Final Call did a story(“America’s Sex-Mad Culture“) about the consequences of the sexualization of children in an attempt to get them hooked on adult products and Black folk’s internalization of oppression. I think it is a must read. The reporters spoke with psychologists and experts from around the country about the effects of bombarding children with adult imagery and words.
The article highlighted the Sexualization of Childhood Symposium which will address the impact of growing up in a sexualized culture on children’s health and welfare, and how parents, mental health professionals, educators and policy makers can address these issues. The conference is June 13-14 and is being hosted by Park Point University in conjunction with A Home Within.
The presenters are Sharon Cooper (Sexual exploitation of children through internet crimes and prostitution), Gail Dines (The meteoric rise of child pornography with the advent of the internet), Matt Ezzell (How boys are socialized and sexualized through video games, media and internet pornography), Melissa Farley (As American children become sexualized, trafficking and child prostitution are on the rise), Diane Levin(Sexualized culture teaches teens to ‘hook up’rather than form meaningful relationships), Susan Linn(Girls’ gender identity is shaped by media imagessuch as the ‘Disney Princess’), Sharna Olfman, Sandra Steingraber (The falling age of puberty in U.S. girls as a consequence of toxic chemical exposures), and Carolyn West (The (s)exploitation of black adolescent girls in rap(e) music and hip hop culture) you can read about there bios in the conference brochure. I wish I could go 
.
Some points from the article, America’s Sex-Mad Culture:
Abercrombie & Fitch sold little girls thong underwear tagged with the phrases “eye candy” and “wink wink.” Young readers of the magazine Seventeen were offered “405 ways to look hot” like Paris Hilton.The sexualization of ‘tween girls, girls between the ages of 8 and 12, is a growing problem fueled by marketers’ efforts to create cradle-to-grave consumers.
“Years ago there used to be separate worlds for children. Now they are exposed to the same things adults experience. Today we have very young parents and we aren’t protecting our children. Popular psychology said that this was OK,” explained Dr. Tarshia Stanley, a Spelman College English professor.“As a result, we have really high rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world, twice that of the U.K. and eight times that of Japan,” added Ms. Durham.
Another problem is Black internalization of oppression, which is borne out in the “pimp and hoe” culture and even support for singer R. Kelly, who is accused of sexual crimes against a child, she said.
Singer Beyonce is talented, but her clothing line, which doesn’t show skin still sells lip gloss and grown folks clothes to children, Ms. Davis said. It’s unsettling that clothes are sold to children that look like clothes made for adults, she said.
“Little girls are taught to trade their bodies for benefits and acceptance…Their only value is what they can be used for and for boys the question is how many “hoes” do I have…Boys as well as girls are put in boxes to play out this foolishness”
You should read the entire article, they spoke with activists, academics and cultural critics. These are people whose work you should watch.
The merchants of misogyny and the supporters of the Regime of Bullets, Booty, and Bling are willing to fight for the hearts and minds of out children, but apparently they don’t have to because society in general rolls over and plays dead while the walk straight to the bank on the backs of your children.
I agree that in addition to protesting these images, we HAVE to offer an alternative. Thousands of alternatives. Why on earth are we ceding the hearts and minds of our girls and boys to the likes of people who have no compunction about putting thigh high three inch boots and garish makeup on a toddler? And NO, this ain’t the same as dress up when we were children. When we dressed up, we looked like kids in grown ups clothing not child-sized versions of adults, and there is a distinction.
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17 comments ↓
I have only a few words for you, these being THANK YOU for saying something, as a soon to be father of six (four girls and two boys) I am troubled by this misguided desire to make children grow up and look like adults tomorrow afternoon.
Thank you for this!!
This issue is very near and dear to me(which is why I wrote a book about it). I began keeping my eye on the way mareketers targeted girls years ago when my daughter was little.
It’s not just clothing, television, magazines and music, either. The brainwashing begins even younger than that…Have you tried shopping for girl’s toys lately? I can count on one hand the number of little girls toys that aren’t focused on looks and putting oneself on display (i.e.doing ones hair, putting on make up, looking pretty and getting glammed up to either sing, dance, get married, do a fashion show or have a party). And now it’s extended from play-glam to real life glam. It’s a dangerous and limiting message that little girls will internalize:
*I’m here to be on display.
*I’m here to get the boys’ attention.
*I have to prettier than the other girls.
*My best and most powerful aspect is my looks.
And of course, it all boils down to $$$…the tween girl demograpic is the most lucrative market in the world right now. Marketers can give a damn about the well-being of our little girls…just keep the profits from those size 3T thongs rolling in.
I’m so glad to see more people starting to give this issue some real attention. Thank you again!
