How do you know when a teenage girl singer is now all grown up?

What are the tell-tale signs that she has left  the foolishness of her immature girly days behind and become a real woman?

Her coming-of-age is easy to detect.

She will launch a sexy new look and a song that tells us how hot she is. She will tell us she is unique and different and breaking all the rules. In reality, she’s following the same script as others before her. It’s part of the music machine. Strip off, writhe around on the floor, do a photo shoot for a lad’s mag and tell the world: I’m a big girl now.

The music clip that goes with her metamorphosis usually involves one or all of the following elements:

Sex, poles, fetishised clothing, lingerie, some black leather and killer heels for good measure, lots of groping and grinding against men – and women of course, because ‘bi’ is just so in right now  and our big girl doesn’t want to be locked in to any rigid form of sexuality. There will be intimations of group sex, including simulated oral and anal acts and her newly outed breasts (proving she’s a woman) will be groped.

Ah, our little girl is all grown up.

Gabriella Cilmi, 18, cast off her unique, authentic style for sexualised coming-of-age same old same old with her clip for ‘On a Mission’.  She informs us: “I’m on fire, there’s no competition” and that she’s a woman and nothing can stop her, in various breast accentuating moves.

Nikki Webster, 22, tried desperately to cast off her pig tails and Olympic swings with a group grope fest  for ‘Devilicious’, a video so cringe worthy I just can’t bring myself to host it here. This one image is bad enough  [confession: artistic licence taken with speech bubble].

It all feels to try-hard: truckloads of makeup, bleach blond hair extensions and hotpants. No matter how hard she tries, she still looks like the under-age kid who snuck out the window to go the rave party with her big brother and his mates. I know she wants to grow up, but it is unbearable hearing her tell us she “tastes so delicious”.

Seventeen year old Disney star Miley Cyrus has gotten into the act now. Of course she did that photo shoot with the post-coital feel,  flirted with poles at the Teen Choice Awards last August . But now, in a $US25,000 silver scale corset, she’s taking her new sexual personal to a new level with her latest video clip for her new song ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ released Tuesday on the E! Network.

According to Celebrity Mania:

On her new sexy side of her in “Can’t Be Tamed” music video, Miley Cyrus said that it isn’t about the new her but more about putting a story to the track. “The video isn’t about being sexy or about who can wear less clothes. It’s about explaining the song and living the lyrics… I don’t want to be in a cage. I want to be free and do what I love,” she explained…

Miley further shared about what she expects from the clip, stating “The reason I loved doing this video is because I wanted it to be something different for a female artist.” She added, “It’s not a new Miley; it’s just a new part of me.”

I’m not sure how many female artists she’s seen lately, but if this is “different” I wonder how she defines “same”?

The lyrics to the Britneyesque song are so try-hard they are embarrassing. And the girl-in-cage-needs-to-get-out-and-be-herself-theme – this is original?

For those who don’t know me, I can get a bit crazy
Have to get my way, 24 hours a day
‘Cause I’m hot like that
Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention
Like I’m under inspection, I always get the 10s
‘Cause I’m built like that—

(Chorus)
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be saved
I can’t be blamed, I can’t, can’t
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be changed
I can’t be saved, I can’t be (can’t be)
I can’t be tamed—

I wanna fly I wanna drive I wanna go
I wanna be a part of something I don’t know
And if you try to hold me back I might explode
Baby by now you should know

The real tragedy is that this conformity to the dictates and predetermined scripts of the music industry are presented as pushing boundaries and original. It seems girls who start out with a unique style are put in a giant homogenising machine where they come out looking and acting and singing the same. While making out they are just so different  and empowered.

As one 14-year-old I know (I can neither confirm nor deny if this child belongs to me) said “as Miley gets older and more into the celeb life, she gets faker”.

Speaking of  the death of originality,  what’s with the Gagafication of  Christina Aguilera?

My friend Tania has helpfully provided this post modern literary criticism:

I actually believe this is an entirely new form of media, transcending cultural, psychosocial and stereotypical sexual boundaries, invoking the spirit of post-feminist icons, subverting the ironic post-modernist dilemma of the liberated female versus the subjugated, boudoir-bound male and poking fun at the latent homo-erotic tendencies of nanny-state do-gooder fundamentalist agitators…

Yawn.

Hot cup of Milo, anyone?

