04-10-11, 02:35 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2009
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Are our kids oversexualised?
Are our kids oversexualised? | Dr Jan Macvarish | Independent Battle of Ideas Blogs
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Last week’s Twitter spat between ‘Dragon’s Den’ star Duncan Bannatyne and website Mumsnet over whether 13 year old girls should be allowed to undergo waxing treatments in his health spas was the latest in a long line of unedifying instances of otherwise normal adults displaying an unhealthy interest in young girls’ bodies. What girls wear on their bodies, and how they move them, has become a peculiar object of social and political concern. Before he was elected, David Cameron expressed his views on the kind of knickers little girls should be bought by their parents and once in power, commissioning a review by Mother’s Union Chief Reg Bailey into the ‘sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood’, which spent a considerable number of pages speculating on what is, and what is not, ‘sexualised clothing’.
While some blame the amoral market for being somehow (why is never explained) driven to create an evil nexus of sex and shopping, others blame dumb parents for mindlessly pimping their pre-teen daughters by buying them padded bras and t-shirts containing vulgar slogans. One Australian think-tank even coined the phrase ‘corporate paedophilia’ and a victims’ rights group in the UK invented the term ‘paedophile pound’ in response to the ‘Primark bikini scandal’. Serious writers such as Agnes Nairn use the language of ‘grooming’ to describe the attempt by retailers to win over children as brand-loyal consumers. Quite who gains what by ‘sexualising’ children is never explained and no-one can quite agree whether ‘sexualisation’ is most worryingly embodied in pink glittery shorts, animal print leggings or ‘high’-heeled party shoes. Despite numerous outraged commentators claiming to have seen ‘future porn star’ T-shirts in children’s departments or sported by toddlers, it turns out that only three such T-shirts were sold by the New Zealand website that designed them (as a rather lame attempt at sicko humour). The fact that there is no consensus on what sexualisation is, nor evidence that it is happening or has damaging consequences, seems to allow the anxiety about little girls’ potentially toxic bodies and corrupted minds to gain momentum in the imaginations of otherwise sensible people.
What all this points to is that, in mainstream society, among both conservative and radical-sounding commentators, little girls have become the obsessive objects of both concern and disgust. Little girls mimicking their mothers or dancing in their bedrooms are now pathologised as damaging their ‘self-image’, constructing versions of themselves infected by the nebulous malevolence of the market, by narcissism, or the masculine gaze. While boys may appear to be absent from the discussion, male sexuality plays a secondary role, lurking in the corners of the debate, a malevolent force presumably stirred into priapic action by the sight of an 11 year old with a clumsily lip-sticked smile or a nine year old in a sparkly bikini.
Few politicians, church-y types or moralists are bold enough to criticize adult sexual behaviour today. Instead, childhood and ‘consumer culture’ provides a more legitimate site of anxiety and opprobrium. Those who are worrying about the moral development of little girls are actually worried about the moral degeneracy of adult society, but dare not direct their criticism at adults, retreating instead to what they sense is the more consensual terrain of concern for the welfare of the next generation. What concerned commentators fail to recognize is that, far from there being an ‘anything goes’ attitude when it comes to children’s bodies and behavior, we are in fact profoundly uncomfortable with children’s physical presence and their latent or nascent sexuality, as anyone who works with children and has been trained in ‘no-touch’ rules will tell you. Little girls’ bodies, how they move them and how they are covered, have thus become the official object of government concern and public scrutiny. The belief that children have already lost their innocence and that sex and shopping are rife with dangers leads us to misread childish experimentations in ‘playing grown-ups’ as emerging from a toxic culture, rather than as being intrinsic to, and necessary for, children’s development. A fantasy of little girls’ degraded and grotesque sexualisation will therefore continue to be invoked as ciphers for our unease about adult society.
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