By Safa Zaki
Your 11-year-old daughter’s number one wish in life is to lose weight.
Shocked? You shouldn’t be. She’s growing up in a world where even popular children’s toy ‘Dora the Explorer’ was forced to lose her realistic, kid’s body (along with her signature backpack and map) to reveal the new Dora: now she’s skinny, and comes with a comb. And Dora’s makeover is just the beginning. Today a shopping trip with your daughter means navigating through stores which are selling padded bras for 6-year-olds (see Abercrombie’s ‘triangle’ bikini tops); ‘Bratz’ dolls dressed in fishnets, miniskirts and feather boas; and underwear for girls strategically branded with a disturbing provocativeness: “Who needs credit cards?”
Yes, one only has to look to pop culture and the mass media to understand the enormously influential source of girls’ body dissatisfaction. Everyday children are exposed to anywhere between 3000 to 5000 images. Most of the time, these images and advertisements are based on the pure commercialization of gender. Proctor & Gamble, in protesting a ruling that prohibited the company from marketing their Secret Sparkle Body Spray deodorant to girls as young as seven, when the label clearly warned “keep out of reach of children,” stated: “If you don’t target the consumer in her formative years, you’re not going to be relevant through the rest of her life.”
It is in line with this type of strategic marketing that the commercialization of gender goes beyond the socially engineered tactic of ‘blue for boys’ and ‘pink for girls,’ to what the American Psychological Association (APA) deems the sexualizaton of girls. The APA says sexualization of girls, a phenomenon occurring within everyday advertising, merchandising and media, happens when: “a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; a person is sexually objectified; and when sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.”
What this looks like in the media is: women portrayed in revealing clothing; women with postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness; women used as a decorative object, or as body parts rather than a whole person, and women held to a narrow and unrealistic standard of physical beauty. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate.
And they’re not without a cost. Research shows our culture of sexualizing girls has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning; where sexualization and objectification undermine a girl’s comfort with her own body, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety; mental and physical health; where sexualization is linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression; and sexual development; where sexualization of girls has negative consequence on girls’ ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image.
Today, body image despair and disordered eating are epidemics. In the U.S., 42% of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade girls want to lose weight; 51% of 9 and 10-year-olds feel better about themselves when they are dieting; 81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and 9% of 9-year-olds have vomited to lose weight. Such statistics do not develop in isolation.
“Our culture defines our health,” says Dr. Maine, keynote speaker of the NEDIC 2011 Conference ‘Body Image and Self Esteem: Shades of Grey.’ A clinical psychologist who has specialized in eating disorders for over 30 years, she reported the more a girl is exposed to the media, the more likely she is to diet and be dissatisfied with her body, her appearance, and herself.
And with a culture that gives girls the powerful message that what matters most is how ‘hot’ they look; a message repeatedly played on TV and across the Internet, in song lyrics and music videos, in movies, electronic games, clothing stores and in children’s toys, this is an overwhelming reality. However, what is crucial for parents to know is that there is an arena where they can, and should, exert control over such influences: within the culture of home.
“Kids, until they are 7 or 8, can’t really understand the persuasive intent of advertising, so for little kids, reality and fantasy is all the same,” says Lyn Mikel Brown; a mother, professor, and community activist whose work on girls’ development has broken new ground. “That is why questioning is so important.”
“You cannot prevent kids from seeing images in a magazine,” says Jill Andrew, a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Education at York University. “All of the magazine images which have girls being spread out as though they have been raped and are modelling for Louis Vuitton, are available at Shoppers Drug Mart. How do you combat that? Through education and teaching kids to become critical media citizens.”
The APA advises: “watch TV and movies with your daughters and sons. Read their magazines. Surf their websites. Ask questions. ‘Why is there so much pressure on girls to look a certain way?’ ‘What do you like most about the girls you want to spend time with?’ ‘Do these qualities matter more than how they look?’ Really listen to what your kids tell you.”
Ultimately, the reality, problematic as it may be, is that sex sells. And unfortunately, this sale comes at the expense of the health and self-esteem of young girls and women everywhere. But parents can be powerful, too. Teach your daughter to value herself for who she is, rather than how she looks, and teach your son to value girls as friends, sisters, and girlfriends, rather than sexual objects. It is this critical consciousness that will help girls as they grow into their body, and will help boys to see them irrespective of it.
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For a full list of suggestions from the American Psychological Association on ‘What Parents Can Do’ to combat the sexualized images of girls and women, see: http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report.aspx
For more information about the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC), an organization which provides information and resources on eating disorders and food and weight preoccupation, see: http://www.nedic.ca/
