Tag Archives: sexualisation

The New Celebrity: Are Vloggers Better Role Models?

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YouTube, like many of the social media services we rely on, was born mostly out of necessity: back in 2005, two former Paypal employees—Chad Hurley and Steve Chen—realised they had no way of sharing the video they had just shot at a conference. Video files were too large to email and uploading them to the web was incredibly tedious, so the natural solution was to create an efficient online media sharing site.[1] However, despite these pragmatic beginnings, it took just a few years (and a 1.6 billion dollar Google buyout) for YouTube to begin profoundly altering the way we consume media, prompting average viewers to move beyond passive observation and tackle the task of content creation. As increasingly sophisticated smartphones armed those viewers with better and better cameras, a revolution was born—and nowhere has it been felt more profoundly than within the teen demographic. Today, more and more young people are naming vloggers (video bloggers) when asked who their favourite celebrities are: According to a 2014 survey commissioned by Variety magazine, the five most influential stars among 13-18 year-olds are all YouTube sensations, with the comedy duo Smosh taking the lead.[2]

For parents, the idea of their children looking up to these (often apparently wholesome) vloggers rather than an endless succession of morally questionable, highly sexualised, and obviously-manufactured mainstream ‘stars’ often produces a profound sense of relief. However, the vlogger phenomenon is not above warranting a critical appraisal; though you won’t find many of these young ‘cyber celebrities’ glorifying drug abuse or stripping naked on album covers, their status as role models—particularly role models for young women—remains somewhat questionable.

Meet The Vloggers: Who Are They?

In addition to Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla, famous for their off-beat brand of charming, zany improvised comedy) some of the vloggers most popular with teens include:

  • Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (PewDiePie): A handsome young Swedish gamer, PewDiePie has accrued a staggering 30 million+ subscribers thanks to his humorous real-time commentary on video games. Though PewDiePie refers to his fans as his ‘bros’, research suggests that he appeals to both teen girls and boys in fairly equal measure. Though some parents may take issue with his use of strong language, he’s generally perceived as good-natured and even charitable, being a major supporter of the charity ‘Save the Children’.
  •  Ryan Higa (NigaHiga): Ryan’s unique ability to master both satirical humour and topical rants (which he refers to as ‘off the pill’ rants as he engages in them while off his ADHD medication) has drawn over 12 million subscribers to his channel. Like many successful YouTubers, Ryan also has a penchant for genuine personal confession that endears him to his young fans; he has even opened up about his struggles as a victim of bullying.
  • Bethany Mota (formerly Macbarbie07): Bethany largely owes her subscriber base of over 7 million to the invention of ‘haul’ videos, wherein she reveals her purchases to her fans after shopping sprees. She also gives fashion and beauty advice. Mota, who won a 2014 Teen Choice Award, usually broadcasts from her archetypal feminine bedroom, which is adorned with colorful accessories, such as strings of pink hearts.
  • Tyler Oakley: YouTube’s most famous member of the LGBTQ community, ‘out and proud’ vlogger Tyler Oakley has amassed over 5 million fans and won two Teen Choice Awards. In addition to being a spokesman for LGBTQ rights, Oakley is much-loved for his inspirational videos and special guest features.
  • Zoe Sugg (Zoella): Another style and beauty vlogger, Zoella’s effervescent personality, comprehensive reviews of beauty products, and hair and makeup tutorials have netted her over 5 million fans, primarily young girls. Zoella’s genuinely clean image appeals to parents and advertisers alike while her openness about her struggles with anxiety make her relatable to many young people.
  • Tanya Burr: Like Zoella, Tanya—a former make-up counter girl—has amassed millions of followers while dispensing beauty advice to young girls. So successful is Burr that she now has her own lipstick and nail-polish range in Superdrug and she is often pursued by ‘high fashion’ brands (e.g. Chanel, Dior and YSL), all of whom send her freebies with the hope that they will get featured in Burr’s ‘Get Ready With Me’ make-up tutorials. Tanya, whole also maintains a clean and ‘down to earth’ image, also occasionally makes baking videos.

