This Just In: Sexism Harmful to Girls

Every once in a while folks realize that we live in a sexist society (world) with a deeply skewed sense of female sexual -- well, anything: empowerment, dignity, privacy, expression. And check out this headline! Don't you just want to hug it? Awww. (Ech.)

Media cited for showing girls as sex objects.

Advertising and media images that encourage girls to focus on looks and sexuality are harmful to their emotional and physical health, a new report by the American Psychological Association says.

The report, released Monday, analyzed some 300 studies over the past 18 months. It included a variety of media, from television and movies to song lyrics, and looked at advertising showing body-baring doll clothes for pre-schoolers, tweens posing in suggestive ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models.

The researchers found such images may make girls think of and treat their own bodies as sexual objects.

Anyone surprised? No, but there's always someone in the bunch (preferably a member of the wronged class) who'll stand up to say that maybe things aren't so bad, so calm down, you (shrill) hysterics.

Ann Pellegrini, an associate professor at New York University who writes about the sexual politics of American childhood, and who was not associated with the report, says she is concerned about what she calls "the panic" about the sexualization of children.

"Not that I would deny there is this aggressive marketing to children, but there is a deep moralization around it," she says. "I do think girls and women are still profoundly objectified when it comes to sex, but there may well be some things that look like objectification that are being experienced by girls and young women that feel empowering."

Let me see if I've got this straight:

1) There is sexually aggressive marketing to children = bad
2) There is a "deep moralization around (the rejection of sexualization of children)" = (perceived by author as) bad
3) Girls and women are profoundly objectified when it comes to sex = bad

BUT

4) Some things may feel empowering to girls and young women though they may look like objectification from the outside = so not so bad!

Hmm. Well, aren't I just thrilled that girls feel empowered to show their asses and play at a sexual availability in purely performative terms (that is, object not subject), mimicking the only behavior that is culturally rewarded to persons of their sex, because I.Am.Sure.This.Has.No.Profound.And.Lasting.Effect.On.Their.Selfhood.And.No. Appreciative.Effect.On.Their.Second.Class.Status.In.Society. Oh, wait, why, here's a whole article above this quote saying exactly effing that!

But here's my favorite part: the I Can Bloviate About Any Aspect of Women's Lives Because I Live and Operate in a Vacuum Theory.

She says someone of an older generation might view today's teen-age fashions as too-revealing, but the teen may not see being proud of her body as objectification at all.

Gosh, i wish I lived in that vacuum with her and those teens who are "proud of their bodies"* and completely unaffected by the entire socio-political apparatus of female sexual objectification. Sounds like they're having a grand old time in there shaking their asses for the (male) masses and not being swayed by, oh, you know, something trifling like corporate capitalist hegemony and a consumer culture predicated on manufactured want bartered on the bodies of a hypersexualized feminine ideal. Naaaaah.

And just in time, something eminently reasonable to wrap things up.

The task force urges parents, school personnel and health care professionals to counter sexualization with images of girls in settings that are not viewed as sexual.

Yes, like a chemistry lab. Or a judge's chambers. Or a diplomat's pied-a-terre. Or a pilot's cockpit. Or an artist's studio. Or a teacher's classroom. Or an operating room. Or an orchestra. Or a farm. Or a kayak. Or fucking anything that doesn't require one to think first and foremost, "Does (x person) think my boobs look good in this shirt?"

[*For the record, it is possible for a girl (I mean this age appropriately) to be proud of her body and IT HAVE NOTHING TO DO W/ MALE DESIRE. Shocking! I was an athlete as a young person, and I felt strong and fast and able, and I liked my body. And not because it was for someone else to regard. Funny how that worked out.]

Comments

[Kevin Zorgon]

I think it's your last point (I was an athlete as a young person...) that really nails it - in my almost thirty years on this planet in this timesuit, I've gone through a whole range of self-disrespecting, self-objectifying (that's a tricky one) and self-loathing behaviours, based largely on external (to me) standards of beauty and fitness... I ended up overcoming them (to an amazing degree - forthright, proud nudism, anyone?) through a combination of self-hypnosis (which is really wierd and was an accident, though a wonderfully beneficial one) and a frank assessment of my positive physical attributes. That is, I felt lousy, and I felt I looked lousy, but I began to notice that I am, for example, very strong, full of energy, healthy, etc. These things which had nothing to do with popular ideals of sexuality, but had everything to do with physical human reality, came to my attention as really wonderful attributes of the timesuit; as I came to feel better about this old body of mine (on purely functional grounds), I began to be less ashamed of it, and as I grew to care less and less about what other people thought of me, I seemed to notice more and more people responding positively to the timesuit. Which may be beackwards, or missing the point, but I maintain that one of the key solutions to this problem is physically empowering these girls. I suspect that it's easier to accept that the most important thing is to have your boobs look great in a shirt if you haven't run the four-minute mile, or climbed enough trees (to know that your boobs never look better than when lodged in a tree, thirty feet off the ground), or cracked the sub-atomic barrier, or whatever.

It comes back to power, for me (I'm not one but Q: how many fouccaultians does it take to change a light bulb? A: POWERRRRRRR!) - you can only ever take power away from someone who's willing to cede it. I used to work in a nudie bar, and this was a recurrent topic with me and the dancers - that even if you're dressed (or not) like a stripper, with just about everything hanging out, objectification lasts only as long as it takes to cross a room and walk right up to and stare into the eyes of whomever is trying to objectify you. All it takes to eliminate objectification is a deep-seated and profound sense of self, even if the precise nature of that self remains murky and unknown.

That's what I think.

[Diane]

If there isn't another wave of formal consciousness-raising soon, there will be nothing to fight for or against: Massive internalized sexism will have taken care of the matter. But why, oh why, should we even NEED another wave of consciousness-raising? The daughters of the Second Wave screwed up big-time, and I suppose that is how generational things go, but I am so weary.

[Meghan]

I think you TOTALLY nailed it. Healthy, positive Body pride pretty much equates to girls liking their bodies FOR THEIR OWN PURPOSES. Not for the purposes, fetishes, perversions or fantasies, economic benefit of others.
That's exactly what I was trying to put into words and thoughts.

THANK YOU!

[Rosie]

And isn't it amazing how the attempts to place girls in settings not viewed as sexual always tend to end up being sexual or having sexual overtones?

And there are consequences for those girls whose bodies don't fit into the barbie model...the differently abled girls, the ones like me who were in and out of fat camp like a crack addict in rehab, girls whose shapes and proportions didn't fit the standard. An athletic model is a much more empowering, positive one to aspire to for these girls.

I think that if we also consider that two-thirds of the births to underage girls are fathered by adult men...maybe the sexualization of young girls would even out a bit if we shifted focus to the adults who enable this mess by wanting to sleep with children. Not that the media role isn't an important one, but it needs to stop being okay for adult men to predate on teenagers ...no matter what they are wearing. It's like blaming the cake for being so delicious as to make you fat.

[dharma]

I wish I had the head right now to comment more, well at all really. But in general thanks. This goes into my file of articles to blog about. One day.