Experts warn pressure to conform will lead to a generation of clones obsessed with looks Modern teenagers are obsessed with emulating celebrities, say researchers Pressure to conform is intense and even extends to what products are used Girls are expected to have long straight hair and be perfectly groomed With their skin tanned to a perfect shade of caramel, expensively highlighted hair and manicured nails, today's teenage girls are a world away from dishevelled youngsters of the 80s and 90s. Then, the teenage years were about expressing yourself, whether by embracing grunge or donning the frills and bold make-up of the New Romantics. But as a quick glance at the crowds thronging Topshop on a Saturday reveals, that is no longer the case. New research has shown that girls are under more pressure to conform than ever before. Identical: Modern teenagers are obsessed with emulating the groomed women in TOWIE and other TV shows Pressure: According to academics, girls are obsessed with looking like Paris Hilton and Helen Flanagan 'Girls report a great hostility to anyone who doesn't look the same,' says Abigail Tazzyman, an academic at York University, who studies the grooming habits of women aged 18 to 25. The spectrum of what is acceptable is very small. It is not, for example, enough that girls must all have straight hair; they must use GHD hair straighteners. Another academic to warn of the perils of increasing pressure to look good is American lecturer and film-maker, Jean Kilbourne. Since the Seventies, she has been documenting how mass culture, including advertising and magazines, represents women and says that it now sets an impossible image. 'In the last 40 years, culture has stepped beyond setting an ideal image of beauty for women to aspire to: now it sets an impossible image,' she says. Thanks to the spread of photoshopping, the flawless look teens seek to achieve simply doesn't exist in nature - with frightening consequences to self-esteem. 'This is not a trivial issue,' adds Kilbourne. It is not just about vanity. This takes up an enormous amount of psychic space. It depresses girls and has a drastic effect on self-esteem. So where has this obsession with perfection come from? The answer is to be found, in part, in celebrity magazines where page after page shows glossy girls with perfect skin, bright nails and neatly applied make-up. Glossy: Reality TV stars such as Kim Kardashian and WAGs like Alex Gerrard are typical fodder for celeb mags Unachievable: Photoshopped images such as this one of Gabriella Ellis set a standard too high for anyone Stars like Amy Childs epitomise contemporary beauty with their large breasts on slender figures, long hair, pouty lips and doe eyes. What's more, unlike striking natural beauties such as Tilda Swinton, their plumped, preened and ultimately plastic look is achievable - 'if you don't have it, fake it' is the lesson that teens take away. As a result, girls are piling on the war paint at an increasingly young age. 'I used to reserve black eyeliner and a little bit of a smoky eye for 18-year-olds,' remarked make-up artist Bobbi Brown recently, 'but there are plenty of 15 and 16-year-old girls that wear it now.' Her views are confirmed by a Mintel report which showed that during the first decade of the 21st century, spending on beauty products by teenage girls shot up by 90 per cent. 'Teenage beauty standards are constantly shifting into more adult territory as girls want to be seen to be more mature at a younger age,' it concluded. They also aspire to being flawless - just like Childs and the cohorts of celebrities they see on their TV screens every day. 'Teenage girls are constantly looking at their idols in magazines, so they too want to be picture-perfect from every single angle,' Anna-Marie Solowij, former Vogue beauty director and co-founder of retail consultants Beauty Mart revealed in an interview with The Times. Bland: The tanned, highlighted look of Ashley Greene and Jennifer Aniston has become the standard The standard of beauty they now aspire to is incredibly bloody high. The look they are going for is overly stylised and globalised. It is packaged by the celebrity industry. Even Hannah Murray, make-up consultant for Topshop, which boasts huge numbers of teen customers, is perplexed by the modern teen's embrace of cosmetics. 'In my day, we'd stick on mascara and lip gloss, but these girls feel they are expected to be ready for the red carpet. I like to see a light, fresh look on teenagers, but they want this heavy, flawless make-up. I find it sad these young girls feel they have to look perfect all the time. Teachers too have expressed their shock at the modern make-up craze, with one North London educator telling The Times: 'There were 14-year-olds with perfectly established beauty routines. They all had tong-straightened hair, perfectly caramel-tanned skin and perfectly done nails. None of it was tasteless, except in that you may consider it tasteless that they had spent so much time on such a thing. They could all have been on their way to an interview as a PA in the City. None of it was adventurous or silly or individual. It was like teaching a class of Midwich Cuckoos. 'All the goth, emo and indie-kid things appear to have faded out,' adds Cathy Cassidy, a former agony aunt for the teen magazine Shout. Diversity has been lost. There seems a desperate desire to conform and be accepted. Girls see from celebrity magazines that success is not measured by how many singles you've sold or how well your movies do at the box office. It all comes down to looks. 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