Society: Teaching girls to be sex objects [18+]

I don't know if the [18+] warning is appropiate for this, but I added it just to be safe.

I was reading topics at Goth.net and found this article:

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Silk and lace turn little girls into eye candy

YOU SEE them everywhere now, little girls clutching plastic Bratz dolls that look like strippers or pole dancers.

In department stores, shelves stacked with bibs and bottles sit alongside racks of minuscule high-cut string bikinis, midriff tops and hipster jeans. Toddler wear, from clothing to sandals, is sprinkled liberally with sequins, tops trimmed with see-through lace and cut with peek-a-boo necklines.

In the US, says visiting author Dr Jean Kilbourne, tiny bras and G-string underwear featuring cherries and the words "eye candy" and "wink wink" have now made an appearance in the children's wear sections of Target. Meanwhile, Barbie has moved from the ballroom to the bedroom: the Lingerie Barbie series includes black silk teddies, garter belts, stockings and bras.

Kilbourne is a Boston-based lecturer, media critic and film maker. She is on a private holiday but has paused briefly in Sydney to talk about her latest project, a book tentatively titled So Sexy, So Soon: The Sexualisation of Childhood. Her co-author, Diane Levin, an early childhood expert and professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, has lectured extensively in Australia and together they are immersed in exploring and documenting a global advertising phenomenon that is worrying academics, doctors and parents throughout the Western world.

Just as there is now clear research to demonstrate the toxic impact of fashion, alcohol and tobacco advertising on young women's body images, eating habits and mental health, Kilbourne warns of the potential for similar pyschological side-effects from the use of sex to sell clothes, toys and food to young children.

Today's children, she says, are bombarded with enormous doses of graphic sexual content but are simply not mature enough to process or understand the images or messages.

Worse still, very young children are routinely exposed to images of sexual behaviour which appear devoid of emotions, attachment, or consequences and can be frightened by what they see.

"Sex often appears as the defining activity in relationships, to the exclusion of love and friendship and is often linked to violence," Kilbourne says.

"Children also learn to associate physical appearance and buying the right products not only with being sexy but also with being successful as a person. These lessons will shape their gender identity, sexual attitudes, values, and their capacity for love and connection."

As the mother of a 19-year-old daughter, Kilbourne's lifetime interest in mass media and young people has been personal as well as professional. Her first-hand observations of school friends' obsession with thinness, with appealing to boys, with self esteem drops, were fascinating but heartbreaking. She remembers an 11-year-old refusing to wear swimmers because her thighs "were too heavy", rampant food obsessions, self harm. In the US, she said, teen clothing manufacturers have now introduced a zero size.

"What does that say to women? Can you imagine a man walking into a shop and asking for a size zero? When it comes to girls, the message is, the smaller the better - there is a portable treadmill advertisement that says 'Soon, you will both be taking up less space'.

"And this phenomenon known as 'hooking up' among teens .. . that notion of sex outside the context of a relationship. Girls see this as liberating now, but researchers know this is not good for adolescent girls, where connections and relationships are so important."

Kilbourne says her new book will not only ask why all this is occurring but will also provide strategies for educators and parents to counter the pervasive influences of the mass media. She believes that a popular culture that sexualises and objectifies children and glorifies casual sex is one of the biggest factors to answer the 'why', as well as children and teenagers' propensity to succumb to peer pressure.

Sipping a coffee in a city cafe yesterday, Kilbourne suddenly looked worried: "I am not some conservative, a prude … quite the opposite. In America, children get this kind of bombardment and yet at school the only sex education message they receive is a 'just say no' total abstinence message. That doesn't work, just as it didn't work for drugs. One of every 10 girls under the age of 20 becomes pregnant in the US … more than any other industrialised country in the world."

So how can we counter the increasing damage?

"Political action? Yes, for change there needs to be political will … but we need to find new ways to promote healthy sexual development in children. This should be discussed from a progressive point of view, one that doesn't deny the sexuality of children and teenagers.

