cliterature

There is a lot of commentary these days about children, especially girls, being ’sexualized’ too young.  I have mixed feelings about this.  It does seem that many kids have a lot of sexual experiences very young and under cultural pressure–often without appropriate precautions to prevent pregnancy and disease.  But where does this problem really come from?

But  I think the focus is too often on surface aspects like clothing and music.  I mean, I do think that young girls are wearing things that have elements many adults read as suggestive, which is bad taste.  But there is a huge subjective element.  I mean, my Dad flipped when I wore a pretty normal denim miniskirt as a teen.  So we cannot assume that we know what clothes mean to children and their peers.  The same applies to popular music, which has always made a lot of sexual references.  Is mainstream rap or emo really any different from rock and roll or R & B?  I think we forget that the songs from previous eras that we remember are the best ones–and others were more sexual and often rather crass and sexist–just like today. 

In contrast, not a lot of attention seems to be paid to how American culture encourages romance roleplay even in infants.  This is not just media or clothing, but training very young children in roles were they should orient romantically to the opposite sex and mime gestures that in adults within this culture are considered sensual.  I remember watching US TV shows, like sit comes, and being astounded that prepubescent children were routinely shown having crushes, dating and so forth.  And this with the active encouragement of parent, presented as cute and appropriate.  The very notion of acting like this was completely absent from my upbringing until well into my high school years.

 While thong underwear for seven-years-olds may be questionable, and child beauty pageants outright perverse, but I think it is far more important that girls not feel the need to play act flirting and courting behavior well before most of them have any interest in it.  This just teaches children to act not on their own wishes but to fit the feminine and masculine roles in soliciting romantic ans sexual attention and ignore their own feelings–or lack thereof.  That is how people who are exclusively gay or asexual end up not only feigning heterosexuality but going as far as marrying and having children–just continuing in the roles they have been taught from their earliest ‘play-dates’.

There are plenty of roles for kids to play act and practise, but dating, kissing, and flirting need not be part of this.  It is not media and fashion that teaches young children that there is only one way to regard the opposite sex.  They could dress in and listen to anything and not change their own behavior at all.  It is not media and fashion that create a culture where people can ask: is it possible for a man and woman to just be friends? 

It is our own gendering of child relationships were some people grow up never mixing freely with male and female playmates just doing the things that kids do.  Little kids cab just play together, older kids can just hang out together–and pursue more romantic relationships only when they really want to and are able to select someone they know well and be safe together.

 The sexualizing of children is not done by the evil retailers, but done (or not done) by families in an age where playing with Bratz and dressing like Madonna-lite may be a hell of a lot healthier than ‘playing house’ and kissing under the mistletoe because the adults think it is cute.  Listening to sexy songs maybe be far less important than being made to hug and kiss grandfather whether you want to or not–which is not to say that granddad is a perv, but that lessons in being in control of how and why you express physical affection begin early.  And it is when a girl loses her sense of that autonomy that she becomes vulnerable to pressures that may ultimately lead, not to the abstract ‘being sexualized’, but actually having sex early, unwilling and unprepared.

* For a bonus point, which recent catalogue included this illustration?

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