A Very Timely Read
Published by Sister Carolyn (Principal) May 27th, 2008 in Announcements.Below is a reprint of an article recently run in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We are blogging it because it has great significance. We do so with permission of the St. Louis-Post Dispatch.
Lolita with your fries?
Byline/Title: BY AISHA SULTAN
PD HOME AND FAMILY EDITOR
I could have sworn that the McDonald’s clerk did not ask me if I wanted a McSkank with my daughter’s Happy Meal, but sure enough, when we opened the toy inside, there she was.
Also known as one of the “My Scene Barbie” Roller Girls, she looked ready for a night of action with her micro-miniskirt and midriff-baring top showing off her hard plastic cleavage.
This was not a doll I wanted in the hands of my preschooler. We went home and squeezed her scantily clad body into some rubbery - yet slightly more appropriate - Polly Pocket outfits.
Last year, a popular toy manufacturer in Britain was marketing its “Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kits,” complete with a kid-size garter and fake money as a great gift for a little girl who wants to unleash her inner sex kitten. (Irate parents forced the company to move it from toys to the exercise portion of the website.)
Miley Cyrus’ recent racy photos in Vanity Fair are hardly uncharted territory in our culture that hypersexualizes younger and younger girls. University of Iowa professor M. Gigi Durham has written an excellent analysis on our culture’s pervasive fascination with little girls: “The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It.”
In the book, which should be required reading for parents, Durham argues that there is a link between the constant stream of highly sexualized images of young girls in the media and the increase in child pornography and sexual violence against young girls and women worldwide. While one may not explicitly cause the other, she writes, sexualizing young girls to sell movies, TV shows, magazines and clothes makes it an acceptable part of mainstream culture.
The Disney Channel, which broadcasts Cyrus’ series, called the Vanity Fair photo shoot, in which Miley is clutching a sheet to her seemingly bare body, a situation “created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”
Someone from Disney wrote that press release with a straight face, perhaps while staring into a mermaid princess’s breasts spilling out of her seashell bra? Hannah Montana is a billion-dollar brand for the company. And another of their child stars is now-pregnant: 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears. And before her, of course, Disney brought us Big Sister Britney, former “dirty girl” Christina Aguilera and Lindsay Lohan.
The underlying problem - and perhaps the only way to challenge the culture - is for parents to teach their children how to consume media with a critical eye, Durham says. Parents need to initiate an ongoing conversation about what these media messages mean and why companies want girls to buy into them. She includes a list of resources and some helpful suggestions, such as encouraging girls to become educated about the sexual exploitation of children around the world.
And, she adds, we still have the power to turn off, boycott and disengage from media that denigrate girls. Children cannot be raised in a bubble, of course, but they must be given tools to understand the sexual media soup surrounding them.
A good place to start might be for local high schools and book clubs to read and talk about “The Lolita Effect.” I’d be willing to host a discussion group for any mom-and-daughter team who wants to participate.
Until we start doing something about it, we’ll keep finding hookers in our Happy Meals.