Deconstructing The Message: How Do Vloggers Stack Up As Role Models? 

The 2000s have thus far been disappointing where conventional celebrity role models are concerned: from the shameless excesses of the Hiltons at the beginning of the millennium, to the self-destruction and/or sexualisation of female Disney stars intended for the preteen market (Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, et al), the practised vapidity of the Kardashians or the frank obnoxiousness of many teen heart-throb (Justin Bieber, notoriously), we’ve been given solid reasons to look beyond traditional media for inspiration. But how are vloggers—the elected leaders of the YouTube generation—really holding up against their old media counterparts?

There’s little doubt that many ‘cyber celebrities’ are at least more genuine than their Hollywood brethren; operating without handlers and the direct oversight of big business, they have worked hard to create both their own images and their own content. However, while this is assuredly admirable, popular vloggers are more often a reflection of the ‘status quo’ than they are radically reshaping it. The mere fact that almost all of the top vloggers intended for young girls run shopping, fashion, and beauty vlogs[1] alone (while popular male vloggers cover niches that range from gaming to comedy to commentary and more) is cause for thoughtful consideration.

Beauty bloggers like Zoella have also been criticised for their all-too-familiar hypocrisy: Preaching a message of self-acceptance and spouting ‘you’re good enough as you are’ rhetoric while directing their young fans toward the purchase of a sizable collection of beauty products. Conspicuous consumption, too, appears here to stay; not only are some vlogger celebrities, like Bethany Mota, famous almost entirely for shopping, Tanya Burr openly encourages her young fans to purchase brands far out of their price range. When questioned if the products she promotes aren’t too expensive for her teen fans, Burr flippantly shot back, ‘No, they can save up, or they can request them from their parents as birthday presents.’[1] Meanwhile, brilliant young women like Shirley Eniang—a maths student with dreams of becoming a pilot or an aeronautical engineer—content themselves with talking almost exclusively about different ways of wearing skinny jeans and styling ‘cute milkmaid braids for spring’.

Certainly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to look good, but the lack of diversity in female-intended content remains a troubling phenomenon among celebrity vloggers, particularly when paired with aggressive advertising and a decidedly mixed message where self-love is concerned. This peculiar brand of hypocrisy seems to have changed but little since the days of women’s magazines.

There are, however, signs of hope. The prevalence of LGBTQ cyber celebrities certainly surpasses that which is found in the mainstream media, indicating a fairer and more even playing field for young people of all identities and orientations. Likewise, not only do many vloggers (including fashion and beauty vloggers) speak up about charitable causes and attempt to shed light on real issues that affect young people (e.g. Zoella’s frank discussion of her issues with anxiety), some popular YouTube channels (run by women and largely for women) feature honest and helpful discussion about women’s health issues and sexuality. Laci Green, for example (a sex education activist from the San Francisco Bay Area) is doing her part to compensate for the lack of adequate sex ed in the United States with her popular YouTube show, Sex+. Meanwhile, vloggers like Dianna Cowan (Physics Girl) are finding entertaining and informative ways to get young women interested in historically male-dominated fields like maths and science. Evidently, the potential for change is here—we just need to decide what to do with it.

Vloggers As Role Models: Helping Your Child Choose

When it comes to embracing vloggers as role models, parents and young people alike should draw on their power to freely elect—with views, ‘likes’, and subscriptions—their own icons within the digital sphere. Parents should stay informed about current vlogging sensations and (as when dealing with traditional celebrities) attempt to guide, but not control, their children’s’ choices. Likewise, it’s always a good idea to teach young people to think critically about their favourites, to ask themselves why they are drawn to a given celebrity, what he or she is really saying, and what he or she hopes to achieve by broadcasting his or her message.

With due scrutiny, it’s possible that the ‘YouTube revolution’ will help to resurrect and refresh the tarnished concept of media-based mentors thanks to its potential for greater authenticity, the inherent relatability of its stars, and the complete creative freedom it grants to its young visionaries. After all, the best role model isn’t someone who is perfect; it’s someone who genuinely and honestly embraces his or her imperfections and then uses them as part of a platform for enhancing the common good.

