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Sexualisation of Girls
24-February-2010
There are many wise words about how a childhood shapes a man or a woman, irrevocably and for life. One of my favourites comes from Nigerian author Ben Okri who said
We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate.
Our job as parents and leaders in society and the community is to do everything possible to ensure that the dreams that come to our young people are positive ones.
Unfortunately the sexualisation of girls is all around us and it is damaging our youth. Bras, and wet shine lip gloss for five year olds, see through lace, tweety bird G strings, plunging necklines and full make up kits for eight to twelve year olds. The theme carries through to adulthood, for example, car advertisements where a man gets a top of the line sports car and then a glamorous woman to ride in it – two possessions to be acquired.
Sexualisation occurs when a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics and when a person is portrayed only as a sex object.
This debate is not about sexual liberation, the freedom of women to have the sexual relationships they choose, where and when they choose -we will all have our individual views about these things. What this is about is the corporate exploitation of childrens’ sexuality. It is not the sexuality itself but the sickening falsification and then mass marketing of children as sexual beings that hurts us all.
I have looked at recent issues of Dolly and Girlfriend. Dolly doctor has been asked about; how you get rid of cellulite, how do you get rid of big breasts, how you get rid of the freckles on your face, and surgery to get rid of scars on your knees.
The cover of the February issue of Girlfriend (a magazine aimed at late primary school and early high school) shows a girl of somewhere between 13 and 23 (the level of airbrushing makes it impossible to tell) , with an off the shoulder dress and a ‘come hither look’. One of the stories featured : How to be the girl who gets the guy that everyone wants
As a society we are visually absorbed – it is all about how you look. To a certain extent we recognise and lament this fact and from time to time we embrace it and jump on the bandwagon. It is a hugely conflicted and contentious area and one that challenges women of all ages.
But it should not challenge children. Children are being bombarded with huge volumes of graphic sexual content and they simply do not have the maturity to process or understand the images or messages.
What are young girls to make of all this? A clear message which associates physical appearance and buying the right products with being sexy and successful. These lessons learned early will shape identity, values, sexual attitudes and capacity to love and connect with other people.
A woman I know, the mother of three girls recalls when her oldest, who is now 25 came to her when in primary school wanting to know why she wasn’t as ‘pretty and little’ as the girls on TV.
Teen clothing manufacturers have introduced a zero size for women. What does that say to women – that anything with positive numbers is a failure?
The message that our mass media and more importantly the advertisers who are their revenue stream are giving to children is that sex has nothing to do with pleasure, desire intimacy and everything to do with things you consume and things you buy.
In this universe the space in our brain where we should be developing sympathy and understanding is not nearly as important as the space in our shopping malls.
When children are imbued with adult sexuality it is often imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. There is so much evidence of the sexualisation of women and girls in television, music videos, movies, magazines, sports media video games, the internet and advertising. These are the models of femininity that our young girls are studying copying and admiring.
The next step is self objectification – where girls actually think of their own bodies as objects to satisfy others’ desires, as objects to be evaluated for their appearance.
The research tells us that sexualisation and objectification undermine confidence and comfort and self esteem, leading to a host of negatives; shame anxiety and self disgust. This leads to eating disorders and depression. There is evidence that young women who hold the conventional feminine beliefs, avoiding conflict and valuing being nice and sweet and pretty and thin are more likely to be depressed.
This debate is about the current and future health of our girls – emotional, physical and psychological. In telling our girls they can be anything, are we actually demanding that they be everything?
In a world where girls face a paralysing pressure to be perfect, where competitive pressures shape such a large part of who we are whether we like it or not, surely we can allow girls the freedom to be children?
This is an extract of a Speech to Parliament, made on 8th February 2010 (Private Members’ Business, The Sexualisation of Girls)