“Hooters” is a euphemism for breasts in common parlance

Hooters  is an American restaurant chain specialising in beer, wings and “beautiful girls”.

Beautiful girls with beautiful Hooters, of course.

In its latest move to further market its brand and help the “desperate” club,  Hooters has hooked up with an under 16 boys football team on the Gold Coast, with sponsorship in the form of money and two cheerleaders in tight Hooters tops and shorts, to cheer the boys on.

I was on Sunrise yesterday on the issue. I argued that embedding busty mascots in with 15 and 16 year old boys taught them that women are really part of the entertainment and rewards of playing the game. Why can’t boys just get on with the game without the dancing girls? We have seen so many times, evidence of  demeaning views about women by too many sportsmen in this country. And too often, abusive behaviour has been made possible through a culture of collusion within male dominated sporting bodies.  I’ve written about this before .

I’d be very interested to know if Australian Hooter employees have to agree to the conditions in the Hooters employment handbook as revealed in 2006.

Female employees are required to sign that they “acknowledge and affirm” the following:

1. My job duties require I wear the designated Hooters Girl uniform.
2. My job duties require that I interact with and entertain the customers.
3. The Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and entertaining conversations are commonplace.
4. I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements, or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile, or unwelcome.

Reading these conditions, it’s like the girls are to be seen as some kind of  Western chicken wing chain version of  geishas. But what if they do find this demeaning? What if ‘joking and entertaining conversation’ becomes code for sexual jokes and harassment? What happens then?

Reducing women to their breasts can never advance equality and fair treatment for women. And that’s something Hooters will never be able to teach 15 and 16 year old boys – or any man.

Lindsay Lohan goes with the (blood) flow

[Trigger warning. Images of violence, self-harm]

It seems nothing is off limits to be sexified for the purposes of grabbing attention and flogging stuff, whether it be a company’s products, a music video,  or reviving a celebrity’s flagging  career.

Glamourising violence against women as sexy is the latest trend. Blood has become the new black.

Violence.  Fear. Threat. Torture. Scenes depicting rape.  Women murdering each other. Women who want to die. Suicide porn. It seems the world just can’t get enough of women made submissive by fear, battered women, women seeking self-annihilation, dead women. Nothing like a hot female corpse (and so much less trouble than the real thing, don’t you think?).

And now it’s actress Lindsay Lohan’s turn. In a photo shoot and video clip, just released, Lohan is dressed in dominatrix style lingerie, black stocking and boots. Lohan is smeared in fake blood.  In one scene she holds a gun to her mouth. In another a man standing over her points a gun at her as she lies on the floor.

Deeply disturbing are what could be read as indications of self-harm on her arms, especially around her wrists. There is a trickle of blood at the side of her mouth. The photo  and video shoot take place in front of a blood spattered wall: a mural of sliding red. Though about to be killed, or about to kill herself, Lohan is also shown as sexy, prone, arching her body, breasts pushed out, legs spread.  Lindsay, do you not care about the message this sends?

Even murder and  suicide are sexy.

This is just the latest in a towering monument to the celebration of violence against women.

I’ve written here before about how violence is being made sexy.  I’ve highlighted t.shirts celebrating brutality against women with slogans like “It’s not rape if you yell surprise” and “It’s not rape, it’s surprise sex”.  Another t.shirt says “I like my women battered”.

In March 2008 I wrote about a shoe company, Loula, which ran a full page colour ad campaign in Harper’s Bazaar, featuring a murdered woman trussed up  in the boot of a car. Just in time for International Women’s Day. For a store opening just blocks from where exactly that happened to a real woman, Maria Korp.

Fortunately, thanks to a campaign against the ad by a number of anti-violence women’s groups, it was pulled.

But of course, this wasn’t a one off.

We’ve seen Vogue Italia’s ‘terror porn’ fashion shoot which showed women being terrorised by security guards and German Shepherds.

And Dolce and Gabbana’s ads depicting a woman pinned to the ground by a bare-chested man while other men who look like they are waiting their turn, look on  (the ad was banned in Italy).

Then there was America’s Next Top Model’s ‘Crime Scenes’ episode in which the aim was to look at sexy as possible – dead. To add to the appeal, the models were depicted as having murdered each other.  Electrocuted, poisoned, stabbed, drowned, organs harvested, decapitated.  Ooohh, cat fight – to the death!

All this at 6.30pm on a Sunday night, just before Australian Idol.

