Youth Minister Kate Ellis wrote a terrific endorsement for my book Getting Real: challenging the sexualisation of girls. I was – and am – very grateful to her for doing so. Ms Ellis wrote: Young women and girls today face extraordinary pressures to meet body image expectations that are unhealthy, unhelpful and unrealistic. The contributors […]
Emma Rush, who co-wrote the Australia Institute reports Corporate Paedophilia: The sexualisation of children in Australia and Letting Children be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia and who I’ve published here before, wrote a response to a piece by Emma Tom in The Australian last weekend. It didn’t get published there, but it will […]
“I was startled by what some young women were saying to me about their inability to access dissent; their inability to hear voices that were presenting an alternative” – Natasha Walter I’m half way through Natasha Walter’s new book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It is a compelling read, laying bare the forces of […]
Nice to know I’m not the only one with a negative critique (also published in On Line Opinion Friday)of the Lady Gaga machine. Here’s an extract from a piece by Jim Schumacher and Debbie Bookchin titled ‘What’s Next From Lady Gaga: A snuff film?’ recently published on Huffington Post: What if glitzy Lady Gaga is exactly […]
Since my last piece on the cyberbullying taking place through Facebook, other sites targeting girls for their alleged flaws have been found. One identifying young women not considered “marriage material”. Another naming and shaming ‘12-year-old sluts’. Another for girls labelled “bitches”. British girl Poppy Bracey recently took her life as a result of a cyber bullying campaign […]
Since when did it become okay to hate women and girls so publicly and to judge them so mercilessly? There’s a new page on Facebook. It’s only two weeks old but already has more than a million members. I’m not going to post the link but of course it is easy to find. You don’t […]
The UK Home Office just released the Sexualisation of Young People: Review by Dr Linda Papadopoulos. It is a compelling, thorough and strongly evidence-based paper which should be read by anyone concerned about the impacts of the pornification of culture on girls and boys. Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls is cited a number […]
Psychologist Lydia Turner has written another significant guest blog, this time dissecting the weight loss show The Biggest Loser, and arguing that a weight-based approach can never provide long-lasting health outcomes. The Biggest Loser: A Danger to Health The time to expose the dangers of the popular weight loss show The Biggest Loser is […]
I’m very pleased to have Sarah McMahon, a Sydney psychologist specialising in eating disorders, write another guest blog, this time on the way the radical treatment of gastric banding is being pitched to teens, with very little attention given to the potential risks. Promoting gastric banding to 14-year-olds: malnutrition and maintenance on the menu I […]
I’m just so pleased to welcome Dr.Emma Rush to my blog today. Associate Lecturer in Ethics and Philosophy at Charles Sturt University, Emma is to be commended for kicking off the debate on the sexualisation of children in this country, as lead author of Corporate Paedophilia: Sexualisation of children in Australia and Letting Children Be […]
I’ve been involved in a few campaigns against the sexualisation of girls, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company act on complaints as quickly as this one did. On Tuesday I posted a blog about a ‘tweenage’ push-up bra sold at Best & Less. A number of people got active and wrote to the […]