References:

[1]   The revolution wasn’t televised: The early days of YouTube, Todd Wasserman. http://mashable.com/2015/02/14/youtube-history/#EPsBG7ZgVsqS

[2]    Survey: YouTube Stars More Popular Than Mainstream Celebs Among U.S. Teens, Susanne Ault. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/survey-youtube-stars-more-popular-than-mainstream-celebs-among-u-s-teens-1201275245/

[3]    11 Most Subscribed Youtube Girls Channels, http://richclubgirl.com/rich-photos/11-most-subscribed-youtube-girls-channels/

[4]     Meet the YouTube big hitters: The bright young vloggers who have more fans than 1D, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2656209/The-teen-phenomenon-thats-taking-Youtube.html

25 Vloggers Under 25 Who Are Owning The World Of YouTube, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/17/25-vloggers-under-25-who-are-owning-the-world-of-youtube_n_6340280.html

Why Youtubers Aren’t The Worst Teen Role Models Ever, http://www.mookychick.co.uk/opinion/love-and-life/youtubers-teenage-role-models.php

Zoella isn’t the perfect role model girls think she is, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11259853/Zoella-isnt-the-perfect-role-model-teen-girls-think-she-is.html

YouTube UK: 20 of Britain’s most popular online video bloggers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/07/youtube-uk-20-online-video-bloggers

Watching “Sexy Baby”: a Movie Documentary

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“We are constantly amazed at the challenges girls are presented with today. When we were growing up things just didn’t seem as complicated. With the Internet and social media bringing sex and sexual content right into our homes, we have often wondered what the impact is on young girls and women today. The new feature documentary film, Sexy Baby, gives us an inside look into the new cultural shift taking a hold of America. Intimate, candid conversations and personal storytellingng expose this new reality. It is shocking and disturbing, but also a wake up call”.
(from http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/sexy-baby-sexiness-the-c…/)

This is another brilliant (although a bit painful to watch I must admit…) 2012’s movie documentary from co-directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus (the same directors of the recent Hot Girls Wanted), available in full format from You Tube.

After a powerful intro consisting of a fast-paced collage of images and clips cuts from popular media /news effectively depicting the sexual saturation of today’s mass media, the movie documentary starts with some young girls watching Lady Gaga in her sexually provoking “Poker Face” video while imitating her moves – a familiar sight for most people these days – then the camera filmed what appear as a 5-6 years old girl giggling “Britney Bitch”, mimicking the famous Will i Am ‘s song.

The documentary follow the lives of 3 women (one of them is actually still a young girl just becoming teenager): an ex porno-movies star who is trying to get pregnant, a 12 year old girl experimenting with her identity and a 22 year old who yearns for “normal” private parts.

What I’ve liked about this documentary is the non-judgemental way is filmed and the way it captures the reality of living in a media-saturated world.  I would have loved to see more racial diversity in it, but that’s about it. The documentary is available now to watch in different formats and, considered its sexually-explicit nature, the authors have produced an edited educational version aimed to a younger audience for its screening into schools (which I’d be really keen to show to the girls taking part in my offline projects).

Sexy Baby is the first documentary film to put faces to a seismic cultural shift: the cyber age is creating a new sexual landscape. While doing research for the film, we had intimate and candid conversations with kids in middle school classrooms, suburban shopping malls, nightclubs, college dorms, and even conducted an informal roundtable during a high school house party. While chronicling trends among small town and big city kids, we discovered this: Having pubic hair is considered unattractive and “gross.” Most youngsters know someone who has emailed or texted a naked photo of themselves. Many kids have accidentally or intentionally had their first introduction to sex be via hardcore online porn. Facebook has created an arena where kids compete to be “liked” and constantly worry about what image to portray – much of what was once private is now made public. And the list goes on… –– (C) Sexy Baby Official Site

“We are the first generation to have what we have, so there is no one before us that can… kind of GUIDE US…I mean we are the PIONEERS” says Winnifred – a 12-year-old girl from New York.