And then there’s these taken from Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Me Softly 3. The caption on the second says ‘Great hair never dies’.

And now Lindsay Lohan, soaked in blood, showing us you can still sell yourself as a sex object while threatening to kill yourself. Self harm is the highest cause of hospital admission for girls aged 13 to 19 in Australia. Should it be treated so lightly? Should it be seen as something you do if you want to be seen as hot and sexy? Branding yourself with blood as some kind of artistic statement?

All these images and messages make a mockery of global campaigns to stop the abuse of women. They feed violence, fuel violence and contribute to an environment which every day becomes more dangerous for women and girls.

Lifeline: 131114

Anne Summers review of Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism was published in the Australian’s Review section on the weekend.

In the review, titled ‘The tyranny of self-perfection’, the long-time Australian feminist campaigner for women’s equality admits she had “no idea” about how bad things were for girls in a hypersexualised culture:

…This reviewer has to confess a comparable ignorance….I had no idea.

For feminists such as me who have been preoccupied with statistics and watching public indicators of progress such as women breaking barriers in politics, in business and other public domains, the cultural revolution that has enveloped girls and young women during the past decade or so was completely off my radar.

I kept fobbing off questions about whether I thought raunch culture was incompatible with feminism: how relevant was that, I thought, compared with the important stuff….?

So Walter’s book was quite an eye-opener.

She documents a culture in which sexual allure is equated with empowerment and girls are driven to strive for an air-brushed perfection that is as artificial as it is unattainable. Every aspect of the culture seems to reinforce this message, from the normalisation of the sex industry via the explosion of lap-dancing clubs throughout Britain to magazines directed at girls that “relentlessly encourage their readers to measure up to a raft of celebrities whose doll-like looks are seen as iconic and whose punishing physical regimes are seen as aspirational.”

Girls today, says Walter, think sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having and will do anything to achieve the mandated appearance… the information I found most distressing was how young women feel obliged to shape themselves according to the expectations of the idealised female their boyfriends have acquired from pornography…

All this is especially germane because 10 years ago Walter wrote a book The New Feminism that argued that feminists should not be concerned about the growing sexual objectification of women…Walter has now changed her mind. Big time.

Summers goes on to say that she finds the material in Walter’s book “sobering” and “challenging”.

While I find it somewhat difficult to understand how so many prominent women actively working to raise the status of women failed to notice  the wrecking ball impacts of a pornified culture which constricts the freedom of women and girls by reducing them to sexy dolls while dressing it all up as ‘choice’, I am glad they see it now.

But while Summers started so well, her conclusion is unfortunate – and wrong.

She writes: “No one — not Walter, not me — wants to be thought a prude, so no one is going to actually take on the hypersexualised culture that is supposedly spoiling the life chances of girls today…”

Summers had “no idea”, as she says, about what was happening.  But is seems she also has “no idea” about the global movement against it.

No one is going to take on the hypersexualised culture? That’s a big call and contradicted by the facts.

There are many of us who have taken it on. Some key players appear in my book Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls (one of a number of books on the subject in recent years, including Living Dolls, The Sexualisation of Childhood, The Lolita Effect, So Sexy So Soon, Pornified, What’s Happening to Our Girls?, Female Chauvinist Pigs, Bodies, etc). Then there’s  Kids free 2B Kids, the Australian Council on Children and Media, The Australian Childhood Foundation, Choices for Children, and the dynamic new counter cultural agitator movement Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation (www.collectiveshout.org).

Then there are individuals who have come together to lobby for change, including Julie Gale, Maggie Hamilton, The Hon Alistair Nicholson, Steve Biddulph, Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Noni Hazlehurst, Professor Clive Hamilton, Dr Emma Rush, Professor Louise Newman, Dr Cordelia Fine, Dr Renate Klein and others.  We are all part of a global movement against sexualisation/objectification, led overseas by activists, advocates and academics such as Dr. Jean Kilbourne, Dr Diane Levin, Professor Gail Dines, Professor Ros Gill, Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon, Dr Melissa Farley, the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood in the US, Object and Pink Stinks in the UK, and many others. The American Psychological Association’s Taskforce on the sexualisation of girls took the issue on, with a major report, and more recently, the UK Home Office, with a compelling examination of the problem.

Propelled by evidence of harm, all have acted together to bring about change. They haven’t given a stuff about being labelled “prudes” or anything else, recognising the vested interests at play that would try to shut them down.

