Category Archives: Parenting tips

An interesting documentary about children’ sexualisation

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sext up kids doc

This is a very recent documentary from US regarding the sexualisation of children through media and marketing.

The documentary does a good job in making us reflect on the different values pushed on our kids by media, advertising and celebrity culture and it does stress how the reality in which children live today has dramatically changed from even a few years ago: they are constantly bombarded by images and messages, but there is rarely any guidance provided to them regarding how these messages and images are produced and which financial/political/ideological interests are behind certain representations.

The film stresses also the necessity of providing media literacy interventions at an earlier age. We can’t wait for kids to be 12-13: at that point they will have already ingrained into them an incredible amount of messages/images on how to be successful, popular, sexy, beautiful, rich and so on!

The other day I was at a friend’s barbecue and I had the chance of watching with interest one of my friends reproaching (in a very stern way) her own daughter for posing and dancing in a sexually suggesting manner. Being the girl only 5 years old, the scene was actually quite disturbing for many adults to watch and embarrassing to say the least. The girl could not understand in the slightest why reproducing something that she actually seen many times over in TV shows or the internet was a reprehensible thing.

I felt both her pain and the one of her mother!

Only a few years ago adults’ sexual fantasies and imaginary were carefully screened from children view, so we did not have to deal with this sort of problems.

Today everything is on show and children watch with interest, indeed! There is a also a growing emphasis on sex and being sexy in the media, while at home or at school children are discouraged or told off if they express any sexuality or imitate any of the images and behaviours they see so often on TV, the WEB, magazines and so on.

Children are thus living constantly connected, in a constant flow of images and messages which suggest them to be and act in a certain way, but they are expected at the same time from their family, parents and educators to refrain from reproducing the hyper-sexualised nature of these images/messages: what we demand from them is to continue “behaving like a child”, despite the constant pressure surrounding them and the natural, playful, psychologically relevant attitude of children to imitate adult behaviour.

How unrealistic our demand is! To expect from a child to know a priori whether a certain behaviour, action, presentation, performance is right or wrong without providing any guidance and advice regarding the nature of this ever-growing and ubiquitous media content…

…this is not just unrealistic, it is preposterous and unfair.

So let’s watch, reflect and move forwards: let’s give the chance to our children to fully comprehend what’s surrounding them.

Along with many other parents and educators, I am still wondering why media literacy is not becoming central as math or English literacy in the primary school’s curriculum. Despite the MediaSmart initiative being launched a few years ago in UK, there is still a lot to be done in terms of efficacy, involvement and reach: year by year, we watch the “media and marketing machine” becoming ever more sophisticated, putting an ever increasing pressure on our kids, but – at part from the occasional protest or bewilderment – we don’t offer solutions, failing to act urgently on the issue.

Our children are left behind, wondering about this constant carousel of messages and images, gathering important clues from them, probably constructing their own identity, aspirations and fears around them…it is such a disfavour we are inflicting on our society not to act with urgency on this issue.

Back to the documentary. I am including both links: the first link is for the short trailer in You Tube while the second is the movie full length in low resolution (watchable as a demo from the distributor’s website).

Happy (well…probably NOT SO HAPPY…) watching! 🙂

 

Slutty Clothes for Young Girls: Irresponsible Parenting?

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shirt1200018border

I am receiving positive comments regarding the “Don’t you tell us it’s just a shirt!” slides.

But what many parents are more worried about is the “slutty” trend of clothes targeted to girls at younger and younger age: mini skirts so mini that knickers are permanently on show and mini tops so mini that nothing is left to the imagination. High heels are on the rise too and we talk about 6-8 years old sizes!

I have read also many articles regarding parents complaining to chain stores for selling inappropriate clothes to young girls (a padded bra and tongue for 4 years old was a case in point) and in many instances the complaint seemed to work, at least when there was enough collective upraising regarding a particular “unsuitable” item.

Sadly, as we know, most of these clothes are still around.

The thing is: shops are selling this kind of attire as long as there is demand for them and at this stage we would expect the parents to be the buyer of course, so… this means that there are parents around who are buying into this trend, right? Instead of labelling these parents for being uncaring or irresponsible it would be better to consider that perhaps – due to their culture/background and upbringing – they simply haven’t thought about the issue in our terms.

Some parents may think that bringing up a daughter to be a gold digger or footballer wife is indeed a good thing. Messages and slogans that some parents perceive as disempowering, may well be perceived by another class of parents as empowering: indeed, the power of female sex appeal! It all depends on perspectives and if you live your life surrounded by a raunchy culture it becomes second nature to think and act in those terms. For this reason, I don’t agree with many comments accusing parents who buy this sort of clothes being irresponsible and not caring about their daughters: the way forward should be to avoid accusations and judgements, engaging in dialogue and reflection instead.

In my view, creating resources and thought-provoking material to awaken people’s consciousness of certain issues is one way to move forward. And another way is to be open-minded and ready to start a dialogue: next time you see someone buying into the slutty trend, try to put yourself in their shoes, thinking within their own frame of reference (not an easy thing I admit), instead of dismissing them as they were not capable of thinking. I have tried this myself with a mother and the conversation we started has made me realise that my preconceptions were far from accurate 😉

Another slide for reflection today, please pass it around!

“But girls want to be superheroes too!”

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Watch this video of a 4 years old girl in a toy store in New York talking about the unfair separation of “pink princesses and blue superheroes” in the children world created by marketers.

No doubt she’s referring to her parent’s discussion on the topic, but this shows in itself the power of parental mediation: girls may be surrounded but a whole system pushing them towards beauty and appearance, but the words, discussion, even casual comments they get from their family will always form their frame of reference to evaluate whatever they see around: this aspect -the power of parental mediation – has also emerged very clearly from my empirical research on young girls’ response to adverts (www.TheGirlsProject.co.uk), and it’s indeed a positive thing which should make parents feel optimistic about their role, especially at this earlier stage of the development (before the adolescence phase, where rebellion towards parents becomes normative, representing for children a way to assert their independence)

This second video is uncut while the first is her video announced by ABCNews

So what do you think? Isn’t this video showing the remarkable power of parental mediation? 😉