I first noticed this when Britney Spears came on to the scene. She was half naked on Rolling Stone and grown men were openly lusting after her. I was slightly disturbed, but the media seemed to glorify it. That is the first time I saw a teen idol become a sex symbol for grown men. Now that has become the standard,I even saw one of those shows talking about how sexy some of the girls were from High School Musical were.
And why do they make low rise jeans for toddlers? I saw one little girl playing in the store and her crack was showing. A child or adult has no business wearing jeans that if you make one slight move you crack will be showing.
I’m scared to have kids. There’s so much to combat with child rearing. It’s only going to get worse whenever motherhood rolls around for me cuz tween hypersexuality is very profitable.
And I’ve been saying for years that “the slut” is a celebrated image. Self-respecting women are often ignored because a lot of men think that healthy relationships are unattainable and/or worthless.
A lot of men have told me that women and girls shouldn’t be affected by the media yet they always cop pleas for wayward men and boys that give are influenced by capitalism and mysogyny. Go figure.
We need more Ravens.
Yeah, uh..disgusting and disturbing (the pics).
When our 8 y/o wanted her own make up, I said no her mother said, ‘yes’. We compromised by letting her wear it in the house only. I guess it’s natural to mimic your mother, but to have a child dress that way for cameras is disturbing and who knows what kinds of stuff is firing up in the minds of pedophiles when they see these kinds of ads. And why is the sexualization of girls of color more prominent than white girls(I don’t want ANY girl of ANY race sexualized, but is it just me that in this instance of the article as well as the past post regarding the young singer you featured)?
History has the answer there from slaves ships to colonization.
RE anonymiss: “the slut” is a celebrated image. Self-respecting women are often ignored because a lot of men think that healthy relationships are unattainable and/or worthless.
How true! If you aren’t showing some skin or dressed in clothes that look like you had to grease yourself to get into them you basically aren’t worth the time of many of the males out there today.
And for anyone to say that “women and girls shouldn’t be affected by the media” is ridiculous. Why do companies spend billions of dollars for advertising? Why do you see brand name products pop up in movies, sitcoms and even books now? Why do people change up their wardrobe, their hair, and even the way they speak to mimic their favorite celebrity or a character in a movie? Because advertising and the images that we see in the media have a powerful impact on how we buy, what we think and how we behave. If some adults can’t even grasp that we certainly can’t expect children to understand it.
Ahhh its More Then the “Slut” There Is a Wonderful Article Called Freaks, Gold Diggers, Divas, and And Dykes: The Sociohistorical Development of Adolescent African American Women’s Sexual Scripts Written by Dionne P. Stephens and Layli D. Phillips (you can Google and read it online…verrrrry interesting). This was written in 2003, but very is still relevant today. I also think that this is a MUST READ
I wrote a blog about the whole debacle of Bey’s “kids” clothing line and how folks weren’t too happy to see the way “Their” lil babies were depicted in this advertisement. Here’s a taste of what they said:
“What is the next ad going to look like? Babies wearing gold metallic bikinis while five-year old boys throw Monopoly money on them.” Ouch!!!!
”Let our children be damn children at least ’till the age of 8. Then they can worry about bikini waxes and putting out.”
”I am not blaming Bey and her Creole mama for the raising rates in pedophilia in this country, but this mess definitely doesn’t help.” “How to make your little girl look like a cheap crack ho. Nice one. Beyonce is an idiot.”
A few weeks ago I had the wonderful pleasure of screening the documentary “Souls of Black Girls” (check out the clip of the movie on our site http://www.urbanplaydates.com ). What is “The Souls of Black Girls”? It’s a documentary that examines whether or not women of color may be suffering from self-image disorder as a result of trying to attain the standards of beauty that are celebrated in the mainstream media. During the documentary a Caucasian teenager makes the comment “Like we don’t look at Beyonce as black…she’s light…like this beautiful color and has like long blond hair” Yes baby girl made that statement on tape! Another point great point was that as long as it is African America girls being exploited there’s no big deal. Chuck D, Public Enemy brought this home when he said that you can turn on BET anytime and watch an African American half naked and gyrating. Now you can also watch a Caucasian girl doing the same thing too, but you gotta pay for it by buying the DVD Girls Gone Wild.
Now take a second and go back and review the advertisement for Beyonce’s children’s collection again. What you will see is diversity. You have one Asian (she gets top billing), two Caucasians, and two black girls (one light and one dark). So here’s the point. Beyonce has target “THEIR GIRLS” and it’s evident that they aren’t having it. Now, the question is if the ad had featured all African Americans, would the outrage been have the same as well as well as picked up by the mainstream? Now the bigger question….are parents of color outraged? If the answer is yes, what are they going to do about it?
