Not Allowed to Grow Up: Difference between revisions

* During its short tenure, ''[[Century City]]'' explored two aspects of this trope: first, a child actor suing his parents over the right to take growth suppressant hormones to continue his acting career, and second, an elderly member of a Backstreet Boys-esque boy band suing his former band over a contractual dispute that forces all members to take gene therapy and other surgery to keep them perpetually boi-ish. Incidentally, both cases averted this trope: the child actor was convinced not to take the pills through an appeal to the wonders of growing up, and the boy band case was dropped after one of the members who went through the procedure died of old age.

* ''[[LazyTown]]'' provides a rare modern live-action example. Julianna Rose Mauriello was 13 when she took the role of 8-year-old Stephanie, and was relatively believable as that age. She was 15 when the second season was shot, and is clearly a young woman rather than a little girl in those episodes (she doesn't even appear to have bound breasts, at least not consistently), yet no narrative time appears to have passed, and in one episode she is shown to be in the same grade school class as her young puppet friends. Mauriello was a month from 17 when the first season of ''LazyTown Extra'' was shot, suggesting at the time that the production team was willing to let her play an 8-year-old ''all the way into her twenties.''

* After ''[[Punky Brewster]]'' moved from NBC, Soleil Moon Frye started developing early and went through a massive growth spurt. At first, producers dealt with the situation by [[Suppressed Mammaries|binding her breasts]] while still playing the character off as, physically, a prepubescent child. When the premise became too unbelievable, Punky was finally allowed to have her puberty. The first episode that admitted Punky was growing up begins with Punky marching in on her caretaker at breakfast and announcing proudly ''[[Refuge in Audacity|"Henry, guess what? I'm getting boobs."]]''

** Made even more obvious by the fact that Soleil Moon Frye would eventually have to have breast reduction surgery at 16 because of [[wikipedia:Gigantomastia|gigantomastia]].