#early puberty

[xtrablak674]

First Blood

I was genuinely more surprised by my reaction than she was, it was never my intention to embarrass her, I was already embarrassed enough for the both of us!

Things had started off innocuous enough for our family visit at the foster care agency located in the Southern Bronx. Both grandmothers were there bringing the children they had custody of in tow to the visitation with their parents and other siblings.

As an uncle I was generally just happy to be there, and tried to make my presence as unobtrusive as possible. The problem is I was raised with only brothers, only having sisters tangentially never up-close and personal to know of when a girl began her menses.

I greeted her as I did all the kids with a simple brief hug, and not even really conscious of it I noticed a brassiere strap under my fingers, I hadn't even considered that I should hold my tongue when I spoke what I felt, "Oh my god, is that a bra strap?"

The damage was done, and I had humiliated my niece and myself in a few poorly spoken words. I was so embarrassed and felt horrible I had obviously put a spotlight on my nieces condition which was probably as new to her as it was to me.

Apologizing and also verbalizing, I was bought up in a house with brothers I had no clue that at nine years old these things were remotely possible. Even from my vague rememory of female biology, puberty was something that hit around twelve or thirteen. I don't think I ever hugged the child again afterwards, but I also think we didn't have many more visits either once the adoption was finalized.

Doing the only thing I could do I sought to educate myself, having known I had a handful of girlfriends who had degrees in early childhood development, they shared with me that it was more common than widely understood. I think one of them shared with me that she got her first blood at eight years old.

I was devastated at the possibility of being able to reproduce at such a young age and wonder if our enslavement had anything to do with this phenomenon amongst young Black women. My friends explained to me it was more than likely diet and genetics, the hormones in the food especially the milk that bought on this early adolescence.

The thoughts of how prevalent sexual abuse was in Black families and how a girl-child wasn't safe in a houseful of men, I was very saddened by the thought of my niece be potentially exploited by something that was far beyond her control. Sadly, like her grandmother, and probably great grandmother and definitely her mom, she too had a baby as a teenager continuing the cycle of babies raising babies.

It would be a gross exaggeration of ego to think my actions in that brief moment contributed to this, but it was possibly a small part for which I would forever regret. As usual I saw great things for all of these kids, but they weren't growing up in environments that encouraged greatness and achievement, so they would probably follow the paths of their parents being forever depended on social services to etch out an existence in this world that never really wanted them and isn't really here for them.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[winstontseng]

Joe Knows (2023) More info at Greenpeace and NBC Washington

[juniper-clan]

Moon 13 (2/2)

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[lyticiaart]

Extremely rushed sketch because I love funcle Barry 06 and awkward early puberty (literally) wolf girl Yifa.

[scootersscooter]

Guys if I see one more person say that Peri is 16 I'm going to explode!!!

[vamptastic]

dgaf about egg jokes they're harmless and at worst mildly stereotypical do your thing im sure ive made one before. however. i do feel like the whole discourse was kicked off by that "egg behavior to wear women's deodorant as a man" tweet and we all collectively need to agree that that tweet was dumb & stupid and women's deodorant is objectively superior to men's. actually men's hygiene products in general just suck more except razors. apparently its manly to smell like shit and have dry skin. if i had my druthers id force every cis man to use dove deodorant. id mean id still do it if it made them transgender but i see it as more of a public service in terms of smell than in that regard.

[willowser]

i love the idea of young dad, touya, honestly, like i think it could really work for him in a way.

you meet him when he's much older of course, because he comes by the restaurant you work at on his lunch break, and he's always taking over for anyone that tries to give your car an oil change or tire rotation. and he's always talking about his kids ! his daughter and son, the prides of his life, his reasons for living and best friends.

he never shows you any pictures of them, not at the start, and it's not until your relationship takes a more serious turn that you actually meet them — and you're expecting young kids. seven and five or ten and eight or something near there.

you're not expecting thirty-one year old touya to have a fourteen year old daughter, with green-lined braces and acne on her cheeks, or his quiet, glasses-wearing eleven year old boy that looks just like him.