"We can't allow marketers to colonise this nor should it be demonised by the right either. It's the corporate exploitation of children's sexuality that is disgusting and dangerous, not the sexuality itself."

Kilbourne utters a last word of warning: the bombardment of sexual images are not designed solely to sell us or our children on sex: "What it's really about is selling us on shopping. Our generation didn't shop for recreation, we didn't hang around malls," she said.

"Learn early about appearance and it it turns you into a good little consumer. Teach a seven-year-old that sex is about accessorising and you've secured a lifetime of lingerie buying. If you disassociate sex from non-market feelings - pleasure, desire, intimacy - and associate it instead with consumable superficialities, you'll not only keep the rabble in line, you'll have them lined up at the mall."

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Really sad stuff, if you ask me. Women these days are already bombarded with these kind of messages everywhere they look, and now little girls have to deal with it.

This causes alot of stress among many girls. This encourages them to want to fit the image of what is considered attractive. Kids should be just wanting to have FUN, like going to the arcades or to the park. NOT worrying about being 'sexy'.

You see, children always had this urge to be more like adults, and now some big-rich corporations and the media are using this image to sell thier products.

Of course, it isn't all the media's fault. If parents be smart and teach thier children to be themselves and not some stupid image of what is 'attractive', then this wouldn't be too bad.

The day I saw a 12 year-old girl wearing a 'Pornstar' shirt, I knew this society is going to hell.  

The sad news is it'll only get worse cause the biology with kids is that they copy the adults to learn how to adapt to the world around them. It is proven that if you ignore your children, they become antisocial, you swear, they'll swear, and if you don't disipline them, they will run rampant.

If you show movie stars or pop stars in sexy outfits, they are going to want to do the same thing. Note that until Billie came onto the scene, there was no solo girl bands, and all of the pop music was truthfull? Britney Spears saw Billie's popularity, and did 'hit me baby',  Chritina Aguleria came onto the band wagon, and the two have cat fight since. Then you get more new girls trying to be sexier to pimp themselves/albums, and it will, and is rubbing off onto the youth. Untill sex doesn't sell, the next generation of girls are going to be wearing next to nothing, going on diets of doom, and killing themselves for attention. That will never happen

I agree that society is going to somewhere vaguely resembling hell.  There's nothing I can really do, so I'll try to help out where I can, and where I can't, the most I can really do is to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all, no matter how much it hurts.  I can't help but feel guilty belonging to the male gender, which is likely to have a significant hand in doing something like this.

Honestly, the only thing that will change this is a nationwide campaign, and there are things that Americans are more concerned about at this point: Social Security and a costly war in Iraq, to name a few.  This is a signficant problem with Americans: we don't care enough about our children, who will be our future generation in twenty years.  We don't care enough about the environment that they're raised in, about who is raising them, about their experiences, about the values that they're growing up with.  Just providing free public education is not going to cut it.

Actually- a quick fix to alot of problems is unfortunatly war. Sorts out unemployment, over population, discipline, religion, and respect.

Unfortunatly that also comes witht hte price of mass death, loss of blood lines, poverty, depression, and not enough men to go around this 55% dominated planet of women. THAT totally sucks.

It's not to be depressed about- it's how sociatey progresses. We are aware finally of the rest of the world, and with everyone's combined efforts I hope the countrys can all work together and make this world even better than before the consummer society started. All of this is just society getting use to  so many options being available. Our children will listen to us mumbling about how crap it is now and be like what ever about it- seriously

On Apr 12, 2006 3:46 pm, Qcvar said:

It's hurtful to men too! All this makes men look like a bunch of sex offenders. The outcome? The feminazis (the extreme feminists) now have an easier target to pick at. It causes no good except for the rich-scheme media and corporations that is exploiting sex to sell to young girls.

From it looks from here, society is indeed going to hell. Maybe some day people in this country will realize the wrong they doing and stop..or maybe this whole capitalism-run economy will explode? I hope something happens to stop it >__<;;