Sexpot Virgins: The Media's Sexualization of Young Girls

[Joanne98]

Professor M. Gigi Durham discusses the corporate media's sexual objectification of girls and how to help young women fight regressive media messages.

In 2006, the retail chain Tesco launched the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit, a play set designed to help young girls "unleash the sex kitten inside."

Perturbed parents, voicing concern that their 5-year-olds might be too young to engage in sex work, lobbied to have the product pulled. Tesco removed the play set from the toy section but kept it on the market.

As M. Gigi Durham points out in The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, Tesco's attempt to sell stripper gear to kids is just one instance of the sexual objectification of young girls in the media and marketplace. Some of the many other examples include a push-up bra for preteens, thongs for 10-year-olds bearing slogans like "eye candy," and underwear geared toward teens with "Who needs credit cards ... ?" written across the crotch.

Targeted by marketers at increasingly younger ages, girls are now being exposed to the kind of unhealthy messages about sexuality that have long dogged grown women. Girls are told that their worth hinges on being "hot," which in mainstream media parlance translates into thin, white, makeupped and scantily clad. Meanwhile, acting on their sexual impulses earns them the epithet "slut." Teen magazines advise girls on how to tailor their look and personality to please boys (in order to entrap them in relationships). Advertisements present violence toward women as sexy.

According to Durham, the regressive messages about sexuality that circulate in mainstream media hamper the healthy sexual development of kids and teens.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/85977/

[undergroundpanther]

1. considering

children are also physically getting secondary sex characterisics earlier,as in as young as 6!!! Periods at 10!

still children inside,emotionally psychologically, but with adult sex drives..it is very disturbing.
And considering how common pedophilia is..it's downright scary.

http://www.health101.org/art_Milk_and_Girls.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/18/healthscience/snearly.php
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-473584/Girls-entering-puberty-age--drugs-answer.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/05/content_6080961.htm

and this...

http://in-defense-of-the-innocent.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-leniency-for-pedophiles.html
http://www.yellodyno.com/Statistics/statistics_child_molester.html

[intaglio]

2. K&R will comment further later n/t

[enough]

3. Very interesting article.

another snip>

Can you talk about the idea that girls have to be "hot" but not "sluts"? Why do you think that this is such a deeply ingrained, pervasive construct?

That's not new. Girls have had to walk that line for quite a while now, where the emphasis is on being sexually desirable but immediately being condemned if they actually act on their desire. Girls are expected not to have desires of their own. The scholar Deborah L. Tolman identified this -- she called it "the missing discourse of girls' desire" -- I think sometime in the mid-'80s. This has been a problem for girls and women all along: They have not been allowed to express their own interest in sex or express their own desires or seek their own pleasure for quite a long time. … It's a terrible mixed message, and it's almost impossible to achieve it -- to walk around projecting desirability but to never be able to act on it, never be allowed to engage in it. One of the other problems is that because of this idea, girls aren't given good information about actual sexual activity. They are not given information to make them understand the risks and responsibilities, how to be in control, protect themselves against STDs, unintended pregnancies -- that's missing from the way they understand sex.

Is there a comparable set of messages about sexuality aimed at boys?

It's not as pervasive. Here's what I think about boys. I think they're getting a lot of messages about girls as sexual objects, in music videos and in video games. In most of the media targeted to teens and even to tweens, girls are always presented as eye candy and sexual objects. Both boys and girls are getting that message. Now, the message that boys are getting about sexuality and masculinity is that male sexuality is predatory, often violent and not emotionally engaged. Those are problematic constructions too. But in the end, girls bear the brunt of those constructions because they give boys an awful lot of power. They don't really put boys in vulnerable positions; they put boys in more powerful positions. In the end it harms both boys and girls. They are not getting good information. They're not getting an ethical, mutual understanding of sex and sexuality, where it's about consensus and cooperation and understanding each other on some human level. It's all about predation and submission.

snip>

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. The message that boys get is that they have to be macho

so that the media attempt to increase gender polarization.

[FredStembottom]

4. That "Peekaboo Pole" has all the earmarks of an Urban Legend

The all too perfectly illustrative outrageousness of it.

[nichomachus]

7. But it's not n/t

[mcg]

8. www.peekaboopoledancing.com

http://www.peekaboopoledancing.com/

"Mom, Kelsey's hogging the stripper pole again!"
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0701/gallery.101dumbest_2007/99.html

Tesco condemned for selling pole dancing toy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-412195/Tesco-condemned-selling-pole-dancing-toy.html

It's not even a good pole. Pole dancing can actually be an artistic sport,
but that's not what they are selling.

[Alameda]

5. This is serious

and very under reported. It's been going on for a long time. It's time everyone became aware of it. Thanks for the article and the links.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. peekaboo pole for yung'uns? ARE YOU SHITTING ME?

excuse me, KIDDING ME?

that's right up there with purity bowels.
that's right up there with pre-teen beauty contests.

[madmom]

9. I don't understand why they say you have to be white to be "hot", I've seen some

pretty hot women (and men) of color in my time.

[windoe]

10. Let's call it pedophilia.

Yet another example of how corporations commit crimes that individuals would get absolutely nailed for.

[mcg]

11. "Buying into Sexy: The sexing up of tweens"

Buying into Sexy: The sexing up of tweens

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/money/sexy/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. The whole "Junior Lolita" look didn't even exist when I was a kid

There was a specific "little girl" style of clothing, with dresses (worn with anklets in warm weather and tights in cold weather) for school and formal occasions and very plain pants/shorts and tops for recreation.

Pre-pubescent children were children, and teens were teens.

The push to extend the teen years into elementary school started when I was in junior high myself. Lingerie manufacturers pushed the sale of "training bras," which girls were supposed to wear whether they had started to develop or not. One began to hear of sixth grade dance parties and contests in which upper elementary school girls vied for the title of "Little League Queen"--at an age when a lot of boys would be just as happy to do without all "girls" except their mothers.

Barbie dolls were controversial when they first came out, because before that, most dolls had been figures of babies or children.

Unfortunately, whatever stupid ideas the business world dreams up, there are always just enough parents who unthinkingly follow them.