Market research indicates that children and teenagers are major media consumers. A 2005 kaiser family foundation study found that eight-to eighteen year olds spend an average six and a half hours a day with media (Durham, 30). According to the marketing firm teen research unlimited, American teenagers spend 11.2 hours a week watching TV, 10.1 hours listening to fm radio, and 3.1 hours a week playing video games (Wallace, 47). Both teens and young adults spend about 17 hours a week online. Both boys and girls rank MTV as their favorite cable channel, spending an average of 6 hours a week watching it (Durham, 31).
There is no way that media isn’t playing a huge part in the issue with young girls and their behavior. There is a very popular show aired on The Oxygen Network called The Girls Club that puts 7 self proclaimed “bad girls” in a house together and films them while they make fools of themselves on national TV. They party and go clubbing every single night. They pick up random men for one night stands. They fight like little girls even though they’re all in their 20’s. I have heard girls talking about how they can’t wait till their old enough to audition for the show. They look up to these young misguided “women”.
One of the youth’s favorite artists is rapper Lil Wayne. You can go to any random Lil Wayne song and look up the lyrics and there’s a nine out of ten chance you will see something degrading to women. Yet you still hear young girls walking down the street reciting the same lyrics that insult them.
There is plenty of media for kids to pay attention to. On a typical day a young person is faced with a media environments that includes more than 200 cable television networks, 5,500 consumer magazine titles, 10,500 radio station, 30 million websites, and 122,000 newly published books. Surely all of these things can’t be wrong, there has to be inspirational and insightful media out here somewhere right?
- Role models
One of the most powerful and respectable role models for young girls these days is first lady Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama recently spoke with's Michael Scherer and Nancy Gibbs about her role in the White House. The First Lady described how she hopes to inspire and empower young girls, and the huge influence that positive female role models, such as , had on her growing up.
“As we were going through the campaign, I started thinking ... How powerful would it be for young girls to come into this space and hear from other really powerful, impressive, dynamic women and to have that conversation go on here in the White House? I see myself in those girls, and the fact that we cut across socio-economic backgrounds, that we [invite] girls from public schools, from parochial schools, kids from private schools, and that they're all sitting around the table as equals in this place, where they all felt some level of intimidation, right, so the playing field is relatively equal, makes these events beautiful.” –First lady, Michelle Obama
We have to look into what young girls value and find important these days. Whereas young girls used to have dreams of being a princess or a ballerina, they now are aspiring to be people like Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian. We have girls aspiring to be the next big video vixen, or rappers baby mama. Young girls need better role models. Why are we forced to choose between fundamentalist Christian, Joyce Myers and pop singer Shakira as sexual guidepost in the media arena?
The days of hoping to be like women who lay on their backs to achieve fame and fortune needs to end. Celebrities don’t need to be the only role models, it’s time for the mothers, teachers, and big sisters to step up to the plate. Adult women who are regularly around young girls need to be vigilantly mindful of the personal messages they send to girls. They need to help change young girls minds about the meaning of being beautiful.
Older women who have influences over any younger girl needs to stop talking so much about their “muffin-tops” and flabby thighs. Stop focusing on wrinkles, tummy tucks, Botox treatments, and breast enlargements. Instead they need they need show our young girls what we do to feel good. Show them how to be strong and independent. Teach them how to be useful for thing other than just how they look. Help them discover their individual strengths. Personal actions are worth more than any ad campaign.
- The Double Standard
“there were two of us- myself and another girl ill call Liz- who were considered the real sluts of the high school. And the reason, from where I sit is that we were having sex on our own terms” – Louise Desalvo, author of vertigo.
Being a young girl in this generation is one of the most confusing positions to be in. women fought so hard to be viewed as equals, to be recognized as sexual beings without being punished for it. Now we have some freedom so what do we do with it? We have earned the power to be sexually promiscuous with less risk now that there are contraceptives and the availability of abortions, yet we still face the scary reality of being deemed a slut. It seems like the girls who dress more provocatively get the attention that we all desire from guys, yet no man takes a “slut” seriously. Women are portrayed as sex symbols and sex objects for men and are whores when they give in.
The midriff-baring seductiveness of today’s pop culture stars is framed in terms of liberation and power. There are such possibilities inherent in the idea of girls accepting and expressing desire and pride in their bodies and embracing femininity, but a closer look at the imagery would reveal that only certain kinds of bodies are positioned as sexual, and only certain types of display count as desirable.