What Winnifred says reflects the thinking of many other kids: they often feel that they live in a world which adults can’t understand fully. They are suspicious of our judgements and our perspective on things because after all we grown up in a completely different era, where computers, internet and social media were not around, so – in their view – how can we possibly guide them through this new sexual landscape? As parents and educators, perhaps we should ask ourselves: how much do we truly know about this new world and about our children’s world?

Empowering Girls & Women through Adverts?

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Today I came across another empowering advert for women and girls. It seems that the trend is growing year by year with more and more brands jumping on the bandwagon.

Some people criticise the trend by labelling companies as hypocrite (“they are trying to sell beauty products/wax and raisors to shave our bodies after all!”). But isn’t wonderful to see this type of empowering messages promoted by adverts instead of the usual “fix yourself -be this or that” stuff?

At the very least these adverts diversify the range of images and role models available to girls and from my point of view this could be the start of a gradual change taking place…if we start to reward the companies sending this type of messages instead of criticising them under the “hypocrisy label”, more and more of them will follow and the entire advertising landscape could gradually transform into something more real and inspiring than the fake beauty images currently surrounding us: it makes perfect sense.

Check out the full playlist of empowering adverts here and don’t forget to comment!

 

How the Beauty Imperative Influences Our Life

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We are constantly surrounded by symbols of beauty – gorgeous tanned women in bikini on the billboards, mysterious smoky-eyed seductresses, mothers that manage to take care of career, household and children, while still looking like goddesses. Female beauty is, as we’ve been taught, something essential. A woman needs to look her best at all times. But it turns out that “her best” is quite a slippery term…

“The Beauty Myth”, published in 1991, is one land-marking book focusing on how the beauty idea influences women’s life. With power come responsibilities, the book says, and these responsibilities – at least for women – mean adhering to certain standards. The “iron maiden”, as Naomi Wolf refers to it, is the impossible standard that punishes women both physically and psychologically for their inability to achieve it.

The ideal of female beauty isn’t new. It has started as early as the ancient times, with the ancient Egyptians using kohl to blacken their lashes and upper lids, and Romans darkening their eyes with burnt matches and fading their freckles with young boys’ urine. In history, beauty has always been a symbol of power and social status. The wealthy Renaissance women had to pluck their hair lines in order to make their foreheads seem higher, and to bleach their hairs to make them blonder. This trend continued up to the 1990s, where the ideal for female beauty was Kate Moss, the symbol of extreme thinness, with a strung-out and emaciated appearance, both in face and body.

We’ve all heard about the Photoshop debates and the unrealistic beauty standards, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Think about how many magazines publish dietary and exercise tips that guarantee you to “lose weight quickly”. How many tabloids compete to be the first to “comment on” (“shaming” is probably a better word) a celebrity’s weight gain. It’s not surprising that the incidence of eating disorders have doubled in the last 15 years.

The problem is not surrounding women with unreal physical standards. The issue is that women believe they’re expected to look like this, because they can. This is how the horrific cycle of self-loathing begins. Every time you open a magazine, you’re urged to lose weight quickly, to dye your hair, to shave your body, to be as feminine as possible. You can’t be beautiful if you have pores or gray hairs. You have wrinkles or freckles? Then you better do something about it. The problem is intensified by the pervasiveness of todays’ media: it’s very difficult to escape all these images, slogans and messages as they are ubiquitous and thus become the very fabric of our constant preoccupation with the way we look. Young girls’ role models are YouTubers like Zoella, whose videos are all about teaching girls how to achieve “that perfect look” through hours of make-up.

So many more girls today suffer from eating disorders, anxiety, depression, self-harm/cutting and trichotillomania. The more girls self-objectify, the more likely is that they will suffer from these issues. The worst problem is that we believe we need to be beautiful in order to be happy, successful and loved. We always fear that all our other qualities – no matter how great – won’t be enough to make us feel worthy in the eyes of others; unless we achieve the standard of beauty which we deem acceptable, we feel that we are falling short, while in reality whom we compete against are only abstract ideals. We will run and starve to death, or binge and purge, to get thinner, but they’ll always be a next magazine cover with a thinner or fairer model. I’ve personally practiced 15 years of this struggle before I started considering that perhaps my perspective was flawed…

