The early sexualization of our girls.....

MyGoosesMom

New Member
"A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development."

I am an adult and the media is harmful to my self-image...I can't imagine what it must be like to be the parent of a little girl these days. The clothes for sale for children, especially girls, are just adult clothes in miniature...I teach first grade CCFF classes at church and the girls come in wearing low-rise jeans! UGH!

Dr. Zurbriggen got it right when she said "As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings-ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,"
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
Thank you Linda. I'm continually amazed at fashions, tv shows and toys aimed at our children. I'm known as a prude because I won't let Duckie wear bare midriff tops or play with suggestive toys such as Bratz dolls & My Scene Barbies. She has plenty of time before she should be initiated in the world of sexuality. I'm afraid that many other girls become fixated on this aspect of being an adult and miss out on developing other aspects of being a whole person.
 

'Chelle

Active Member
My sis calls the Bratz dolls "those hooker dolls", because of the fashions they dress them in and the makeup. easy child does have a Bratz she got from grandma and I did get easy child a Baby Bratz she wanted for Christmas, but even that looked like it had make up on! It's supposed to be a baby for crying out loud, it comes with a baby bottle! And try find clothes for a tall chubby 6 year old. The low cut pants and short tight tops do not do well. It's so frustrating. I just want to dress her like a little girl. I'm not really a prude, Barbie and Ken used to get married at our house :faint: (and kiss :rofl:) but there's a point where the girls are being pushed to grow up too soon. in my opinion that point came when they started marketing thongs to 10 year olds.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Im always amazed when parents let their kids dress like little hussies and put on makeup at ten years old. My 22 year old daughter, who was no angel, told me that kids were "doing it" at elevin years old in her middle school. She used drugs, but even she didn't have sex until age 17 (per her diary I read...lol). It's totally disgusting to me that some parents seem to think it's "cute" when their girls chase boys in fifth grade. Our school had a boy/girl dance this year. My daughter is in fifth grade. How early do they want our girls to grow up? I agree that marketing to our tweens is getting dangerous!
 

dreamer

New Member
I do remember in the 60s us girls at my school were NOT allowed to wear jeans or even slacks at all. We HAD to wear dresses. And any of the girls who dared to wear pants at any time was called a "hussie"
Then when my girls were in earlier grades in elem school, I got a letter from our school, our girls were only allowed to wear dresses on the one special dress day per month. The school felt dresses were "inappropriate"
As for becoming sexually active, sadly my mom was 15 when I was born, and my cousin a girl had a child by 14 and her brother fathered a child by age 13, and had 3 kids by 18 (with the same girl, whom he married), then died in a car accident by age 20 (he was coming home from work, a drunk driver hit him). That was in the late 60's early 70s.
In my school we did not have school dances till HS. My kids elem school now has dances. BUT their idea of a dance is a lot of line danceing and group type dances etc, not really pairing up of girls with boys.

When I was in school we had classes where we were taught to do all these things at home to please our husbands. Like um...feed kids before your husband gets home from work, do not greet your husband at door with complaints, freshen up before husband is due home. <sigh> as if our sole purpose in life was to please our men?
I do hafta say I think our society is getting better with that somewhat......
But it sure is not really all so new.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Oh gosh...I was just telling someone the other day how astonished I was when I went to buy some baby clothes for Keyana. Now I must remind you this baby is 8 months old! She wears between a size 9 months to a 12 months.

I was looking at some size 12 months clothes and they had these clothes in 12 to 24 months that looked like hooker knock offs! Aint no way! They had netting shirts over short sleeved tops that came to little points in the front made to look like they had a chest I guess. They would pair these shirts with a mini skirt. Oh heck no...not on MY grand daughter! She is a baby for gosh sakes.

I dont even like the little capri outfits. Whatever happened to the little sunsuits? Babies are only babies for such a short period of time...keep them looking like babies.
 

totoro

Mom? What's a difficult child?
Scary!!! With difficult child's constant touching of herself and rubbing on things... ugh... I am so glad she is a tomboy!!! She does not care yet about too much of the "girly" things. My mother in law tries to send the barbies and princess cr@p!!! but difficult child really doesn't care too much. She just got to buy something for herself because she walked extra far when she was very tired and kept pushing her little legs!!! SO she picked out a little pirate costume!!!
I am so not being mean here but my difficult child reminds husband and me of the little girl on "Little Miss Sunshine" !!! She is just like that with some ultra rapid cycling and violence thrown in for @&#^@ and giggles!!! I cried through that movie because she was the little girl, without the glasses!!! SO cute. So innocent and naive... she even does little dances like that?!?!?!

