Am I pretty?

by Anči

Most of you are probably aware of the disturbing new You Tube trend, summed up by the phrase "Am I pretty or ugly?"

Just your average after-school activity

If you haven't heard of it, you can probably imagine what it involves. Basically it's an exercise in public humiliation, among(st) adolescent girls who... regularly  1) stare into a camera, and 2) ask the notoriously Noble-Hearted-You-Tube-Commenters to tell them whether they're pretty or ugly.  (I'm suddenly much less of ashamed of spending so much of my pubescent free-time interviewing celebrity-me in front of a mirror. "Did I feel a lot of pressure after being named one of  People's Most Beautiful? No, not really. I don't really focus on those things. Although it's always nice to be included.")
 If you've ever been on Youtube, you can probably imagine what the majority of the responses are like: (To those of you who wrote down "Dick pics captioned with an angry, misspelled request for fellatio," I'd say... That's a really specific answer.  And where are you writing that down?)

As expected, Bust reported  that "70 percent of the comments came from men. Not only were they highly derogatory in nature, but "most of them were definitely over 18.""

It was also pointed out that "The comments from females... were almost exclusively provided by the under-18 crowd," which paints a really creepy picture if you ask me.

Just the fact fact that the two primary contributors to this "trend," are underage girls, and grown men should tell you exactly which group benefits from the sexualization of young girls. And more importantly, which group it hurts the most.


Thoughts?