The “beauty ideal” has influenced women’s throughout history, regardless of the country or culture. The beauty standards may change according to country-based preferences (although there is evidence that the white/western type of beauty is increasingly held as a standard more globally; an example is offered by some Asian countries – see this article about South Korea – where the western beauty ideal has prompted an alarming growth in the number of girls resorting to cosmetic surgery to “fix” their  Asian features. South Koreans currently have more plastic surgery than in any other country according to 2013 figures, with the craze particularly popular among 19 to 49-year-olds), but still these beauty standards dictate our life and judge who can be happy and who needs to “work more” in order to achieve their dreams.

In a world in which other skills and qualities in a girl are – should we say? – “less regularly” emphasized, beauty has become synonymous with happiness and girls are constantly pushed towards it, and punished if they fail to conform. The question is how can we revert the brainwashing once done and “unlearn” the bits of a beauty-obsessed culture that doesn’t serve us well, while keeping the ones that make us feel empowered. If only we could teach girls (and boys too) that there is nothing inherently wrong in the appreciation of feminine beauty or the grooming practices in themselves, but that, rather, the problems start when we take as imperative what society/media/advertisers tell us in regard to what our beauty ideal should be (particularly if that ideal of beauty become narrower, unrealistic and applied universally) and when we fail to strike a balance with all the other dimensions of our life, self and world, so that our preoccupation with appearance gradually becomes an obsession.

I know that for me and many other women, awareness has only come with age. I am still convinced in the power of awareness and participation, but I wonder what type of experiences can permanently raise young girls’ consciousness of being beauty-bound? And would that consciousness – once raised – be able to eradicate the feeling of unworthiness many young girls are battling with? Or is this – like many seem to contend – just a process that necessarily most girls will need to go through, living it and experiencing it in their own skin before finding themselves “liberated” only at a later stage of maturity?

Media’s Perfection through a Young Woman’s Eyes

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by Dusty Rose (USA, age 25)

I live in Los Angeles, self-proclaimed “Entertainment capital of the world.” Every waking morning the denizens of this overcrowded mini-state are inundated with images. Billboards on the work commute or daily walk, magazines in the grocery stores, banner ads in the email sidebar or website of choice, commercials and trailers for every conceivable product, film, and TV series.

I have lived my life so swamped by these images that I have learned to tune them out for the most part, which only prompts bigger, flashier, more attention-grabbing ones to take their place as advertisers realize we’re becoming inured to their attempts.

The few times I actually stop and look at what is being sold, I realize that it is always Perfection of some kind. If they are not directly showing you how YOU could be Perfect, they are showing you actors and actresses who set a standard for “Perfect” that few can reach naturally.

I remember growing up hating myself all the time. Before I knew the diagnosis label Trichotillomania, I was pulling out my eyebrows and eyelashes from anxiety, and would spend hours meticulously tweezing my knees because it calmed me down. When I hit puberty, skin-picking was added to the mix. The pulling and picking eased my anxiety, but directly fueled a raging self-hatred. Several passages in my old journals spew vitriolic sentences about how “Princesses don’t have scabbed and scarred faces” and “Princesses don’t have gaps in their eyelashes.” I never actually referenced Disney princesses in this, but rather the idea of Perfection that I saw everywhere and was embodied in the term “Princess.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t me, and I belonged “in the garbage with the trash.”

As I have grown, I have struggled and continue to struggle with overcoming my self-hatred. I don’t wear makeup unless I completely lose an eyebrow, and then it’s just a little eyebrow pencil. I feel shame some days, but prefer not to hide behind a mask like there’s something terrible that I must hide about my appearance.

I have also made many friends, and at least three were actively bulimic when I was with them. It was when their fingers were down their throats that I most raged at the images everywhere, the worshipped model of Perfection that made them think they were “less than.” I hated the pain my friends were in, and wished with all my heart they would see themselves as beautiful, even as I could not see myself as anything more than garbage.

