The Sexualization of Childhood Recent Titles in Childhood in America Sharna Olfman, Series Editor All Work and No Play . .: How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers Sharna Olfman, editor Childhood Lost: How American Culture Is Failing Our Kids Sharna Olfman, editor No Child Left Different Sharna Olfman, editor The Last Normal Child: Essays on the Intersection of Kids, Culture, and Psychiatric Drugs Lawrence H. Diller Bipolar Children: Cutting-Edge Controversy, Insights, and Research Sharna Olfman, editor The Sexualization of Childhood EDITED BY SHARNA OLFMAN Childhood in America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The sexualization of childhood / edited by Sharna Olfman. p. cm. — (Childhood in America) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–99985–8 (alk. paper) 1. Girls in popular culture—United States. 2. Sexually abused teenagers—United States. 3. Children—United States—Social conditions—21st century. 4. Children—Health and hygiene—United States. 5. Body, Human. 6. Exploitation. I. Olfman, Sharna. HQ777.S435 2009 305.23082'0973—dc22 2008028205 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2009 by Sharna Olfman All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008028205 ISBN: 978–0–275–99985–8 First published in 2009 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 For Lisa and Bess Olfman: May the circle be unbroken This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 The Sexualization of Childhood: Growing Older 1 Younger/Growing Younger Older Sharna Olfman I Growing Up in a Sexualized Culture 2 Pornography, Lad Mags, Video Games, and Boys: 7 Reviving the Canary in the Cultural Coal Mine Matthew B. Ezzell 3 A Royal Juggernaut: The Disney Princesses and 33 Other Commercialized Threats to Creative Play and the Path to Self-Realization for Young Girls Susan Linn 4 Girls Gone Grown-Up: Why Are U.S. Girls 51 Reaching Puberty Earlier and Earlier? Sandra Steingraber 5 Something’s Happening Here: Sexual Objectification, 63 Body Image Distress, and Eating Disorders Margo Maine 6 So Sexy, So Soon: The Sexualization of Childhood 75 Diane E. Levin 7 Still on the Auction Block: The (S)exploitation of Black 89 Adolescent Girls in Rap(e) Music and Hip-Hop Culture Carolyn M. West viii CONTENTS II Sexualization and Child Sexual Abuse 8 The Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth: 105 Redefining Victimization Sharon W. Cooper 9 Childified Women: How the Mainstream 121 Porn Industry Sells Child Pornography to Men Gail Dines 10 Prostitution and the Sexualization of Children 143 Melissa Farley Series Afterword 165 Sharna Olfman Notes 167 Index 203 About the Editor and Contributors 211 Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation to each of the contributors, whose research and advocacy is helping to ensure a healthier future for tomorrow’s children. I am particularly indebted to Gail Dines for her many thoughtful suggestions and generous support. Debbie Car- valko continues to shepherd this book series magnificently. As always, my husband Dan, and children Adam and Gavriela were a constant source of loving support throughout this endeavor. This page intentionally left blank 1 The Sexualization of Childhood: Growing Older Younger/ Growing Younger Older SHARNA OLFMAN A few decades ago in the United States, childhood was understood to be a unique and vulnerable stage of development; a time for play and protection from adult preoccupations and responsibilities. In recent decades, however, we appear to have jettisoned these norms, and the lines that separate the lifestyles of even very young children from adults are blurring. In today’s world, children dress like miniature adults, and creative outdoor play is being replaced by media enter- tainment that is saturated with sex, violence, and gender stereotyping. Internet pornography is easily and routinely accessed by preteen boys, and pornographic depictions of women and girls have been glamor- ized, mainstreamed, and marketed to children through dolls, clothing lines, video games, comic books, music, magazines, television, and movies. A sexualized society places all children at risk for internalizing impoverished models of gender and human relationships. Girls are vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse in a culture that depicts females as objects for male pleasure. According to the landmark 2007 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) task force on the sexualization of girls, girls who are sexualized are more prone to eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, impaired concentration, risky sexual behaviors, and unsatisfying sexual relations when they are older. Boys are also victims; they risk losing a piece of their humanity when they are flooded with images—through video games, film, television, and online pornography—of sexually brutalized women whose sole function is to pleasure men. But the children who 2THE SEXUALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD are most harmed by a sexualized culture are those who are already at risk because they are growing up with poverty or abuse. When our culture desensitizes us to the idea that having sex with children is a violent, immoral act, child sexual abuse through prostitution and pornography rises and children who are already living marginalized lives are most likely to be targeted. Another way that girls are being sexualized is that they are enter- ing puberty at increasingly younger ages, partly as a result of expo- sure to endocrine-disrupting toxins that are flooding our environment because of lax environmental protection laws. It is no longer rare for girls as young as 8 and 9 years of age to have begun breast develop- ment, and their physical precociousness makes them even more vulnerable to intense societal pressures to “grow older younger.” PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT BEGINS AT BIRTH Throughout this volume, the phrase “sexualization of childhood” will refer to derailed psychosexual and gender development as a con- sequence of cultural values, beliefs, norms, and practices that • teach girls that their primary worth is in their ability to be sexual objects for male pleasure • teach boys that sex and violence are conjoined and that girls and women should be valued primarily for their ability to give them sex- ual pleasure • isolate sexuality from personhood and the capacity for emotionally intimate and committed relationships • treat children as if they are sexually mature because of the outward trappings of wardrobe, makeup, or precocious puberty • allow corporations to use materials or methods of production that release endocrine-disrupting chemicals into the environment, con- tributing to early puberty Although sexualization is by definition an unhealthy process, chil- dren nonetheless begin the journey toward sexual maturity at the very beginning of life. Healthy psychosexual development should be acknowledged, supported, and clearly demarcated from sexualiza- tion. When we deny children access to meaningful education about their burgeoning sexual development, we give them no choice but to glean what they can through a highly sexualized media. Psychosexual development begins from the moment that the new- born experiences the sensual pleasure and feeling of “rightness” when she is held in her parents’ arms. During infancy, through the repeated experience of her parents’ timely and tender responsiveness to her GROWING OLDER YOUNGER/GROWING YOUNGER OLDER 3 myriad needs, she will acquire the capacity to love and be loved, a process which the famed British psychiatrist John Bowlby termed “attachment.” Attachment between infant and caregiver teaches chil- dren about the power and pleasure of committed and loving relation- ships. When a child travels through toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence enveloped by a supportive family, community, and culture, she will develop autonomy, creativity, indus- try, and a sense of identity, and she will mature intellectually, socially, emotionally, and morally. She will then have the capacity to enter into an intimate relationship with another person who is drawn to her intellect, personality, values, interests, and passions, and sexual inti- macy becomes part of the tapestry that they weave together. When I observe a young child who is being treated abusively by a parent—who only seems to know how to communicate by barking com- mands, finding fault, and asserting control by threatening violence—I see fear in the child’s eyes that is almost too painful to bare witness to, and at the same time, a yearning, a holding out of hope for a gesture of tenderness and a sign of love from her abuser. If this child does not find escape from her abusive parent or an alternative source of affirmation, she may very well grow up—her heart hardened against love—to be similarly abusive to her own children. Likewise, when I witness a little girl who is sexualized—dressed in a belly shirt with a provocative phrase written across the backside of her shorts, her lips glossed and her hair streaked—her playful, curious nature is palpable just beneath the surface. But when a girl or boy is not rescued from these soul-destroying