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?

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

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend about Kick-Ass, a school holidays film starring an 11-year-old girl who shoots a man in the face, impales another and says things like:

“OK, you c—s, let’s see what you can do now.” The film is described as containing  “scenes of carnage and massacre played for laughs.” Read the article here.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Abbi Marper is too shy to speak above a whisper, but she wants to be a policewoman or a nurse. Her friend Becky Billing is studying to be a plumber. Charlotte Wilson, the most chatty of the group, is having a problem narrowing her options. “I want to be a firefighter, but I also want to be a paramedic and a midwife,” she says. “The trouble is, there’s just too much choice.”

Slumped in the plastic chairs of a Sheffield community centre, shovelling fistfuls of free sweets from the coffee bar into their mouths, the group of girls are all members of Aim High, a dance troupe set up by Becky Billing and Charlotte Wilson’s sister, 17-year-old Lauren, two years ago after they got in trouble with the police. Read more…

I’m very pleased to have Sarah McMahon, a Sydney psychologist specialising in eating disorders, write another guest blog, this time on the way the radical treatment of gastric banding is being pitched to teens, with very little attention given  to the potential risks.

Promoting gastric banding to 14-year-olds: malnutrition and maintenance on the menu

I am shocked that a research article published on Wednesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association has been picked up, mixed up and hyped up by mainstream media, suggesting that gastric banding is an appropriate solution for “obese” teenagers. The research is typical of what we are seeing coming from the obesity industry, which is looking to capitalise from the condition.

What the research really found

Given the media hype, we need to look at what the research really tells us. Two groups of teenagers were randomly assigned to either a “lifestyle” group, for exercise and a healthy diet, or a “gastric banding” group, for laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery with the main aim weight loss.

The gastric banding group experienced dramatically more weight loss than the lifestyle‘ group. This is not surprising. I would expect that intrusive surgery resulting in necessary food rationing is far more motivating than the “suggestions and encouragement” regarding dietary changes prescribed to the lifestyle group.

And although the extent of compliance between the groups is not clearly reported in the journal article, it requires little imagination. The reflex of a banded stomach is to vomit if the food is not small and well chewed. Not only does this force malnutrition, there is generally limited opportunity for high calorific intake. Of course vomiting is a vastly different compliance measure than the “intermittent food diaries and food counts used to measure compliance in the “lifestyle” group.

The sample size of the study was hardly robust. Less than 50 participants completed the research trial, meaning that statistically no evaluation of single health problems could be generated. This is important when considering the value of the study’s public health significance, given that the scaremongering associated with the “obesity epidemic” has gained so much momentum by medicalising the problem.

It seems that medicalising obesity somehow justifies culturally sanctioned prejudice on the basis that any intervention is “in their own interests”. Interestingly the study determined that despite the vast difference in weight loss in the gastric banding group, both groups experienced significant improvements in general health.

Further, follow up of weight loss measures were conveniently limited to two years, despite overwhelming evidence in research that suggests significant weight regain occurs from three years post surgery.

Industry promoted research

The study was undertaken by Monash University’s Centre for Obesity Research and Education (CORE). Perhaps not surprisingly, CORE receives an unrestricted research support grant from Allergen, which happens to be Australia’s leading provider of gastric banding equipment.

The lead author and pioneer of the lap banding procedure in Australia is Professor Paul O’Brien, who has previously served on the Allergen Advisory Board. Another author of the study reported consultancy with Allergen and membership of advisory boards that include Allergen, Optifast and Bariatric Advantage – all heavy weights in the weight loss industry.

It seems as though the boundary between commercial methods of weight loss, such as weight loss pills and medical interventions, are becoming blurred. Medicalising obesity to justify surgery creates an instant industry, and there is no shortage of businesses lining up to profit from it. Allergen’s webpage proposes alternative payment options, given the surgery is not covered by Medicare. These include the early release of superannuation savings or bank loans via third party medical finance.

The other side of gastric banding

Gastric banding is framed as a quick fix solution to address obesity. But does it address the real problem? Whether it is compulsive eating, binging due to psychological issues, or poor nutritional education, reducing an individual’s stomach size does not reduce the significance of these factors.

For example, eating disorders are not contraindicated, meaning that many people undertaking gastric banding may have severe psychiatric problems that are contributing to their weight gain or pursuit of thinness. I expect that this is one reason why the weight loss from gastric banding ultimately is short term and generally not sustainable.

Further, there is no standardized screening tool for the surgery. I know of countless cases of people engaging in binge behaviour who are offered the opportunity of gastric banding, at huge cost to their health. In our culture of thinness-at-all-costs, it seems that health is a reasonable trade off for thinness. Complicating this further is the fact that the subtext of our culture is that thinness equals health.

The Australian Medical Association’s 2008 report, ‘Bariatric Surgery: A Weighty Issue’, warned against the potential and inherent risks associated with gastric banding.

The cost to health from gastric banding is huge. Studies suggest that patients require follow up procedures to correct secondary health issues such as hernias, gall stones, bleeding, blood clots, infections, gastritis, correcting loose skin etc. In every 1500 cases there is one death (which can’t be corrected).

Common post-surgery complications include:

• Frequent vomiting because the stomach is unable to hold so much food or because food is unable to pass out from the stomach;
• Dumping syndrome which occurs when food enters the digestive tract too quickly, leading to adrenalin that results in nausea, palpitations, sweating and diarrhoea;
• Nutritional deficiency due to malabsorption. This means that people need to follow a lifetime program of consuming nutritional supplements and vitamins;
• Requirement for further surgery due to slippage, repositioning, adjustments and need for replacement of the band. In the aforementioned study, over one quarter of participants required revisional procedures that consisted of removal and replacement of the band or replacement of the access port;
• Permanent eating difficulties including: an inability to digest particular foods, requirement for extensive chewing, difficulty in drinking at meal time, difficulty in eating at certain times during the day, and food becoming lodged in the throat.

These associated health concerns are frightening given that gastric banding is framed as the “next step” when diet, exercise and medication have failed. Descriptions on web pages, brochures and even research reports invariably begin with scaremongering about the “obesity epidemic” followed by cartoon-style drawings of the seemingly simple procedure that will not only make the person thin, but will solve all their problems. Not surprisingly, the “success stories” on brochures and the media focus on the life that was “saved” through gastric banding.

The ability of 14-year-olds to make this decision

Given the associated complications, it is not just me who believes that it is unsafe to be proposing this intervention for teenagers. In November 2009, the Dieticians Association of Australia (DAA) released a ’Position Paper on Bariatric Surgery in Children and Young People‘ which concluded that there is insufficient evidence of the surgery as a safe and long-term solution to weight loss in teenagers. Even Allergen normally requires patients to be over the age of 18 to undertake the surgery.

This begs the question: what teenager has the capacity to make a decision so significant, given the health risks and the lifetime maintenance of such a procedure? How can a teenager adhere to the strict requirements necessary to maintain the band?  What happens when they experience other significant life changes, such as pregnancy?

We are talking about prescribing this intervention to people who are in high school  who are legally unable to drink alcohol or drive because their brain is insufficiently developed to manage these responsibilities.

Frequent vomiting, permanent eating difficulties and soiling pants may not be the alternative to “obesity”’ that teens really need.

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.