Glee star Lea Michele features on the March cover of Cosmopolitan. We’re seeing more of this sexification of popular schoolgirl characters. Of course it’s not just sexing up female actresses from the high school TV show genre – this is just another example of the sexual scripts young women celebrities are expected to follow. You’re famous? Show us your flesh.
I’ve written before about the creepy photo shoot by Terry Richardson for November’s GQ, featuring Glee’s lead characters in poses suggesting schoolgirls are seductive temptresses and promoting the schoolgirl porn fantasy/barely-legal genre.
The objectification of women confronts us everywhere. It’s not about being personally ‘offended’ at seeing Lea Michele pulling back her clothing to reveal a significant amount of breast. It’s not that this cover is worse than others. It’s the cumulative impact of so many like it. It’s what it says and represents and the message it sends about women’s worth and value – on the front of a magazine read by thousands of young women. This is where your power lies: in your ability to attract sexual attention. Natasha Walter in Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, expresses it well:
Through the glamour-modelling culture, through the mainstreaming of pornography and the new acceptability of the sex industry, through the modishness of lap and pole-dancing, through the sexualisation of young girls, many young women are being surrounded by a culture in which they are all body and only body. In the hypersexual culture the woman who has won is the woman who foregrounds her physical perfection and silences any discomfort she may feel.
I commented on the Cosmo cover and broader implications for women and girls on Channel 7’s Morning Show today with parenting expert Yvette Vignando who has also written on the issue here.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/19814016 [/vimeo]
Here’s an email I received after the show. It takes up a point I got a bit passionate about as Kylie and David were trying to wrap up the show – why is it parents who are expected to clean up the mess created by a pornified culture? The onus is always on parents, rather than cultural change.
Thank you once again Melinda for speaking on The Morning Show (unfortunately for us all, you seem to be invited to that programme along with Dr Carr-Gregg time and time again yet nothing seems to change). I agree with everything you speak about in regards to the skank culture that my generation are forced to raise our children in…I can safely say that on many an occasion I feel so frustrated and angry that I have been known to say…‘Oh I give up… why don’t you marketers and money makers just take my kids from me and raise them yourself!’ As you said today, it’s ludicrous to expect parents to fight the over sexualized society we live in, at every turn, get blamed for the damaged children produced from it and witness NO ACCOUNTABILITY from the media and culture perpetuating the damage. I have three daughters of teenage years and very often I wish I didn’t…I fear for them and the damaged boys/men they may well encounter in the near future…Maybe the tides will turn and my future grandchildren will have a better start in their cultural life than this current young generation have been forced to endure.
Kind regards
Suzanne Jones
The Morning Show had another show earlier in the week about growing parental concern about sexualisation of children. Yes, I know, I’ve said the same things many times. Until things change, expect me to keep going on about it.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/19809978 [/vimeo]
See also: ‘Equality hampered by sexualisation of young girls’, originally posted at The Vibe. Marcus Cleaver argues: “Despite legislation and the feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s, we still live in a society where girls are conditioned from a young age to see themselves as sexualised objects”. It’s worth reading the full article.
5 Responses
Wish you didn’t have to, but thanks for going on about it, Melinda.
That Vibe article is brilliant, loved every word. Would that every hater on The Drum were forced to read it and then discuss if this is still about a fear of sex, reactive moral panic, or misandry… well, a girl can dream…
Melinda, thank you so much for your tireless efforts!
Melinda,
Being a 19 year old female, I have really struggled finding out what it means to be a woman of integrity and self respect. Recently, my eyes have been opened to the issue of child sexualisation. I am outraged at this magazine cover and photo shoot of a young woman who is a popular tv star at the moment in a hit tv show that airs at the more earlier hours of the evening – main target audience being obviously teens. And yes, as David Campbell said (I was really annoyed with his reaction and arrogance to the importance of this issue), the Glee star is a 26 year old actress, but who grabs hold of the Cosmo magazines every month? I remember the first time I did, I was about 14 years of age and was one of the last girls to buy one in my grade -literally every girl had one. But these magazines keep pushing it further and further – it makes me terrified what they are going to come up with next! Even something as “little” as a plunging neckline,or as “harmless” as a headline containing the word sex plants seeds in young women and men’s minds that this messed up culture keeps on watering and watering and helping to grow into nothing but problems in all different aspects of life. This goes beyond what any parent can change by themselves. Thankyou for standing up for us teenagers, weneed more people like you! I am definitely jumping on board and fighting against our culture!
God Bless!
Eliza.
Don’t you ever stop going on about it Melinda! You speak for thousands and thousands of women, girls (many of whom don’t even realise it yet), and many men who are also fed up with this damaging culture.
Great letter from Suzanne Jones – I completely sympathise. As a mother of girls and boys, I am equally as concerned for my boys. Not only do I worry about the girls they may encounter (there are plenty of stories even just among my friends about boys being freaked out by sexually forward girls playing out what they think is ‘normal’), but I also worry about the boys they hang out with who don’t have any guidance to navigate this hyper-sexualised culture. I have just about given up hope of thinking that any teenager/young adult these days could possibly have their first sexual encounter without the tacky and narrow ‘porn sex’ script being their guide. To me, it’s an offense that our society has thrust porn culture on them and robbed them of their right to explore and experience sex in their own way.
I’m also a bit confused as to what the ‘porn culture protectors’ are actually accusing parents of? What,
Letting their kids watch daytime/afternoon TV?
Looking out the windows of a car?
Not sheilding their eyes as they walk past the porn rack beside the lollies and icecreams or at the petrol station counter?
Knowing how to turn the TV on and getting an eyeful of Video Tits (sorry, Hits) on a Saturday morning?
Noticing porn brands and bunny ears in major retail outlets like Adairs (*insert fingers down throat at Adairs literally ‘getting in to bed’ with the porn industry’) or that Coles displays their Playboy merchandise rack in the school lunch box treats isle?
Letting them see the My Chemist/Beauty Spot Valentine’s Day promotion ‘HARDCORE Fragrance Sale’ in the style of a tacky neon XXX strip club plastered around them in the local shopping centre as they watch a ‘My Little Pony’ centre stage performance??
Pah-leeaaase!! (I could go on.)
It’s such a copout (and completey WRONG) to blame parents. The blame lies with the marketers and corporations who have teamed up with the porn industry to capitatlise on the ‘sex sells’ message, and the society who has let it happen. They don’t care less about kids! Only as the next wave of consumers, which is why they are GROOMING and BRANDING them now.
Melinda, only with people like you encouraging everyone to speak out can we even HOPE to turn this around. I just hope that the growing wave of people starting to wake up to this, put their money where their mouths are and in the meantime BOYCOTT companies/stores that exploit women and market their wares to, or in front of, children.
I completely agree, particularly with the comments about parents.
I called up Tim Arandt from Nena and Pasadena clothing last week, regarding my complaint with their soft porn t-shirts. He said it was up to parents to decide if they will allow their teenage boys to buy them. He also agreed that the shirts were distasteful and he himself would not allow his teenage sons to wear them. Yet he continues to make and sell them. Hypocritical much?
I am tired of hearing that protecting our children’s innocence is solely the parents responsibility. I am vigilant about what my children are exposed to, and quite selective about the media I allow in my home. But upon leaving my home with my children, they are exposed to an onslaught of inappropriate material that is out of my control. Friends and popular culture can be very influential to young people. In high school, I compared myself to some of my skinnier friends and the women I saw in magazines. Despite open discussions with my parents, and their reassurance that I was talented and beautiful, there was just so much reinforcement that women have to be thin. Parents cannot do it alone. Something has to change.