If I could change one thing about how the media presents women, it would be to strip away the concept of perfection. Not that women don’t go around all day without makeup, many do. But do they wake up in Perfect eyeshadow? Do they swim with gloriously thick mascara? Is every blemish properly concealed to avoid the horrifying truth of nature? Must every single woman walk around looking like she just spent half the day in a high-end salon? And, in the vein of stripping away “Perfection” as it is known, I would add in a boatload of women in various sizes and shapes as actresses in main and supporting roles, whose role in the film is NOT to be fixed, degraded, or made fun of. I would have some struggle with their appearance, reflecting our own struggles, and I would have some rejoice in their reflections to give us some hope that we, too, can enjoy ourselves in any shape and size.

Maybe one day the standard for Perfect will be different, or maybe we will outgrow the need for Perfect. Until that day, the best thing we can do is build each other up in the places where we are constantly torn down.

LetMeBME Project: An Outsider Perspective

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by JL Field (Canada)

I can vividly remember the first time an image in the media truly impacted my self-image; it was back around the turn of the millennium, when I was enduring that awkward, spotty, slightly pudgy preteen experience so many of us go through. I desperately wanted to emerge from that chrysalis, to find my adult being, to establish a sense of personal power over myself and surroundings.

I opened a fashion magazine, and I saw her: Incredibly thin—I can still remember the bone-white elegance of her frail wrists to this day—immaculately airbrushed skin, face with barely a hint of visible makeup (as was popular at the time), and simple, millennium-sleek powder-blue jacket and plain white tank. She had brown hair and eyes, just like me. I wanted to be her; I don’t know why. Something in her cold grace called to me, became my personal idea of perfect, the measure against which I compared myself for years to come.

“Perfect” is a word you’ll hear echoed a lot by the various participants in the LetMeBMe project, a revolutionary new initiative launched by Media Savvy Girls. This worldwide video project has gotten underway by asking women from many diverse backgrounds to share—in 45 seconds or less—what they would like to see changed in the media’s portrayal of women. This question is to be the first in a series of three, aimed at shedding light on the unique needs, values, and voices of women around the world. LetMeBme was initially developed for girls and women alone, but after receiving many comments from men and boys, the creator of the project realized how important it was to include their voices too. As the recent UN “He4She” campaign so aptly put it, “Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue.”

The format of the LetMeBMe project will be, I feel, a large part of its success; it is brilliant in its brevity and simplicity, easily digestible by the social media generation while remaining personal, poignant, and powerful.

The answers to the main question really struck a chord with me. So many different women and men — over 100 have already contributed to the video project by posting their video with the hashtag #letmeBME, which shows strong signs of going viral — from so many different countries are echoing similar statements: a sad comment on how obviously flawed the media’s current portrayal of women really is. The majority of contributors speaking cited the need for a rapid and thorough end to the unrealistic expectations of physical perfection and the limiting, idealized stereotypes regarding female roles and behaviour. Instead – say these people- we need more realistic, multifaceted depictions of women as complex, flawed people whose beauty is found in the inner strength that allows them to carry on despite adversity, not in their superficial blessings and the unrealistically perfect lives that are always shown to accompany them.

I couldn’t agree more. Nobody has ever given me an “opt out” choice for any of the tragedies or hardships in my life because I look a certain way or because my body is a certain shape, and I think when I realized that—when I realized how irrelevant many of these superficial qualities the media so wholly focusses on in women are to the actual story of life—I realized the phenomenal lie we as women are told by the media on a daily basis.

How we look is not who we are. You are not actually likely to be any more successful or happy because you are a size 4, a certain height, or look younger than you actually are— trust me! No such qualities, no matter how much they match my old concept of “perfect”, have helped me overcome a single struggle that I have faced; instead, my brain, my tenacity, and above all, my positive and enduringly generous attitude, have carried me through.

By telling young women anything else, we are rendering them ill-equipped to deal with the struggles their lives will actually present them with, giving them the wrong tools to deal with the challenges that the world will, almost certainly, throw at them.