Given the major battles Summers has engaged in over decades, I would have thought she was made of sterner stuff.

Sexualisation, pressured sex, pornified music video clips, Kiely Williams PR campaign for the women-love-rape movement,  a little boy having his wish to go to a strip club granted, leg waxing for little girls, sexism in Christine Nixon reporting: a selection of articles from the last couple of weeks reflecting the status of women and girls. The bar is getting lower friends.

 The porn identity

Mary-Anne Toy, The Age/SMH, April 19, 2010

Are the sexually explicit images bombarding society shaping identities and mores?

A FEW years ago, Melbourne mother Julie Gale walked into a milk bar with her then 10-year-old son to buy him an icecream. Instead, she was horrified at seeing, in full view of her son, a magazine with the headline ”Tender Teenage Tw&t” above a picture of a girl in pigtails. ”I thought, that can’t possibly be legal…

Kindergarten teacher Dianne O’Dwyer has four-year-olds proudly showing off their ”little bras” and bringing make-up to school, a three-year-old who imitates pop singer Lady GaGa’s raunchy moves, and a little girl who boasts about being the skinniest in the class.

On television and billboards, and in shop windows, sex is a popular way to sell everything from the obvious – men’s clubs, brothels and treatments for erectile dysfunction – to an idealised, celebrity-based concept of success. Read article here.

Gen Y women facing pressure to have sex

Mary-Anne Toy, The Age/SMH, April 19, 2010

THE rise of raunch culture and the ”advanced consumerist” culture of Western countries are creating new pressures on young women to have sex early and against their will, experts say.

La Trobe University sociologist Anastasia Powell says the sexualisation or pornification of society – the preponderance of sexualised imagery in media, music and other popular culture – has done little to empower young women. Read article here.

Pornification of pop is bottom of the charts for children

Suzy Freeman-Greene , The Age, April 16, 2010

What must children make of videos in which nothing is left to the imagination? Read article here.

Sleazy song keeps rape myths alive

Judith Ireland, SMH, April 19, 2010

The latest film clip from American singer Kiely Williams is the musical equivalent of treason. Ordinarily the song’s over-reliance on cheesy synths and breathy vocals would be reason enough to can Spectacular. But its true crime lies in its portrayal of rape as a fun, crazy night out.

Dressed in a tube skirt and corset top, the former Disney star heads out for a big night, meets a guy in a bar, drinks a whole bunch of drinks and wakes up the next morning staring in horror at his naked butt.

She doesn’t remember the guy’s name or if he used a ”rubber”. She was so tanked (and possibly drugged) that she remembers just about nothing. Or, as she sings it, ”I was face down, ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off”. Read article here.

Watchdog bans Red Bull TV ad for ’sexualising children’

Mumbrella, April 14, 2010

An animated TV ad for Red Bull featuring a young boy who convinces his mother to let him go to a strip club has been banned by the Advertising Standards Bureau because it “normalises sexualising children”. Read article and watch video here.

Parents forcing girls, 9, to get legs waxed

Caroline Marcus, The Sunday Telegraph, April 18, 2010

PARENTS are sending girls as young as nine to have painful beauty treatments.

Beauticians say that young children are being brought into salons by parents to undergo painful hair removal treatments. Read article here.

Would a man be treated this way?

The bizarre case against Christine Nixon

Jeff Sparrow, The Drum Unleashed, April 20, 2010

Women buying men for sex is not equality

Women, we’ve arrived. We’re equal now with men. The conditions for equality have been met. Am I talking about political, social and financial equality? No.

Access to maternity leave, child care, the opportunity to balance work and family life? No. The ability to live free from harassment and sexual bullying. No.

We know we are empowered because now we can buy men like they buy women. Men can be prostituted to provide sexual services for women. Here is proof of our newly won freedom: we can participate in the sexual objectification of men in the same way we have been objectified through history.

Free from restriction, the sex industry is now open to all. And there’s lots of pseudo-feminist rhetoric to make us all feel good about it. It’s all there in a piece in The Age, which reads like a free plug for a new male escort service (”She needs more Melbourne-based men and older men, in their late 30s and 40s”).

But just because it’s women doing the buying — and the pimping — doesn’t make it liberating. Being able to trade in human flesh doesn’t mean that emulating the sexual behaviour of men and their sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, is progress.

