Notes to Young Rebels

(An open note to a girl who is growing up too fast)

You are not dressing like a woman.
You are being dressed as one.

By algorithms.
By beauty industries.
By porn culture.
By adults who profit from you not knowing how young you are.

They tell you it’s empowerment.
They tell you it’s “owning your body”.
They tell you it’s confidence.

But here is the truth no one dares to say:

You didn’t choose this timing.
It was chosen for you.

You didn’t wake up at fourteen wanting lip filler, contour, lashes, nails, and a voice trained to sound seductive.
You were taught that your value begins where desire begins.

And that is not freedom.
That is grooming.

When a fifteen-year-old speaks, dresses, and performs like a thirty-year-old woman, something has been taken from her:
• her awkwardness
• her softness
• her right to be unfinished

Girlhood is supposed to be messy, loud, silly, ugly, brilliant, boring, intense, naive.
Not curated.
Not filtered.
Not monetized.

But the world doesn’t make money from girls who are still becoming.

It makes money from girls who think they are already products.

So it sells you a body before you’ve lived inside it.
A face before you’ve owned it.
A voice before it’s truly yours.

And once you learn to see yourself through desire, you never fully stop.

You start asking:
• Am I hot enough?
• Am I visible?
• Am I chosen?

Instead of:
• Am I safe?
• Am I curious?
• Am I alive?

And that is how childhood ends quietly, not with violence — but with a mirror.

I am not telling you to be modest.
I am telling you to be yours.

You are not late.
You are not behind.
You are not boring.

You are exactly the age you are.

And there is nothing more radical, in this world, than letting a girl grow slowly.

— L.P.