A message countering that lie in this medium has, if you ask me, been a long time coming. While the occasional video project empowering women has made quite a splash on mainstream media during the last decade or so, too many of those have been the buzz-grabbing brain-children of corporations (think Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign). While such campaign’s as Dove’s are not entirely without merit, they not only inherently involve a certain level of hypocrisy (“You’re beautiful the way you are—but buy this product to make your flat hair look more radiant”), they verge on being all-out patronizing to women, such as the by-now infamous “Patches” series, in which Dove evidently went out of its way to find women insecure and naive enough to believe that wearing an empty patch would “make them look more beautiful.” When the women were told the patches were fakes, Dove was on hand to film their reactions, as if making a fool out of “real women” on national television would help the self-esteems of women everywhere.

Personally, I feel that treating women as though they need a corporation to enlighten them, to enable them to see themselves as they really are or to measure their own potential, is an inherently flawed approach anyway—and that’s why the LetMeBMe project is so inspirational. LetMeBMe puts all of the power in the hands of women themselves, with a complete and truly refreshing absence of agenda. It simply lets us speak. More importantly, I find the inclusive nature of the project – the fact that men and boys are not excluded from the conversation – absolutely crucial in these days and time. As a contribution to the empowerment of women and girls everywhere, this raw, individual emphasis on the female voice is long overdue and truly invaluable.

What Men Really Think about Women in the Media?

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Finally!  It was about time that we open the conversation to men!  Today we have almost reached the 50+ mark for male contributions (!!): these men and boys speak from all over the world and the majority of their voices seem to allineate perfectly with women and girls’ concerns.

So what do they think? Check this short promo first

and then move on the full playlist at

It is all very exciting and I cannot wait to see more contributions coming in, so please keep sending in and keep sharing!!

<3

Launching LetMeBME: A Worldwide Video Project

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What would happen if I start asking women and girls around the world to answer 3 simple questions? This is the first short film produced from a selection of the first contributions received 😉

Eventually I would like to invite contributions from the men/boys, to see what is their view on question 1: I think it’s paramount to include all views and allow the project to be as inclusive and agenda-free as possible.

The project website www.letmebme.org is still under construction and I am looking for sponsors to effectively power the website with in-built video-uploading technology: this will bring the project to the next level as contributors will be able to directly share their uploaded videos through YouTube/Vimeo and other video sharing links. For now everyone interested in sharing their thoughts can send their short video via email to letmebme@mediasavvygirls.org or via tweet/facebook with the hashtag #letmeBME; our editor will upload all new contributions on a monthly basis.

In this era of social media and advanced video technology there is not excuse for not joining in and letting our voices be heard!

The sexualisation debate: innocence versus sexual agency

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There is no question that the pervasiveness of the media affects us all—regardless of age, race, and privilege—but the question of how much it impacts the developing brain of a child—particularly when it comes to their emotional and sexual development—and what the long-term consequences of this might be, is such a diverse and complex area of study that definitive conclusions have yet to be drawn. Millions of children are being subjected to marketing-driven media every day, much of it containing sexual overtones, whilst we look on with no real knowledge of how this will affect them ten, twenty, or thirty years down the road. Are we affecting our children’s self-esteem and their ability to be healthily intimate one day, merely for the sake of profit?

Several countries now ban advertising to children altogether in an effort to control the media; Sweden, Norway, Greece, and the Canadian province of Quebec have all instituted a ban on advertising to children under twelve in any way, shape or form, and a rising chorus of voices in the UK is calling for a similar ban. A recent petition letter (leaveourkidsalone.org), which was circulated by Jonathan Kent, writer and broadcaster, and Rupert Read, reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia and chairman of Green House think tank —and subsequently signed by more than 50 authors, journalists, renowned academics, and leading childcare experts— implicates marketing to youngsters in a host of national ills, such as high rates of teenage pregnancy and underage drinking. Among other things, the aggressively sexual subtext in advertisements is seen as a powerful and insidious encouragement to engage in destructive and risky behaviours—an alluring voice that infiltrates the media to make partying and having sex seem “cool” to innocent young minds.

The letter claims that such marketing is “Designed to manipulate adult emotions and desires onto children as young as two or three”, a strong nod to the adult themes, such as sexuality, that are present in many advertisements. The letter also claims that marketing to youth, on the whole, makes them “harder to control” by turning them into little adults who demand what they want, when they want it, and aren’t afraid to express themselves verbally, physically, or sexually.