This move is part of a capitalist celebration of the female sexual consumer who can choose to buy dildos, botox, pole-dancing classes, new breasts, Brazilians, surgically altered and coloured labias – and men. These are the tokens of our emancipation? This is what ”freedom of choice” has delivered?

This is a parody of liberation in which women become a mere participant in a mass-marketed orgy of so-called sexual freedom.

I do have some sympathy, however, with the argument that women cannot find men they want to be with intimately. In our pornified culture we are raising men who are callous and insensitive to the needs and desires of women. We knock tenderness out of them with a diet of brutality from the earliest of ages. Boys’ role models are celebrities and sporting figures who see women as conquests, there for the taking.

But buying a man won’t fix that. It is a reflection of distance, disconnection, a lack of intimacy and a subtraction of emotion from sex.

And it’s dishonest to tell women who want something more than a quick $500 f— that they can have ”the whole boyfriend experience” — hair stroked, hand held and even a walk in the park with her, her kids and her dog. For a mere $1200-$1500 a day. That’s a lot of money for simulated intimacy. That’s a pretend boyfriend, not a real one. How does that ”make a woman feel special”?

Hiring prostitutes remains fundamentally a male preserve, which is why we don’t see huge line-ups of women wanting to buy the bodies of boys and men. When women pay men for sex, it doesn’t have the same social effect because there is no history of women enslaving men, the porn industry is still primarily driven by men’s sexual demands. And there’s no social construction of men as sluts who enjoy their own degradation.

The rise of male ”escort” services reflects a devaluation of sex because of the primacy of exchange and commodification of another person.

All we’re seeing with this new men-for-sale business is the democratisation of objectification. Buying and selling male or female bodies for sex will always be reducing them to a means to an end; a denial of their full humanity.

Published today online in the National Times.

French-Marie Claire goes sans air brushing, but not sans camera tricks, makeup, lighting and models already near ‘perfect’.

French actress Louise Bourgoin graces the cover of this month’s edition of French Marie Claire – hailed as the “totally non-airbrushed April issue”. Leaving aside the fact that it’s not totally non-airbrused because the women in the ads still are – should we rush to congratulate Marie Claire for its bravery? Should we declare this a step in the right direction for body image?

Digital enhancement is only one part of a modelling shoot. No one is saying how long the hair and makeup took, what camera tricks were used, or how the models to be depicted au naturale  were selected in the first place.

Even if the models in these issues haven’t been kissed by the photoshop fairy godmother, we are still being presented with an unrealistic expectation of how women should look.  Existing beauty standards will not be compromised, even if  Mr Airbrush takes a day off.

And I’m sure the editors picked the model who could put the best body forward, sans airbrushing.

We’re told these non-airbrushed images are supposed to make us feel good about ourselves. That’s what readers of Australian Marie Claire were informed when Jennifer Hawkins was featured on the cover “naked and non-airbrushed.” I wrote about this in January, arguing that making Miss Universe a poster girl for poor body image – with her dimple on the thigh and ‘uneven skin tone’ – treated women like idiots.

Using pretty much flawless young women in the first place hardly proves that models and celebrities are just like us. Give us a break.

If Louise Bourgoin hasn’t been airbrushed, then it means she really is that skinny. So, even though she may have a tiny wrinkle somewhere near her eye, the fact is that the thin ideal continues to be held up as what all women need to attain. As one fashion writer said: “If airbrushing is supposed to blur out any blemishes and/or imperfections — then Bourgoin is perfect”. Photographer Benjamin Kanare points to some of the tricks used to get the best outcomes:

…Burning out the skin using overexposure, soft light, adding a half blue filter to whiten the skin, pulled back images, large smile’s for celebrities so their nasal labial folds are hidden, pulled back hair with hands stretching the skin and smoothing the wrinkles. Using grainy film and converting the images to black and white to neutralize the skin tones.

If young women deserve to know when images have been digitally enhanced, don’t  they also have a right to know about these techniques as well? Also, is this move just a one-off jump onto the anti-airbrushing bandwagon or is Marie Claire going to keep the blow torch of its models in future issues? It seems unlikely.

