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.

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

The UK Home Office just released the Sexualisation of Young People: Review by Dr Linda Papadopoulos. It is a compelling, thorough and strongly evidence-based paper which should be read by anyone concerned about the impacts of the pornification of culture on girls and boys. Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls is cited a number of times (the quote above from the Executive Summary is taken from Betty McLellan’s chapter ‘Sexualised and Trivialised: Making Equality Impossible’). It’s good to see our work acknowledged in this significant report.  Given that we share the UK’s cultural DNA, I hope this report will bolster efforts to address this issue here and add momentum to the push for a review of our own Senate Committee inquiry recommendations, which Emma Rush wrote about here earlier. 

See also ‘Clamp down on lads’ mags to avoid ‘pornification’ of society, says study’.  Also have a look at the following articles: ‘Review into sexualisation of young people published’ , ‘Fears over sexual images and children’, BBC, and the Guardian.

Transcript of ABC’s Q&A in which precious minutes are wasted as I try to explain the term ’skanky hos’

Melinda Tankard Reist: What would have been controversial would have been if Tony Abbott had said: “I want my daughters to be skanky hos.” Then you might have had a controversy.

Satyajit Das: Sorry, what is a “scanty ho”?

Melinda Tankard Reist: Skanky ho. Whore.

Satyajit Das: What is that?

Rebecca Huntley: I’ll show you after.

Satyajit Das: You’re on.

Rebecca Huntley: We’ll just go out.

Barnaby Joyce: It’s a derivative.

Satyajit Das: It’s a derivative?

Lindsay Tanner: It’s a family show.

Satyajit Das: It’s a family show?

Lindsay Tanner: It’s a family show.

Melinda Tankard Reist: It’s a rough term for a loose woman. Skanky whore…

Satyajit Das: Oh, right…

Melinda Tankard Reist: You obviously don’t listen to enough rap music.

Gerard Henderson’s take on Q&A, with special empasis on the skanky ho educational segment.

Interview on 3CR ‘Right Now Radio’

Interview with Mia Freedman about Collective Shout.

Sarah McMahon’s guest blog post ’Promoting gastric banding to 14-year-olds: malnutrition and maintenance on the menu’ reprinted in On Line Opinion. 

Emma Rush’s guest blog post ’The market is eating our children’ repirnted in On Line Opinion.

I’m just so pleased to welcome Dr.Emma Rush to my blog today. Associate Lecturer in Ethics and Philosophy at Charles Sturt University, Emma is to be commended for kicking off the debate on the sexualisation of children in this country, as lead author of Corporate Paedophilia: Sexualisation of children in Australia and Letting Children Be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia, the discussion papers published by the Australia Institute in 2006. Emma also wrote the chapter ‘What Are the Risks of Premature Sexualisation for Children?’ in Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls. Emma makes a compelling case for Government to get involved because of industry failure to act and also asks: what’s happened to the review of  the Senate inquiry recommendations that was supposed to take place last year?

Time for government to set standards preventing child sexualisation

It’s great to see bi-partisan concern about the sexualisation of children. I commend those MPs who spoke up for children’s interests in the House of Representatives this week on a Notice of Motion introduced by South Australian Labor MP Amanda Rishworth.

The issue is not about banning little girls from putting on mummy’s lipstick or playing with Barbies – activities Jane Caro claimed critics of sexualisation were wanting to ban, on ABC’s PM program Tuesday night.

It goes well beyond playing dress-ups. There is substantial evidence that sexualisation harms children: it promotes body image concerns, eating disorders, and gender stereotyping. Premature sexualisation also erases the line between who is and is not sexually mature, and as such, may increase the risk of child sexual abuse by undermining the important social norm that children are sexually unavailable. Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Government is moving to strengthen the nation’s child sex exploitation laws.

Until now it hasn’t been an offence to be a member of a child pornography network. If the bills are passed by Parliament that will change and the offence will attract a maximum penalty of 25 years in jail. >more

About time. Will be very interesting to see if any MP votes against this.

I’ve been involved in a few campaigns against the sexualisation of girls, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company act on complaints as quickly as this one did.

On Tuesday I posted a blog about a ‘tweenage’ push-up bra sold at Best & Less. A number of people got active and wrote to the company to protest. Adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg was one of them. Here’s his letter (warning, anyone offended by the term ‘cretin’ should not read further):

I am a child and adolescent psychologist who has worked for 25 years in the field. I am incandescent with rage with the bone brained individual in your company who thought it would be a brilliant idea to sell push up bras to prepubescent girls!