On the other hand, critics depict this move as a moral panic and argue that the commercial interests behind broadcasting aimed at children would make problematic, if not entirely unfeasible, a total ban on advertising to kids: a measure which would undoubtedly shake the whole foundations of children programming. One can easily imagine how the main stakeholders holding strong financial interests on the outcome of this debate – broadcasters and children products industries – are lobbying to make their voices heard.

Like in any important socio-economic issue there is always a political side to it. The issue of KGOY (acronym used for “kids growing older younger”) is often attributed to the increasingly strong influence of media on children’s mind, but I agree with Jackson (2006:251) that this line of thinking is not necessarily helpful to young people as they are based on notions of childhood as innocent and powerless, rather than acknowledging or seeking to increase children’s abilities to understand their world (for example, by enhancing their critical skills through media literacy interventions). Critical observers have questioned whether these experts truly seek to restore children’s agency and protect their ‘innocence’, or whether they seek to limit their free will and access to media in an effort to control social problems that would be better addressed by the government, for example by providing more useful and thorough social welfare programs (all of which are presently facing a decline in the UK).

Said need for critical examination is especially evident when one considers that in Canadian provinces like Ontario, where advertising to children under twelve is perfectly legal (and the media is, overall, little different to what it is in the UK), the rates of issues supposedly tied to early sexualisation—such as teenage pregnancy—remain relatively low (as do abortion rates, despite Canada’s notable lack of restrictions on abortion). And yet, across the border in the United States, where much of Ontario’s consumed media originates from, issues like teenage pregnancy are much more prevalent. When one weighs this information, the clear link between the media, early exposure to sexual content, and the “too much, too soon”social ills suggested by the team of English experts grows more tremulous.

This does not mean, however, that concern about the impacts of marketing and the media on children’s developing sexuality is mere moral panic, and nothing more. Statistics, at the end of the day, tell us little about the actual people behind them, and there is no denying that across the western world, overt sexuality is being displayed by young people—particularly young women—more often, more blatantly, and earlier on that at any other time over the past century (and perhaps much longer).

The issue of whether or not these young women have knowledge about and access to birth control (and the right socio-economic reasons to use it) tells us nothing of the emotional consequences they may be suffering as a result of possibly premature sexualisation and self-objectification. How do they feel about themselves? Is their body image suffering under the pressure of increasingly unrealistic beauty standards portrayed in the media and in the effort to be sexually appealing? Are young girls too willing to be intimate with any man that desires them, having been taught that they are simply objects for this desire? Are they able to be properly intimate with young men who have also been raised in today’s culture? Or, conversely, are young women finally being taught that female sexuality is not a ‘sin’, a dirty secret, but rather something to be reclaimed and expressed while also striving towards a successful career? Is ‘girls power’, as a feminist-inspired discourse absorbed by popular culture and challenging the idealisation of girlhood in our culture as repository of purity (based on the rhetoric of girls’ vulnerability and need for protection), leading to increased girls’ self-determination and agency?

In short, are we creating something revolutionary—acceptance of the sexual agency of young women —or are we setting girls up to be passive targets of exploitation, while pushing young men to aggressively exploit?

These are the main questions of the “pleasure vs danger” debate, which I will address in my next blog post. So far, I have tried to adopt a sitting-on-the-fence stance in the attempt to present more objectively the different sides of the argument. In a third article I will also be keen to clarify my own position on these issues. In the meantime, I am asking my readers to chime in and let me know their own perspective on things. 😉

 

Main References
1. Jackson, Carolyn (2006). "Wild" girls? An exploration of "ladette" cultures in secondary schools, Gender and Education, Vol.18 (4): 339-360
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9984366/Ban-advertising-aimed-at-primary-school-children.html
3. http://www.economist.com/node/4649
4. Currie D, Kelly D M, Pomerantz S (2009) Girl Power': Girls Reinventing Girlhood. Peter Lang Publ.

Check this Inspirational Speakers Playlist

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