Eating disorder specialist Sarah McMahon –who has written for me before - gave me her thoughts:

The value of removing the digital Barbie-fication of models remains in question when magazines continue to promote one beauty ideal that is generally tall, fair and ectomorphic [characterized by long and thin muscles/limbs and low fat storage]. In the absence of airbrushing, magazines will endure by utilizing the world’s most beautiful models (who generally do not require “digital enhancement”).  The French edition of Marie Claire featured Louise Bourgoin. Comparable “non-airbrushing” initiatives in France by Elle and Harpers Bazaar have used supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and actresses like Monica Bellucci. In Australia late last year we saw Sarah Murdoch’s “un-airbrushed” shoot on the front of The Australian Woman’s Weekly. These magazines continue to uphold the homogonised beauty ideal that contributes to body image disturbances through selecting models who incite unrealistic and largely unobtainable beauty ideals.

Ultimately this begs the question: what are the public health consequences of promoting such beauty ideals? This is an easy question to answer as the consequences are very well documented. Study after study reveals that promotion of a thin and homogenized beauty ideal contributes to body dissatisfaction and dieting- risk factors for the development of disordered eating.

 This positions body image disturbances and ultimately eating disorders as a very serious public health issue- indeed a public health crisis. Tokenistic marketing activities by magazines giving lip service to this issue is simply not good enough.

Spain is one country taking the issue seriously.  In 2007  Spain banned ultra thin models from the catwalks following a number of models literally starving themselves to death. In April 2008  an “anti-anorexia” bill was passed, banning uber-thin models and making it a crime for anyone to incite “excessive thinness”, food deprivation or extreme dieting.  A new law bans  the broadcasting before 10pm of TV ads that promote beauty products and treatments that suggest surgical or chemical ways to achieve a perfect body. The moce was prompted by concern that the ads were fueling a rise in eating disorders in young people.

 But all we’ve got is the unsatisfactory  recommendations of the National Advisory Group on Body Image and a Voluntary Industry Code of Conduct which appears to have achieved not much at all.

.Before-and-after airbrushing images of Britney Spears released

It’s difficult to know who is really behind the release of the Britney Spears before-and-after airbrushing images for Candie’s (shoes). Some accounts say Britney released them herself, others question it, given that Spears didn’t actually release any statement and the pics appeared in The Daily Mail.

As Jezebel says:

As helpfully pointed out by the gigantic arrows, in the final images Britney’s calves and thighs have been made slimmer, some barely-visible cellulite has been removed from the back of her thighs, and tattoos and bruises have been airbrushed.

If it is Britney herself wanting to highlight what airbrushing does, I think that is a good thing. But again, I can’t help wondering about the use of lighting, camera angles, and the other tricks already mentioned. The more cynical part of me (rescue me Satchel Girl!)  looks at the ‘before’ pics and wonders if there’s been some airbrushing done there as well?

The fact is, Britney is still presented in a sexualised and objectified way, inviting comments that focus on her body: cutting her up, analysing her piece by piece. For years Britney has attracted cruel comments for how she has looked, condemned for “baby flab”,  mocked for wearing outfits that show her tummy, the usual ‘is she pregnant or just fat’ jibes.  The Daily Mail reminds us of “A display of her flabby tummy on tour last month….”  

Because Girl with a Satchel knows so much about these things, I asked her opinion late last night:

It seems odd that Britney would release these photographs, though this is the girl who produced a highly orchestrated MTV comeback documentary as a prelude to her post-breakdown comeback. If a celebrity wants to increase her female-friendly factor, whether that be to boost sales or attempt to genuinely connect, inspire and motivate women, then showing her real/authentic self is usually a good start. And can’t be any worse than having your butt splashed across the tabloid papers and magazines thanks to a courteous paparazzo.

Britney’s probably one of the most airbrushed celebrities of our time, as her career came to fruition in the 90s when we weren’t all so aware of the practises being used in the magazine industry. To see a relatively unpolished image of her online could be a good thing for her young fans.

But the fact that these images have been fed to The Daily Mail, a tabloid dubbed ‘The Daily Hate Mail’ by the feminists at jezebel.com for its often masochistic treatment of women, as opposed to a more women-friendly title (does such a thing exist?) smells like ’stunt!’

Is this a case of pop star one-upmanship? After all, Jessica Simpson is on the cover of Marie Claire sans makeup and airbrushing this month, in aid of her new show, The Price of Beauty.

Now of course, showing women not digitally enhanced is better than what ACP’s former Art Director Louise Bell and colleagues once did, as told here:

What limits did you attempt to stick to? I was an art director at a time where retouching or “airbrushing”…was a very new technology. And Mia [Freedman] and I just went for it! We literally did as much as we could get away with – different heads on bodies; you name it.

