I don't read, watch or listen to the mainstream news media, and I have little interest in the pop world. If a story is sufficiently saturated, it finds its way into the world of my awareness by incidental means, but I'm usually unclear on any specifics.

I barely know who Miley Cyrus is. I do know that she plays the character "Hannah Montana", but I couldn't tell you who Hannah Montana is (TV? movie? something else?). I know next to nothing about the circumstances of her supposedly racy photographs, but given my general attitude toward pre-adult sexuality, I doubt I'd be shocked.

The part of the story that caught my interest is that in nearly every headline Miss Cyrus called a "tween". I guess it's a measure of how out of touch I am, but I had assumed a tween is someone in her 20s. That's how the word is used by Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring, which until now was the only place I had seen the term used. Hobbits have long lifespans, so they don't even come of age until 33. (Frodo turns 33 when the book opens, though he's 50 by the time of the main adventure; I guess they don't mention that in the movie.)

For hobbits, then, the tweens are a time of early adulthood when one is no longer a child but not yet really serious about life. Since it is my opinion (from my perspective now of one comfortably beyond 40) that most women don't really blossom until some time around age 28 to 31 -- an opinion which is perhaps a function of the subculture I inhabit, in which education is typically prolonged and marriage typically delayed -- the Tolkien concept of tweens makes sense to me.

But obviously that's not what the rest of the world means by the term. Googling around a bit, I see that "tween" refers someone who is older than a child but younger than a teen. The term is used by marketers, and in that context I can understand it. When one thinks of it in terms of "what images and associations will appeal to this demographic?" it's pretty natural to identify a group which has style and image consciousness beyond that of a child but not yet that of a teen. In my day these people were simply "preteen". I'm not sure why a new label was needed, but that's how it always is in marketing.

Most definitions I've seen say tweens are of the ages 8 to 12, with some going as high as 14. OK, but I still don't see how Miley Cyrus is a tween. Tween comes before teen, and teen means 13 to 19. Miley Cyrus is 15 years old. By anybody's definition, that makes her a teen, not a tween.

11:52:30 PM  [permalink]  comment []