I think most of us would agree that young girls are over-sexualized, and that’s a problem. So here’s a novel idea: Blame mommy!
Judith Warner’s column doesn’t start off all that poorly. She writes:
Bling-Bling Barbies and pouty-lipped Bratz. Thongs for tweens, and makeover parties for 5-year-olds. The past couple of shopping seasons have brought a constant stream of media stories — and books and school lectures and anguished mom conversations — all decrying the increasingly tarted-up world of young girls and preteens. Now the American Psychological Association has weighed in as well, with a 67-page report on the dangers of the “sexualization” of girls.
The report takes aim at the music lyrics, Internet content, video games and clothing that are now being marketed to younger and younger kids, and correlates their smutty content with a number of risks to girls’ well-being. It finds that sexualization — turning someone into “eye candy” — is linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression in girls and women. Adopting an early identity as a “Hot Tot” also has, the researchers wrote, “negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop healthy sexuality.”
She doesn’t fall into the “little girls are turning into sluts” trap, which is nice — she clearly recognizes that girls are being turned into eye candy, and that they’re the victims instead of the perpetrators. But then:
This isn’t surprising, or even new. But what did surprise me, reading through the A.P.A.’s many pages of recommendations for fighting back (like beefed-up athletics, extracurriculars, religion, spirituality, “media literacy” and meditation), was the degree to which the experts — who in an earlier section of the report acknowledge the toxicity of mother-daughter “fat talk” — let moms themselves off the hook as agents of destruction requiring change.
Mother-daughter fat talk is indeed toxic. Moms who obsess over their daughters’ appearances and who are critical and judgmental are toxic. And even moms who focus on their own perceived flaws in front of their children aren’t doing the kids any favors.
But “agents of destruction”?
Notice, naturally, that only Mom is the issue here. I’m going to give Warner the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn’t read the news that a very recent Harvard study of eating disorders nation-wide indicated that a full quarter of people living with anorexia or bulimia are male, and that men account for 40 percent of binge eaters. So as long as we’re blaming the same-sex parent for a child’s problems, we should probably pin some of the fault on Dad. Although I’m still going to go with the argument that social and cultural forces have a huge impact, and that socially and culturally we under-value women, place a premium on their sexual attractiveness, and then shame them for trying to be sexually attractive if they do it in a way we don’t like. I’ll also point out that dieting and self-starvation are considered the norm for women. From the Northwest Herald article linked to at the beginning of the paragraph:
“A teenage boy shouldn’t be eating what his 110-pound, dieting mother would eat,” Robb cautioned. “It’s normal for a half-gallon of milk and a loaf of bread to disappear every 48 hours if there’s a teenage boy in the house.” A notable change in eating habits, she noted, should prompt a call to a physician or nutritionist.
No mention of the fact that maybe an adult woman shouldn’t be eating what his 110-pound, dieting mother would eat.
But back to Warner.
I know that sounds pretty nasty. We’re not supposed to be judgmental these days. We’re not supposed to blame parents — especially mothers. I also know that what mothers do or don’t do (short of out-and-out abuse) doesn’t, single-handedly, “cause” much of anything. But I think it’s fair, even necessary, to wonder: how can we expect our daughters to navigate the cultural rapids of becoming sexual beings when we ourselves are flying blind? How can we teach them to inhabit their bodies with grace and pleasure if we spend our own lives locked in hateful battles of control, mastery and self-improvement?
We all tend to talk a good game now on things like body image and sexual empowerment. We buy the American Girl body book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” promote a “healthy” diet and exercise, and wax rhapsodic about team sports. But do we practice what we preach?
Not when we walk around the house sucking in our stomachs in front of the mirrors. Not when we obsessively regulate the contents of our refrigerators in the name of “purity.” (Did you know that there’s a clinical word for the “fixation on righteous eating”? It’s called “orthorexia.”) Our girls see right through all our righteousness. And they hear the hypocrisy, too, when we dish out all kinds of pabulum about a “positive body image,” then go on to trash our own thighs.
