Girls on Display
This spring, Disney pop star Miley Cyrus became the center of a media backlash when Vanity Fair released photos of the Hannah Montana lead in nothing more than a sheet. While the magazine is known for pushing boundaries of propriety, these images were particularly troubling due to the age of the star (15) and those who emulate her (girls as young as 8). The images illuminated the way children younger and younger are becoming players in a sexual culture traditionally reserved for adults.
How did children come to be seen as sexually available as adults? M. Gigi Durham contends in The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It (4 stars) that the sexualization of children, especially young girls, is largely perpetuated by print and electronic media. Durham's title evokes Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 Lolita, a modern classic about a French scholar who falls in love with a 12-year-old. What does the Lolita Effect look like today? "Adult sexual motifs are overlapping with childhood—specifically girlhood, shaping an environment in which young girls are increasingly seen as valid participants in a public culture of sex." Durham, a University of Iowa communications professor, argues that the Lolita Effect harbors a special interest in those less discerning about sexual boundaries.
Durham offers an arsenal of statistics and examples to demonstrate that drawing young girls into sexual culture is, in part, a backlash against feminism. As adult women gain more influence in the public square, girls—naïve and easily manipulated—become a more appealing image of female sexuality for a media culture that has enshrined "sex sells" as its motto.
Durham explains that the Lolita Effect thrives ...

Grieving with the Good Friday God
La complejidad hispana: Todo cambió en el 2012

(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).













Comments
Displaying 13 of 15 comments
See all comments
Dave
Quote: Bratz dolls are aimed at 4-8-year-old girls, with "dewy lips, fishnet stockings and barely-there miniskirts — a creep-out factor for a lot of moms. Earlier this year, a report from the American Psychological Assn. mentioned the Bratz dolls by name and said 'it is worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality.' " So we have the cultural subversion theme going on: "ten-inch tall hoochie mamas" for little girls to play with. Director of the movie Sean McNamara's first reaction to the dolls is revealing: "These aren't cute dolls — they look like sluts." The driving force behind Bratz is Avi Arad, an Israeli-American who is very big on diversity, at least for America: "The first thing I saw in them was diversity." ... "I really liked the idea that they had a Latino girl, an Asian girl, an African American girl and a lily-white kid." Arad, predictably, is not in favor of the same approach to Israeli culture.
Shirley Hawkes
I am sick and tired of sexual things with children. Please do what you can to STOP IT!!
Rita
Though I agree that our culture is too sexual, I am wondering why we have suddenly decided that the age a girl becomes a woman is 18? That is just a number. Throughout history, and especially Bible times, the age was when a girl began menstrating. Once that age hit the girl was available for marriage and therefore sex. We have demonized this idea in our culture. Why? If it was evil, why did God not say so in his word? He was pretty clear about all other sexual sins.