The cover of this past weekend’s New York Times Magazine features a somewhat stunned and lifeless looking Miranda Cosgrove with the headline “Big Girl Now,” the corresponding story (penned by Peggy Orenstein) examines the difficulties that the seventeen year old Cosgrove faces as she navigates her way from tween idol to adulthood, ideally without becoming yet another cautionary tale of out of control young womanhood (see: Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, etc etc etc).
The piece is fascinating and raises quite a few good points, but what I find far more interesting is what’s ultimately left unsaid: while Miranda and her female cohort are desperately trying to grow up without losing control, their male peers are somehow able to traverse the path from boy to man in a much more seamless manner. While cultural critics wring their hands in fear of what’s to become of Miranda (or has become of Lindsay, Miley, and the like), no one seems the least bit concerned about how similarly wholesome Justin Bieber (who, like Miranda, is on the cusp of adulthood at age seventeen) is going to become a man and embrace his sexuality without betraying his principles: perhaps because, for a boy, being interested in sex is not seen as being in conflict with being “good.” (How else to explain the fact that Justin Bieber manages to maintain a wholesome image while palling around with rappers best known for singing, well, less than chaste songs?)
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