We have friends who have easy child's and they are the same age 5.5 and they are caught up in all of the girly stuff and boys already!!! yikes
 

Marguerite

Active Member
I was a tomboy, preferring to climb trees and work with the farm animals. While I had male friends from an early age, I preferred it when they were JUST friends with absolutely no hint of anything more. If I wore trousers it was to help muck out the animal pens. My mother wouldn't let me own jeans even when I started uni - I had to wear a dress. But the uni I went to was a wind tunnel, dresses would blow up over my head and so for the sake of modesty she allowed me to buy jeans.
Eventually I compromised and wore long dresses.

Dreamer, I remember those classes on how to please your husband. Laughable. My main concern was, I wanted a husband who would let me have a career as well. I figured most husbands would be happy with the extra income, even if it wasn't as much as a man could earn. I was lucky, though - at about this time, while women were still paid a lot less than men, my sister was earning almost twice as much as her husband because she had a uni degree and he was a tradesman. So by the 80s, she was back in the workforce while HE quit his job to stay home and raise the kids.

A kid I know confided in a friend of ours that Mummy & Daddy were putting her on a diet over the summer so she could lose some weight before school went back, "because being fat isn't sexy." This kid was 6, for crying out loud! And the quote - would have come from her father. We know this family well, we know their cousins well - ALL the kids are chubby, large kids to begin with who have slimmed out in their teens with no need for diets. We're all made with different shapes. But these girls grew up with a self-conscious, negative view of their bodies which they will never be able to shake, no matter how gorgeous they look now.

My mother was a large woman. Most of the women in my family are. I look back through photos of past generations, and it seems to be how we're built. But my mother was constantly torturing herself to lose weight. Then, when she was about sixty, she managed to lose a lot at last (something like the Atkins diet, from memory) and the weight stayed off. But she was never sylph-like. She was just healthier. And all the previous years - a waste of time, agony and money for the special ingredients. She would buy expensive starch-reduced rolls (which I would have loved to tuck into) which left you still feeling very hungry.

difficult child 3's former classmates from the local school - I watched these girls grow up, highly sexualised in what they wear with a lot of peer pressure on ALL girls to wear skimpy, revealing clothes clearly designed to be alluring. I remember listening in to a group of them talking about who shaves their legs - I didn't have conversations like that at school until I was in my mid-teens! And these girls were barely ten years old!

difficult child 3 is fairly oblivious. He walks in on me sometimes (but walks right out again, apologising) but often is unconscious of revealing himself when he's heading for a bath or asking me to examine a spot or sore that's worrying him. He's not displaying himself - just not cautious.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 is very appearance-conscious, but not a slavish follower of fashion.
We have girls in our town, their whole family are large from the beginning. I know they don't eat right - they're all comfort eaters. There are two girls now in their late teens who I've watched grow up. They are definitely obese - I worry about their health. But they could look so much better if they dressed to suit their colouring and shape (like their younger brother does). Instead of wearing lovely emerald greens in longer, flowing styles they instead wear short, cropped lycra tops with hipster flip skirts. In shades of hot pink! These girls have natural red hair - it could look fabulous - but instead they try to pretend it's not read by wearing all the colours that actually make them look ghastly. And so I have no doubt that they look in the mirror and see a slavish follower of fashion who can NEVER get the look right. The phrase "muffin top" constantly comes to mind. How can they feel good about themselves when everything they do with their clothing to try and fit in socially, makes them look more misfit than ever?
Incidentally, these girls apparently go out of their way to be mean to easy child 2/difficult child 2 (who really doesn't care). easy child 2/difficult child 2 is very slim, also with red hair. She NEVER wears pink, never wears lycra (although she would look fabulous in it) and chooses her clothing to make her feel good about herself and to also be an individual. I think these girls target her because she IS slim and pretty and they resent this. Sad. To feel so bad about yourself that you resent anyone who looks better because you believe they're trying to show you up.

This is the legacy of our modern society's sexualisation of children, purely to fuel the fashion industry.

Bring on Ugly Betty!

Marg
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Interesting article. easy child gets mad because I won't let her wear the short shorts to school and, of course, it's what she sees in the media. Her reasoning is that everybody wears them. She told me the other day then she guesses she won't wear shorts at all this summer. I said I guess not. Of course, the longer shorts are coming back in-thank goodness.
 
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