There are so many reasons why this runs counter to what we know is in the best interests of young girls – it is difficult to know where to start.
I can only refer you to the American Psychological Society Taskforce report on the impact of early sexualisation  and hope that you reprimand the cretin who made this decision and immediately withdraw the product.

Sincerely

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg 

Then I received this response from Best & Less.

Dear Melinda,

We are writing to you regarding your recent blog and comments relating to bras labelled “Tweenage”.

Best & Less prides itself on its strong family values and has strict guidelines relating to the sale of products for young people. As such Best & Less does not stock or sell push up bras for children.

The bras in question were intended to be a women’s petites range from sizes 8AA through to 12B. They were made to current Australian standards for women’s bras and were displayed in our women’s underwear department. Regrettably an error resulted in the incorrect branding and labeling of these bras as ‘Tweenage’. As a consequence, they were removed from sale in all of our stores across Australia as of yesterday, 2nd February.

We have taken procedural steps to avoid any future branding or labeling errors of this sort.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Christine Ryan

Best & Less

That’s one hell of an error in the branding and labeling department. But the company has at least responded to community concern and acted quickly, unlike others who have featured on this blog (responses from Roger David: zero).

I hope all of you who have taken any kind of action against corporate sexploitation will be encouraged by this outcome.

We magnify the body, we perfect the silhouette, we help to cheat

That was said about push-up bras by a woman who manages a French company which invented them.

A bra now being marketed to girls who haven’t even hit their teens and, mostly, will not possess anything that needs support, let alone need a lacy push-up number.

In yet another example of the sexualisation of girls, Best and Less is selling the Tween-age Push-up Bra. Tweens have been defined as aged 6-12.

Now, as most people know, push-up bras are designed to show off cleavage. Obviously the inventors of the tween push-up bra don’t care if there is no ‘cleavage’ to start with. They will help a young girl cheat and make it look like there is. Underwire padding, boosting: helping create the illusion that this little girl is much more developed than she really is.

And why would you want to do that exactly?

Why would a child need to have her body magnified? What is a perfect silhouette for a child? Why would a child be required to cheat? Why adultify little girls?

We are telling little girls that their bodies are not acceptable as they are. And that their bodies are supposed to draw attention, primarily male attention. The earlier these messages hit them, the more ingrained they become. They are being groomed to see their bodies as sexual objects.

Normalising and encouraging the appearance of breasts on prepubescent children puts them in danger.

We are witnessing the disappearance of spontaneity, unselfconsciousness, curiosity and fun in girls – qualities that were once valued for their role in developing a strong sense of self identity; enabling girls to journey into adulthood in a natural and healthy way. But now they are body conscious – indeed self-loathing – at younger ages, wracked by fear and self-doubt, wondering if they are good enough.

The manufacturers of the push-up bra for little girls know this, and are preying on it.

They need to be held accountable. Tell Best and Lest what you think. Email:feedback@bestandless.com.au, Ph: (02) 95613400.

Some mates and I are about to launch Collective Shout to name, shame and expose corporations and marketers who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. Stayed tuned.

You know, I was really hoping to focus on something other than anti-women t-shirts this week  and blog on a topic which might hopefully maintain the interest of the 13,000 people who visited this site in the past four days in response to global coverage of objectifying items of apparel.

But just as I was tossing around a few ideas for the next post, a young woman sent me photos of these t-shirts (thanks Jackie) which she found in a Supre store in Sydney’s CBD.

Now some of you will know that this isn’t the first time the pimps-r-us clothing store has come to the attention of this blog (Treating little girls as ho ho ho’s). As a result of a raft of complaints over its “Santa’s Bitch” and “North Pole Dancer” t-shirts, Supre’s Karen Hermann told us, in writing, that “Santa’s Bitch” would be removed. But Supre was playing fast and lose with the truth  (Update: Looks like Supre was serving up untruths for Christmas).

And now they are flogging this “Pussy Power” tee for $7.50.

Supre, why would you use a porn inspired title for women’s genitals as the slogan for girl’s clothing? Will a 10,11 or 12-year-old girl, perhaps drawn to the image of the little black cat, understand how wearing such a shirt could be interpreted; the message it could send in a culture which already treats young girls as hot and sexy mini women?

Why would you put her at risk like this? And don’t tell us you had in mind soft cuddly kittens.

This isn’t a store where adults get their clothes. It’s a cheapie chain frequented by flocks of young girls who should be allowed to enjoy their few short years of girlhood without being targeted as walking billboards for pornified messages about who girls are and what they are good for.

This is what Jackie thought of Supre:

Flood Karen Hermann’s inbox.