I’ve been reading you for a couple months now, but this is the first time I reeaallly felt moved to comment. This post brought tears to my eyes… 1. because every time I go out my house (I live in an “economically disadvantaged” neighborhood) I am confronted w/girls who seem to fall into every statistic and stereotype that’s prominent about young black women and my heart aches for us… I don’t know what to do… where to even begin to help them. I want to make a difference, some would say I’ve kind of started just by mentoring those who’ve come after me…This is something I’m so passionate about, but it seems like an almost insurmountable task.
2. Because one day I want to have kids of my own but what kind of world will I be bringing my sons and daughters into? Is parental influence enough to protect their innocence and keep them from the oversexualized and materialistic trappings of popular culture?
This has been something that I’ve constantly thought about. I’m definitely going to read the article within the next day or so.
And congrats on getting those credentials to cover the DNC.
I agree that kids are hypersexualized and it just seems to be getting younger. I’m def not a fan of that ad by House of Dereon and the fact that they’re all dressed up like that with the makeup & such. I mean, look at the pageant culture for these young girls — they dress them to look like miniature grown up dolls & its really sad. Let kids be kids not an 8 year old going on 35 who has been through a divorce & has a minvan.
Society is selling these dumb parents a dream and the cost is our children…
This is not a new issues but it is a worsening one. They are pimping these children for money and it is disgusting.
In the same vein, Wendy Shalit’s book Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good is worth the read…
I have a lot to say:
* I also screened “Souls of Black Girls” out here in BK for young AA girls. Excellent documentary!
* One of my roommates and many of my closest friends do music videos. I am actually trying to set up a talk at my apartment for young girls and the video girls to talk. Many of these girls who do videos are not hos. They are beautiful and smart women. However they have made the decision to degrade themselves for many reasons. I am a dancer but refused to take that route. I chose integroty over craft, over money. I am hoping that such a meeting would allow for my friends and their counterparts to see who they are effecting.
I feel that people are speaking for the girls in the videos and the girls in the videos are not speaking for themselves. They are muted. This exploitation of blacks in the media, music and film industry goes back to the days of minstrelsy.
* While in college, I switched my major from marketing because they were pretty much teaching me how to manipulate people. I have too much integrity to do that. How can I manipulate the lives of people especially impressionable young people then go back to the community and claim that I am trying to make a difference.
My cousin works for Def Jam. He recently had to face this contradiction. He claims that he wanted to make a difference in the lives of African american youth yet,yet he sits over at Def Jam making thousands off of what Gina calls the “Regime of Bullets, Booty, and Bling”. He (in my book) is the problem. The people who could care less about their people in exchange for $$$.
* This is an issue that crosses racial lines of course. It is everywhere. We use sex to sell everything down to ice cream.
I work at Juicy Couture, the company got famous off of the tracksuits with “Juicy” on the butts. They have since reformed this. Most of the suits coming out now have it written going down the leg or on the front of the pants by the waistband. However if they started with Juicy going down the leg or on the front of the pants by the waist band, would they have even gotten that popular?
There are so many more examples of this.
My issue nonetheless, remains with black boys and girls because our children esp. our girls are not being protected. They are the most unprotected.
Other groups of people reserve the right to protect their children from this sexploitation and exploitation. I would like blacks to wake up to the fact that they are being played.
I am young. I fell for these same vices. The fact that I fell for them and have even come to internalize them makes me understand them even more.
It is powerful. They know that, they don’t care. Its captialism and hegemony at its best.
“As a result, we have really high rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world, twice that of the U.K. and eight times that of Japan,”
As if the UK and Japan are not industrialized? This is a weird quote.
I worry about these things as well. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how anything thinks it’s all right.
I am appalled and dismayed at this! This is a major problem we have now in this world: WE DO NOT ALLOW OUR CHILDREN TO BE “CHILDREN.” There is nothing wrong with fashion or having children dressed in cute clothing, but there is a key word there- “cute.” They are “children,” and they should not be subjected to dressing “sexy.” I am so heated over this topic, that I have to do a follow-up to this on my blog. I thank you so much for bringing this issue to the light. You couldn’t possibly understand how much this upsets me.
I’ve experienced this hypersexualization of children atrocity firsthand. Now that my goddaughter started walking, she is starting to do some very “provacative” dances that, to me, a baby shouldn’t be think about doing yet. Come to find out, all she watches at home is BET, MTV, and other ridiculousness. It is sad because the older folks in my family just pass it off as “she likes to dance.”
BTW, Congrats Gina!!!
Greetings Ladies, the Final Call need not use its hypocritcal pens… after all the NOI accepted Russell Simmon’s “generous” donation, even though Simmons’ One World Magazine published the nude shot of Lil Kim in a burqa. So America’s culture is sex-mad, but any Black pornographer who argues with the ADL is aok, even if its on the necks of Muslim women and Black women? They will roast in hell.
Aho, Rahmat
Maryam