Speaking of different heads and different bodies…

Here’s 23-year-old star of  The Hills, Heidi Montag. Heide was on parade this week, displaying her new “bikini body”. She’s had:

A mini brow lift; Botox in her brow and frownline area; a nose job; fat injections in her cheeks, nasolabial folds and lips; chin reduction; neck liposuction; had her ears pinned back; a breast augmentation revision; liposuction on her waist, hips and inner and outer thighs; and a buttock augmentation.

But she’s still not happy.

Even though she can’t jog anymore (for fear of knocking herself out?) and can’t let anyone hug her because it hurts too much, she wants to go up another breast size, “but I can’t legally right now. The limit is 800cc and I have 700cc”.

Thanks Heide, for contributing to the body insecurities of all your fans. But maybe being able to run along the beach and share affection is overrated?

See also Newsweek, ‘Heidi Montag, Version 3.0′.

Youth Minister Kate Ellis wrote a terrific endorsement for my book Getting Real: challenging the sexualisation of girls. I was – and am – very grateful to her for doing so. Ms Ellis wrote:

Young women and girls today face extraordinary pressures to meet body image expectations that are unhealthy, unhelpful and unrealistic. The contributors to this book make a valuable contribution to an important national debate on how we can help young women to grow up with a healthy self-image and with the freedom and strength to be their real selves.

I believe the Minister is sincere in her commitment to addressing this issue. But her photo shoot for Grazia – which goes on sale today – raises questions about whether her message needs to be more consistent and whether there are a few dots still to be joined up.

Lydia Turner, a Sydney psychologist specialising in eating disorder prevention and who I’ve published here before argues that the Grazia shoot is problematic on a number of levels: sending conflicting messages about body image, encouraging judgement and surveillance of other women’s bodies and reducing a member of parliament to her sexual desirability.

Yet again we’ve seen another body image blunder pushed into the spotlight with Minister for Youth, Kate Ellis, donning tight-fitting leather clothes and dominatrix-style 8-inch heels in a bid to improve body image in Australian women.

According to the Courier Mail in the shoot done on an athletics track in her electorate of Adelaide, the 32-year-old minister sports a pair of killer $1790 Gucci heels and a curve-hugging $695 leather Karen Millen dress and looks more like a runway model than a Member of Parliament.

“I really enjoyed it!” she said of the experience. “I didn’t think it would be so much fun – I didn’t want it to stop.”

Celebrity magazine, Grazia, had approached Ellis to model for its annual ’Body Image Special’. They thought she would say no. She gave an “enthusiastic yes.”

Grazia tells us Ellis was voted the sexiest MP by her male colleagues and recently “chuckled” when invited to pose for lads mag Zoo.

Ellis said her reason for modelling was to “spark a debate on body image” (she said similar when posing in a bikini for The Daily Telegraph not too long ago). She wanted to draw attention to the results of the body image survey in Grazia. But something just doesn’t sit right.

When Ellis was asked whether or not her images were airbrushed, she dodged the question, replying that she had made her views about airbrushing “clear” to the magazine editors. Ellis avoided disclosing whether or not the images were airbrushed, yet disclosure of airbrushed images was one of the key recommendations put forward by the National Advisory Board on Body Image – a board Ellis initiated.

Flipping through the magazine, it’s hard to understand how Grazia’s editors could possibly think they were doing women any body image favours – and harder to understand why Ellis would want to support a magazine like this.

The cover itself shouts “Jen: You voted her BEST BODY. Posh: You voted her TOO THIN. Beyonce: You voted her KEEPING CURVY COOL.” On page 16, four female celebrities are lined up side-by-side, each with numbers scrawled across their image indicating the percentage of readers who approve of their bodies. Beyonce scores a lousy 13%.

Yet when discussing the results of the body image survey, the headline of the article screams “Why are we our own worst enemies? 71% of [women] judge other women based on their bodies” as though it was oblivious to fact that it actively promotes women monitoring and surveillencing other women’s bodies.

In her opening editorial, Editor-in-Chief Alison Veness-McGourty announces that “curves are back” and that women should rush out to buy pencil skirts so they won’t have to be “endlessly watching [their] weight.” Yet the top four out of five most popular articles listed on Grazia’s website focus on dieting. Fad dieting. Dieting to make you “thin by Friday.”