Women are beaten with the idea that they need to be empowered and break the mold so what does that mean for us romantically? Does this mean we shouldn’t allow a man to pull out our chairs or open doors for us? Does this mean we are not to cook for our men? How do we be powerful and independent when we still love the feeling of being protected? When we still want a chivalrous man?
When it actually comes to sex it gets much trickier. One problem with thinking clearly about sexual content in teen media, and the sexualization of young of young girls, is that it often breaks down into a good/bad dichotomy: you’re either for sex or against sex. Being at all critical or analytical of sexual representation in the media instantly seems to imply that you’re in favor of censorship and opposed to sex in general. It appears that you think should be wearing chastity belts and taking pledges of virginity. For those of us who don’t see sex as a bugaboo, that’s a crazy position to be in, but it’s equally noxious to be expected to celebrate “girls gone wild” as empowering.
So what do we do? How do we express ourselves sexually and maintain our independence and be accepted? Is there a winning solution? Many young women and men alike forget about the dangers of sex. It is not smart to run around having sex with anything moving to prove your “girl power”. Dressing in next to nothing and not worrying about the fact that there are perverts and rapist out there that don’t care about your rights to dress how ever you want.
All teenagers, males and females alike, should be encouraged to wait until they are in a serious relationship. They should wait until they are ready. They need to be given the right information on birth control, abortion, condoms and other protection, and STDs so they are mentally prepared. Yet, sex education is increasingly focused on abstinence, with more than a third of districts using an abstinence-only curriculum that permits discussion of contraception. Only 45% of public schools offer information on where to get birth control and only 37% mention abortion (hunter,85).
The sexual advice and information in the magazines, in particular, offer a very restricted and outdated version of girls’ sexuality. In the articles on sex man is depicted as an animal, and women is depicted as the animal trainer. The magazines continually urge girls to at once attract and fend off male advances, which imply both that boys are uncontrollable lechers, and that girls have no sexual desires of their own. The magazines emphasize the idea that the sexual community belongs to men, and women survive by containing themselves and by adapting and subjugating themselves to male desires.
4.Boys and Myths
In her book The Birth of Pleasure, Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan draws a distinction between relationships, which she defines as “being in sync with another person” and a relationship. Gilligan states that love depends on being in relationship with another person, connected a bond of equality and mutuality. “ both love and democracy depend on voice, having voice and also the resonance that makes it possible to speak and be heard.” She writes , and goes on to describe how love can flow between people , fluid and refreshing.
Yet, this is not what media tells us. This is not the image media puts into the minds of young impressionable girls. Seventeen magazine, for example, informs them that boys know a lot about girls. It tells us that boys know how to make a fling last. Apparently a boy would be most likely to stay with a girl who would “rub on his sunscreen”, according to the handsome young men interviewed in seventeen’s Nov. 2006 issue (Durham, 158).
Girls would be well advised to plan their activities, clothes, and behaviors with boys taste in mind. Tracy Cabot , the now divorced author of, How to Make a Man Fall in Love With You, went as far as to literally tell her readers to copy the man they want. She advises girls to dress how he dresses, move as he moves, and even breathe like him. In the pages of teen fashion and beauty magazines like seventeen and cosmo, tips on getting boys to notice girls are skillfully intermixed with the product placement that characterizes girls’ magazines, so that advice on buying jeans, accessories, and cosmetics seamlessly linked to the relationship guidance that claims to help girls negotiate the complexities of love and sex.
The myths in media that give off the idea that girl are supposed to fulfill male fantasies and pay obsessive attention to male needs is very damaging to the development of young girls. The myth does not recognize the idea that boys have responsibilities toward girls. It does not acknowledge the fact that boys can be caring, respectful, and sensitive beings. Boys are constructed as aggressors whose goal is to coerce girls into physical relationships, while girls are positioned as defenders of their virtue.
5. Conclusion and Solutions
The media is playing a leading role in distorting the healthy sexual growth and development in girls. It’s giving the wrong images of female empowerment and using the concept as a marketing game to only benefit them. It gives false examples of love and what men want.
Adolescents want more information about sex and there are too few opportunities to gain helpful and supportive information about it. If they take their cues from the media they are bombarded by a mythology that tells girls there is a certain way they should dress and act, that there are only certain ways to attract men, that they should be sexy but not be sluts. Listening to the messages of the media is why these young females are so confused and misguided on what it means to be a woman.
