Sexy Too Soon: The Sexualization of Girls

Choose a Girl

Screens and interactive media form an important part of teens’ and young adults’ social lives, education, and entertainment choices with teens and young adults engaged in a constant and often simultaneous interaction with the online world alongside their “real life” world. Friends become the predominant connection during adolescence, offering a safe space and emotional independence from parents, teachers, and other adults. Teens form more mature friendships and romantic relationships and they begin to feel a greater need to establish their own sexual identity. Social connectedness is integral to teens’ long term wellness outcomes.

Who’s to Blame for the Sexualization of Our Daughters?

Kids are not having intercourse at a younger age, and they’re not having more intercourse than they used to. They are engaging in other forms of sexual behavior, younger and more often. And one of the things that I became really clear on was that we have to broaden our definition of sex, because by ignoring and denying these other forms of sexual behavior that kids are engaging in, we are opening the door to a lot of risky behavior, and we are opening the door to a lot of disrespect. Among Americans under age 35 today, equal numbers of men and women are practicing law, while 60% of physicians are women. Since Title IX was passed in 1972, there has been a nearly ten-fold increase in girls who play high school sports.

Media Messages to Young Girls: Does “Sexy Girl” Trump “Girl Power”?

That would totally shift our ideas of how we thought about girls and boys and sex. What was tricky was that both the thing that is held out — for college students in particular but high school students, too — as «fun,» which is getting drunk and hooking up, also facilitated assault, because alcohol is really the No. 1 date drug. We talk a lot about girls drinking and reducing girls drinking, and I think it’s very important to talk to girls about the particular effects of alcohol on their bodies, because drink for drink, we get drunker faster than boys do. [Oral sex] is considered to be less intimate than intercourse, and something that girls say repeatedly to me would be, «It’s no big deal.» There’s an argument that some of the girls have in the book about exactly what it is. It was something that they felt that they could do that boys expected — that they could do to not have to do something else. It was a way that they could cultivate popularity, it was a way that they felt — interestingly, they would talk about feeling more in control than if it was reciprocal.

• As young girls, most moms probably owned Barbie dolls and enjoyed collecting their clothing and accessories.
• In our research with elementary school children, children as young as 5 tell us that, compared to non-sexualized girls wearing jeans and a blouse, girls in skimpy clothing with heavy make-up and jewelry are not as nice, not as athletic, and not as smart as the other girls, but that they are more popular.
• In one of our 2023 Pulse Survey’s, over half of teens who reported having rules around their media use felt that they were just the right amount of restrictive — so teens are not opposed to rules from family.
• When asked to describe a sexualized girl in a picture, elementary school-aged girls say things like, “Girls that dress like that aren’t very smart” or that they just “act dumb.” Yet a large proportion of girls aspire to look like the sexualized girl, even while saying she has very few redeeming qualities.
• That would totally shift our ideas of how we thought about girls and boys and sex.
• «When I would talk to girls, for instance, about oral sex, that was something that they were doing from a pretty young age, and it tended to go one way [and not be reciprocated],» Orenstein explains.

This does not even count the impact of the sexualized toys marketed to young girls. MGA Entertainment, aiming at the 6-to-10 year-old market, recently released “L.O.L. Dolls,” outfitted in mini-skirts, high heels or thigh-high boots, and fishnet stockings. As a recent viral video indicated, some of the dolls reveal clingy lingerie when dunked in cold water.

Alcohol also makes boys less likely to step in as bystanders when they see something occurring, than they would be if they were sober. So we really have to address both sides of this equation if we want to reduce assault. «When I would talk to girls, for instance, about oral sex, that was something that they were doing from a pretty young age, and it tended to go one way [and not be reciprocated],» Orenstein explains. If the media reduce drastically this representation it wont be so normalised, and will reduce a range of issues that sexualisation of women perpetrated. You can’t walk through the grocery checkout aisle without seeing the latest shenanigans of young celebrities.