bats her eyes and gets her way.” [Cosmopolitan, Jul 1991]

~ ~ ~

Heavy metal and gifted children - dealing with being social outsiders

More High ability / gifted videos

Related article: Getting out of school alive.

Related pages:
Early life
Gifted / talented characteristics
High Ability - gifted/talented articles
Perspectives on talent : teen/young adult

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