I do think that she has a point here — I know I’ve told my own mother, when she expressed concern about my or my sister’s potentially disordered eating habits, that the best thing she can possibly do for both of us is to shut up about her own weight, to stop commenting on the weight of other people (“Have you seen so-and-so? She looks great, like she lost about 10 pounds! But have you seen so-and-so? She’s really getting heavy…”), and to quit evaluating what or how much someone (herself included) is eating. Parents have an influence on their kids, and when either one is obsessed with weight and dieting and appearance, it’s incredibly unhealthy for their children.
But it’s unhealthy for the parents, too, and that’s where Warner loses me. Having kids does not make women super-human. Yes, ideally parents would can the negative body image talk around their children. But in a perfect world, adult women wouldn’t be put in a place where their bodies were constantly up for scrutiny, too.
It’s good that we’re worried about hyper-sexualizing girls. But what about when those girls turn into women? Where’s the outrage about the negative psychological effects of turning adult women into eye candy?
Maybe it’s time to take a break from bashing the media and start to take a long, hard look instead at the issue of mothers’ sexuality, which is, apparently, after a long and well-documented dormancy, enjoying a kind of rebirth — thanks, it is said, to things like pole dancing classes and sports club stripteases. These new evening antics of the erstwhile book club set are supposed to be fabulous because they give sexless moms a new kind of erotic identity. But what a disaster they really are: an admission that we’ve failed utterly, as adult women, to figure out what it means to look and feel sexy with dignity. We’ve created an aesthetic void. Should we be surprised that stores like Limited Too are rushing in to fill it? (Now on sale: a T-shirt with two luscious cherries and the slogan “Double trouble.”)
In opposing the tot-trash ethos, we shouldn’t comfort ourselves with “co-watching” TV or throwing out the Barbies. Instead, we ought to learn to find comfort inside our own skins.
Easier said than done when you can’t step outside your house without a giant billboard of a hot skinny chick selling you cream to make your ass firmer, or your wrinkles less obvious, or your lips poutier. Easier said than done when vaginaplasty is the latest in plastic surgery, conservative senators are saying that it’s healthier to have breast implants than not, and beauty supposedly makes you more intelligent and successful. Easier said than done when you can be fired from your job for not wearing make-up, when fat people are regularly discriminated against and that discrimination is routinely justified, and when you live in a culture which punishes women who don’t conform to the feminine archetype.
“Learn to find comfort inside our own skins”? How?
Her statement that “we’ve failed utterly, as adult women, to figure out what it means to look and feel sexy with dignity” is also interesting. We can assume that she means stiperobics and pole dancing classes make women feel sexy, but at the expense of their “dignity.” Now, I’m not a big fan of striperobics and pole dancing classes, but the dignity argument strikes me as incredibly classist — stripping is something that “trashy” women do, and we all know that “trashy” is code for “poor.” That middle and upper-class white women would embrace it lacks dignity.
So what would a “dignified” sexuality look like? Stoic and missionary-only? Would it involve sexy lingerie, so long as that lingerie is very very expensive?
I’d rather focus on a woman-centered sexiness, wherein women are allowed to be a little bit selfish in bed and figure out what they want and what they like. I’d like to see our definition of “sex” move away from the penis-in-vagina model which assumes that sex starts when he penetrates you and ends with his orgasm. I’d like to see “sexy” mean a little more than plasticized images of ready-to-please women.
And I’d like to see all of this reflected in popular culture. I’d like to see both women and girls offered more diverse models of womanhood, wherein beauty and sex appeal are simply two traits among many that are valued in all human beings. I’d like to see women treated as human, instead of as a service class designed to please you sexually, gestate your children, raise them flawlessly, and pick up your socks.
I think that would go farther in improving conditions for girls than all the berating of never-good-enough mothers ever will.