Media marketing creating early sexualization for children
In their recently released So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can do to Protect Their Kids, Diane E
. Levine, Ph.D., and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., explain the role that media and marketing have had in undermining children's healthy development. Levine and Kilbourne highlight the alarming new sexualized childhood promoted through the media and popular culture. Video, computer games, Internet, toys, fashion and entertainers all contribute to the negative sexualized messages that children receive.The authors explain that "marketers have long targeted children as potential consumers, and they know that using sex and sexiness is one of the most successful ways to get children's attention in order to make them want to shop". Through their lobbying efforts, advertisers and marketers have significantly reduced the regulatory power of two major government agencies designed to protect the consumer, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communication Commission. Subsequently, children were and are left exposed to risqu media tactics designed to manipulate children and also their parents to purchase their products.
Clearly, it's no coincidence that when negative marketing and advertising increased, so did issues related to violence and sex within the schools, and at increasingly younger ages. As a result, middle schools are now canceling dances because of inappropriate dancing. Dress codes are necessary at many schools because of the increasingly risqu and provocative clothing children wear. It is not uncommon for teachers at the preschool level to hear children using the word "sexy" as they describe their dress or behavior.
"The sexualized childhood environment influences dramatically the social climate in the classroom. It teaches children to treat one another as objects being judged and treated based on what they can buy and how they look".
The authors offer several examples of marketing efforts from the fashion industry that after-school professionals should find alarming:
* A T-shirt for 4-year-old girls with "Scratch and Sniff" printed across the chest.
* Gym shorts for 10-year-old girls have two handprints on the back - one on each cheek, zeroing in on the spot supposedly waiting to be grabbed, patted or pinched.
* T-shirts for toddler boys carry the slogans "Pimp Squad" and "Chick Magnet."
* "So Many Boys, So Little Time" is the slogan on one fitted T-shirt sold in a size made for 6-year-old girls.
There is significant opportunity for adults working in child/ youth settings to collectively work together with parents to counteract the negative messages and images that children/youth are experiencing. These actions will help allow grown children to be "ready and able to establish a meaningful and intimate emotional and sexual relationship with a partner" if they choose, and to "cope with the inevitable stresses and strains of life".
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