I'm convinced that the media is a major factor in the high rates of teen pregnancies and STDs in the United States. It portrays a version of sexuality that erases all notions of girls’ rights and responsibilities in sexual activity. It doesn’t encourage girls to gain fact based sexual knowledge, instead it glamorizes and fictionalizes sex. It offers a nefarious mixed message: be sexy but not sexual. Flaunt your sexuality, but don’t act on it. Good girls don’t feel desire, but need to transmit the playful message that they are “sluts” or “hotties”.
These contradictory messages can only result in confusion and rash decision making. We are squeamish about children’s sexuality, so we have allowed the media to dominate this important discourse. We cling to notions of childhood innocence, but look away when our kids gain sexual knowledge via the sexual media messages that surround and target them. Even shows like SpongeBob have sexual innuendos in them.
Sex is about ethical and positive human connections. Sex is the richest in the context of a loving, meaningful, deeply felt relationship. When you have these feelings for someone and you have the correct knowledge of sex, its consequences, protection and Ect. Then there is nothing wrong with taking your relationship to that level, but having sex just to prove that you can, or because you think you have to, or to be liked, without knowing what you’re getting into is detrimental to your health physically and mentally.
By maintaining that sex and desirability are the prerogatives only of girls who conform to the restricted criteria of media’s image of what girls should be, a whole range of possibilities and potential joys are being denied to millions of others. Media is antithetical to girls’ sexual fulfillment. It eliminates the possibilities of sex outside of commercial context. They say “sex sells” yet only very specific definitions of sex can be used to sell. The sex that sells is a corrupted version of human sexuality, because it denies and negates so many aspects of it. Sexual ethics are not even considered. Kids and many others need to seek out richer, deeper, more humane, and more ethical concepts of sexuality if we are to make any progress at all towards healthy, inclusive, unoppressive sexuality.
Developmental age has a great deal to do with how girls are able to deal with and process the sexual messages in the media. A six year olds responses and reactions to media is different from a sixteen year old’s, yet media treats them all the same. So the Bratz dolls that little girls play with, with their fish-net hose and hot tub parties and “bling” are the baby versions of the hyper sexualized women in music videos.
We have a responsibility to girls, to ensure that they grow up in safety, and to ensure that they have the ability to make good ideas about their sex lives as well as about all other aspect of their being. “Empowerment” is a word that has been too much bandied about in the media, used to sell everything from deodorant to pop music. It’s starting to lose its meaning.
There are real ways to give girls more power, to help them gain the strength to confront the media. There are tools we can give them to help them in these aims. This is not the same thing as curbing them, breaking their spirits, or cordoning them off from the real world. On the contrary, giving them these tools and the information to use them well will encourage them to use their intelligence, critical capabilities, and courage to forge their own way into the world.
The first tool needed is media literacy education. Media literacy can happen in after school programs, in the classroom, in mother daughter groups, or one-on-one. It can begin with children as young as two who understand the concept of “make-believe”. In a media saturated world, children need to learn how to dissect and understand this aspect of their environment.
The next tool is creativity. Girls creative energies are awe-inspiring. It is vitally important that we feed girls creative energies and support their visions. Girls need to become active media producers, not passive media consumers. Through creating and sharing their ideas about being a girl, they can begin to talk back to the media.
Another tool is multidimensionality. This will help girls to recognize the value of their abilities in areas other than sex and sex appeal. Sex is an important part of human life, but it’s not the only one that matters. In a way the media both overvalues and undervalues sex. It overemphasizes the need for girls to be sexy, but doesn’t take it seriously enough to provide good information about handling it in real life. Girls need not to be one-dimensional Barbie dolls, but accomplished complex people whose sense of self –worth isn’t totally dependent on media.
The fourth tool is consumer advocacy and action. We can and must engage actively with the media. We have the ability to critique, analyze, challenge, and affirm media messages. We also have the option of turning off, boycotting, and disengaging from media that denigrate or insult girls. This isn’t censorship, just us using our rights to freedom of speech.
In conclusion girls need to know that the media profit from certain fictions, that there are problems as well as delights in the media, that it’s important to feel good, comfortable, and safe about sex, and that they need to take wise precautions as they become sexually aware and active. The goal is for girls to see sex as a responsibility and an area of real empowerment. Real power goes beyond the media. It has to be defined in real-world terms of girls having the freedom and knowledge to make clear decisions that are good for them In the long run. To understand biological realities, to understand consequences, and to understand how to analyze the media according to these things.
“in an ideal culture sexual decisions should be the result of intentional choices” writes the psychologist Mary Pipher. This is a goal to work toward, for all girls, everywhere. This is the recognizing, and renouncing the media.
Resources
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