There is constant worry about media images effect on young people, young girls in particular. One parent and blogger, Sara Sarasohn, expressed worry about just that problem. Sarasohn mused about how she was not allowed to play with Barbie as a child because of her mother's fear of the effects on body image the doll would have and how this pales in comparison to the suggestive clothing being marketed to children today.
Perhaps, however, the problem is not the media but rather adults.
Since adults are usually the creators of media for children they are the ones who fuse their adult sense of what is appealing into children's media, and for that matter in everyday products, like clothing, that are not typically looked at as "media". For example, young girls are often criticized for dressing too sexy. Adults blame the influence of popular music, television, and other media examples that sexualize women. But these sexualized identities are present from an early age because of the media images and products they are exposed to daily. Many of these images may fail to make significant distinction between girls and women which means that styles and attitudes that appeal to adult women are subsumed by girls as part of their adoption of gender. The question is one of timing: Are girls adopting a woman's identity too soon?
One might say that children's preferences for sexualized media reflect their sexual development. While it is true enough that children are capable of making a lot of decisions independently, adults have the power to limit the range of a child's perspective, resulting in a limited scope for the child's decisions.
Sarasohn points to the difficulty she has in finding clothing that does not sexualize her young daughter. By virtue of the wardrobe that is available to them girls are integrated into a sexual identity from and early age. As an extreme example of this look at the TLC show, Toddlers & Tiaras. These parents are some of the worst offenders of prematurely woman-ifying their daughters. The claim is that the children enjoy dressing up and participating in pageants. Adults claim the child has agency in decisions about whether they should participate in pageants, but we must question whether this is true functionally or realistically. When everything about childhood is condemned by adults children have little direction to go but to pursue adulthood through whatever means are available to them. One that seems readily available to young girls is clothing choice, and what is more adult than sexually suggestive clothing?
It is, of course, easy to get in a tizzy about about what the big bad clothing companies are doing to our daughters and the "horrible mothers" on Toddlers & Tiaras but the fact remains that children find these products appealing, likely because of their "adultness".
In our culture being "childish" is an insult. So what is a child to do but try to shed the part of their image that is condemned by adults. Craig Balsam, creator of "Kidz Bop", a CD series that does covers of popular music for kids, noted that "It's hard to have a brand for kids that has absolutely no edge, I really think they would be completely disinterested."
So is it possible to have "edge" without being "adult"? Perhaps the answer lies in getting children more involved with the production of their own "edgy" products. What do you think that would look like? How can children be interested in stimulated without being subject to adult sexualization?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/parents-teens/
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