Letters to the Editor
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badly researched
I didn't get past the second paragraph without running into evidence that Mieszkowski didn't do her research.
There are no "pole-dancing toys." The item in question was an adult product which was mistakenly placed in the toy section, then quickly removed after the (very late) Adrian Roberts led a protest against it.
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Yes!
No kidding. As a parent of a 9 year-old who is about to turn 10, I am shocked and amazed at the horrible crap my peers allow their similarly aged children to be exposed to.
On the freakin' Disney channel!
Little girls dressed up like tarts, in outfits designed to arouse sexual desire in grown men. What is possibly right about that?
I never let my kids watch TV alone, we always talk about what commercials are trying to do (shorthand; "Commercials are designed to make you buy things you don't need").
And we stay away from the current mass marketing media. It is unbelievable and disturbing and distorting. And most of the worst stuff is aimed at little girls and their self image (boys are apparently just supposed to blow stuff up or ram cars into it).
We're in a sick culture. Thanks to Gigi Durham, Katharine Mieszkowski and Salon for shedding a little light into the roachpit.
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I agree with this womans viewpoint. She is spot on.
There need to be limits but more importantly there needs to be open-minded education. Despite this, I can't see attitudes changing anytime soon.
There is no right answer to what is the right age for sex and sexuality for young adults but the time to discuss it can never come to soon.
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Who's yer Daddy?
This is Capitalism, boys and girls. It will penetrate every market niche it can find...all puns intended.
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Given the full problem...
Given what parents consider ok for their children this issue hardly warrants notice.
Consider this case which is NOT considered strange: 2 working adults decide to have a child. They decide this knowing in advance that the child will be put in the care of a hired stranger almost from birth so both parents can go back to work.
Given that the above case is not considered criminally negligent, I don't see why anything else should bother us in the realm of parenting or child care.
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Yup
Obviously, if it is somehow profitable to exploit, market, and distort young girls' sexuality, someone in America is going to do it.
Capitalism and morality are in fundamental conflict on that point.
Of course the answer is to better parent children, as seems clear from the interviewees' repeated calls for discussion. But it can be difficult to spend time with the family when one's survival is contingent on working for someone else.
We have the resources in this country to build a bridge to heaven, and instead we spend our days trying to figure out how to sell fishnets to little girls and cigarettes to asthmatics.
One can find a way to resist this "pop" or "mass" culture. We all know our own values are better than the worst of everything we see on display in the Supermarket of Ideas.
Just be real for the rest of your life, and maybe some of it will rub off on those around you. Avoid plasticity of the soul.
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Refreshing perspective
It's nice to see an author speaking out on this topic who is also against censorship, in favor of sex education, and not trying to shelter girls from all aspects of human sexuality. As she says, the point is the marketing of these young girls as sex objects for profit.
The Miley Cyrus point is a good one -- people do seem to be either outraged or defending the photos as a healthy expression of sexuality... but when we focus on how a 15 year old is doing this for a commercial magazine, it becomes more complicated. It shouldn't be about shaming or praising Miley for expressing sexuality in the photos. It should be about the marketing of 15 year old bodies for mass consumption.
Durham sounds like a good advocate and mentor for young girls because she is on their side rather than pushing an overly puritanical or overly permissive agenda. One of the best things we can do for girls is help them to recognize distorted images in the media -- and especially, the profit motive behind these messages. Her approach will allow girls to feel empowered rather than censored or shamed.
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So Grateful for This, and that it's NOT in Broadsheet
I think it could help to involve middle-school girls in efforts to protect littler girls, by being "older peers" who help the little ones become more savvy about how the media seeks to exploit them.
I found in teaching creative writing to adolescents that they had a passionate sense of justice and sympathy for the vulnerable when they were encouraged to express it. Respecting their innate wisdom by giving them community avenues to enact it as champions of youngers girls helps to strengthen two generations of girls.
Anybody know how to influence public school curriculae?
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Spare us the glib, stupid headlines, please . . .
Even if it's supposed to be ironic, the title of this article, "Little girls gone wild," is as exploitative and stupid as any of the sexually-suggestive "products" mentioned here.
Whether she's a prostitute in Cambodia, or a trick-or-treater in suburban America, any little girl who is dressed in suggestive, inappropriate clothing is being exploited by someone. What's sad is that most likely, in both cases mentioned above, she's being exploited by one or both of her parents.
The issue is not "how young is too young?" The issue is exploitation. Any parent who tries to live out his or her fantasies through his or her children is exploiting them--and setting them up for a life of exploitation by others.
The other point I want to make is that fortunately for people in marketing and people who write books like this, the American public has no memory of anything that's happened in the past. Otherwise, they would remember how a little girl named Brooke Shields was exploited 25 years or so ago in exactly this same way, and they would know that there is no such thing as a "shocking new trend."
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parents
what i would like to see is a study on what types of parents buy these sorts of clothes and toys for their children. when articles like these come out, they invariably focus on the purveyors of adolescent sexual accessories rather than the people who actually buy it. i don't really know that we'll have a complete picture of this phenomenon until we understand who buys this stuff, why, and if they think there is a problem with it. articles dealing with this subject is almost always bereft of any information about the true consumer. after all, especially in the case of a six year old, the consumer is the parent.