[the-wizard-dipper]

Masters' Academy AU: Student Extra

Art by @okkennymay

[superfluffychickens]

Muppet! She’s looking a bit red in the face, she might be getting close to laying age! The cuckoo barring was a surprise to me, as was the crest, but she’s really cute!

[barmecidebiohazard]

It's so interesting how I could get my ears pierced at a Claire's in under ten minutes, at age 8, without being harassed by adults who cry "what if you regret it???"

I did regret it, mind you. Hated getting the piercings, hated caring for them, hated wearing them- almost never did. I got an infection, my piercing holes closed but there's always be a little scar there, I still have pain in my ears intermittently. Suffering the long term ramifications of body mods at age 8 because my mom thought it'd be cute.

Nobody was there to explain the possible risks and benefits, I didn't have to go to three therapists and I didn't have to wait until I was 16 or 18 or 20 or whatever. Just walked into a mall and had my body permanently altered. But somehow that was fine.

[beholdthemem]

Listen I'm not gonna pretend that the 2010s-2020s don't have plenty of bodyshaming unpleasantness of their own, but if anyone starts reviving the PARTICULAR brand of fatphobia that ruled the early 2000s to try and fuck up the body image/relationships with food of the little girls of today like they did with the little girls back then, I'm killing them with my bare hands.

[gaycavendish]

can i put you guys onto t4t dakavendish. take my hand… what a beautiful world…

[forestlion]

anyone else had insane pain in the legs bc of, one assumes, growth spurts as a child?

[insummerigrieve]

I was such a quiet, filled with self-loating kid. Constantly thinking, writing, drawing and reading but no talking. I sung to myself when I missed my own voice. My mother convinced herself for years that I hated her, so she wouldn't have to talk to me. I hated myself. I hated that I took space.

[starwarsanthropology]

may i ask about your Sev headcanons?

I love Sev he's so. Idk he's a very interesting kind of strange to me

Headcanon A: realistic

I think that despite the fact that everyone casts him as "the psycho" he's the most emotionally responsive of Delta squad. Like, he's not GOOD at processing or verbalizing or even recognizing his emotions, but he doesn't really bottle up his emotional reactions most of the time the way I think the others do, even though his lack of emotional self-awareness means that he doesn't react to most emotions quite how one might expect and these reactions are easy to misinterpret by outside observers, especially if they're already primed to view him as the "squad psycho".

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Cute aggression (and also generally displacing affection as aggression). but also I do think he's got a soft spot for cute things in general. its just funny to me that i can see him simultaneously as unbothered by incredible amounts of violence and also someone who would feel kind of bad about eating a dessert shaped like a cat.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

I think it takes him a long time to come to terms with the fact that he got left behind on Kashyyyk, not because he thinks anyone is coming to get him after the first 24 hours, but because for all he knows logically it’s the most likely scenario, he can’t imagine a world where his squad would abandon him. I think he’d assume the rest of delta was dead or suffered such heavy casualties was impossible to follow him, and focus on that before processing the fact that they left him, regardless of what information he has about the situation. If/when he gets rescued, it’d be really hard for him to forgive them, not just because they left him but because in doing so they let him grieve for them, and now it’s a shock to his system to see them again. They’re his squad, right there, and it’s a huge relief to see them safe, but part of him thinks of them as the living ghosts of the brothers he trusted. He’ll never be able to see any of them quite the same way after that.   

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

I like to think that the reason his voice is stupid deep is because he got either sick or injured sometime around puberty and it scarred his vocal folds, or a treatment made them grow thicker than the rest of the clones, etc etc. Sometimes it's fun to me to pull on Fi's little brag in Hard Contact about his skill with emergency tracheotomies and think that Sev was his first victim patient during a training exercise and that's why his voice is so much deeper than other clones.