Great piece by barrister and Human rights lawyer Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt. Dr Scutt is also chair of Women Worldwide Advancing Freedom and Dignity. Here’s an extract:
One mainstream journalist said Target was ‘not to blame’. Rather, the commercialisation of childhood and contemporary social and cultural mores were. An online commentator held otherwise, contending that those articulating concern were projecting their own sexualised contentions upon girls, with girls being consigned to a ‘prudes’ category from which they should be freed. The ‘moral majority’ was hard at work, with Puritanism and mediaeval (sic) horrors of naked female flesh on the rise … This view appeared to be that ‘sluts’ rule, to be celebrated at whatever age, and that adult concerns for their children’s wellbeing was misdirected.
Yet is it ‘fair enough’ that seven to fourteen-year-olds are presented with images of adult-as-prostitute as ‘trendy’ and ‘desirable’, with their own contemporaries or almost-contemporaries arrayed in similar attire, so that girls’ aspirations are limited to an identification with (at best) ‘celebrities’ adopting ‘grunge’ or ‘sexy’ modes of dress, singers and pop stars living in a world where ‘making it’ or remaining at the top is dependent upon videos in which dress or the state of undress seems equally important as voice? Is it really ‘okay’ that what once was ‘standard streetwalker’ is sold as ‘standard seven-year-old’?
Western culture no longer consigns girls into wifehood before their time. Now the message is that girls must conform to an adult sexualised image. In both cases, childhood vulnerability is ignored and the potential woman-as-independent, as her own woman, disappears. In under-age marriage, girls are forced into childbearing, childrearing, housework and husband-work, grown-up and grown old long before their time. Culture dictates control through submission of person. With Target-wear and its equivalents, girls are forced into seeing themselves as ‘real’ through adopting a sexually objectifying style of adult dress. Western culture sets girls on a trajectory toward early capitulation to the body-image imperative. How long before they conclude that Botox and breast implants are next on the ‘must have’ list?
Subjugation to marriage may seem and be aeons from subjection to the commercialised image. Yet whether controlled through marriage or commercialised images of what it is to be a girl-woman, East or West, North or South, culture thereby denies girls the right to be girls. Read full article here.
One Response
Thanks for sharing this article MTR.
While I was not too keen on the use of the term ‘Target-wear’ in the article, which suggests an issue with everything Target sells, I found this article to be very relevant and a different perspective to what I had seen written before.
As I said in my own article, I shop at Target myself and have never maintained this argument to be about a ‘pair of shorts’.
To me, this whole scenario illustrates the frustration around a sexualised trend in general.
I think that in the West we perceive ourselves to be ‘free’, yet we are subjected to cultural trends that force girls (and boys) to conform to narrow ‘beauty’ and sexualised ideals to fit in. I certainly see this as a form of subjugation. The hundreds of girls I have seen in practice who don’t believe they ‘measure up’ because they are not ‘sexy/beautiful/skinny’ enough are an illustration of this.
It wasn’t too long ago in western history that women were not able to vote, children were in forced labour, girls were unable to access education like their brothers were… Sexualisation to me, in general, just forces women into a new set of standards to which they need to conform. So I do believe it is on the trajectory.
I will continue to stand against any form of sexualisation. The evidence of the damage it causes will not allow me to do otherwise