Throughout the ‘Body Image Special’, article after article features celebrities talking about why they loathe their bodies. Sienna Miller confesses that she is “all in favour of airbrushing” and that in ten years time she will “probably be stuffed full of botox and fillers … with fake lips!” How is this supposed to be empowering?

While Ellis says she intends to “work with industry” to improve women’s body image, it’s difficult to imagine how effective this approach might be given that the fashion industry’s profits are significantly inflated by instilling a sense of inadequacy in its consumers. It is also unlikely that a voluntary code of conduct will ever be adhered to.

How will corporations agree to something that runs contrary to their profit margins? Just look at the Weight Council of Australia. It is a voluntary body that requires businesses in the weight loss industry to adhere to a set of guidelines, designed to protect the health of Australians and the quality of weight loss product. Of the tens of thousands of weight loss businesses in Australia, only five are members.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone when Grazia quotes Jennifer Aniston, “looking good is the best revenge!”. But what is Ellis doing supporting this tokenistic stunt? Having recommended, through her National Advisory Board, that a diverse range of body sizes and shapes should be portrayed in magazines, it is rather odd to then engage in a photoshoot that upholds current beauty standards and allowing images of oneself that are most likely airbrushed. Perhaps she just wants to look glamorous in a fashion shoot but needs to cover it in tokenistic body image/self-esteem jargon?

Perhaps most frustrating is that young, smart, high-profile women are routinely subjected to sexualised scrutiny, regardless of their profession. Natasha Stott-Despoja, Stephanie Rice, Julia Gillard, Penny Wong, Gabriella Cilmi – who recently stripped to “prove” she’s “all grown up” – the list is endless.

One of the functions of sexualising powerful women is that they become less threatening. Their abilities fade into the background while whether they are ‘hot-or-not’ becomes the only focus.

It seems the message girls and women are continually sent is that until you’re hot, you don’t count. Girl With a Satchel Erica Bartle summed it up well when she wrote, “…even smart MPs have to fit the fashion mould to become successful”.

Instead of giving in to the pressure to sexualise herself, Ellis could have taken the offer to pose for Zoo and later Grazia, as opportunities to speak out against the pressures on women to consent to objectification. She could have highlighted this as a problematic message sent to girls.

How awkward would it be if you found out that all the men in your workplace had voted you the sexiest worker? If every time you spoke you had to worry about whether they were actually paying attention or just checking out your breasts? Your boss would be strapped for sexual harassment for handing out the survey to begin with.

Yet Ellis accepted the ‘honour’ of being voted sexiest and has allowed herself to be presented in a sexualised manner. And she still wants to be taken seriously as a MP with a portfolio caring for young people.

‘Mick of Brisbane’ provides an example of how some men see the Grazia shots. He commented online in the Courier Mail April 4: 

“She is the sexiest politician I have ever seen!!! I wonder if she would do a photo shoot for Penthouse? With all funds raised going to the community of course!!! I think she could pull off a centrefold with ease!!!”

Yes, Mick, as long as it’s for a good cause. So many of the comments posted in response to Ellis’ photoshoot have been about whether she is ‘hot or not.” Because that’s what counts.

There are no easy solutions to our current plague of body image problems. At the same time, none of us should have to put up with faux attempts to put things right. Grazia is merely giving the appearance of wanting to empower women. Ellis’ participation only upholds existing beauty standards while catering to the sexual fantasies of men.

Given that girls and women are already taught that their worth is measured by how sexually desirable they are, having our youth minister reiterate that message just trivialises an issue she seems to care deeply about.

Dannielle Miller from Enlighten Education, who I’ve run here before, has blogged on Channel 10 and its allegedly PG-rated show ‘So you think you can dance’. It brought to mind a clip I saw last week of Pamela Anderson on ‘Dancing With the Stars’. The male judge , totally beside himself, shouted: “All I could think about was sex, sex and more sex!” I don’t recall him saying anything  about her dancing ability. Maybe that’s irrelevant. Maybe she’ll win.

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“I was startled by what some young women were saying to me about their inability to access dissent; their inability to hear voices that were presenting an alternative” – Natasha Walter

I’m half way through Natasha Walter’s new book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It is a compelling read, laying bare the forces of sexualisation, objectification and raunch culture and their destructive influence on the health and wellbeing of women and girls everywhere. So much of the book echoes the findings of Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls. It is encouraging to see a coalescing of global concern around the pornification of culture and it’s wrecking ball impact on girls’ lives.

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