Getting Real
Getting Real is powerful, disturbing, confronting. We often hear that young women today have never had it better, but the sexualised world they have to grow up in has nothing to do with empowerment. If we don’t challenge what we’re beginning to accept as the social norm, the risk to our girls will only continue to grow.
Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi
Getting Real gives the mindlessness of this cultural misdirection a good shake. It does it in straightforward language and with academic attention to detail. This book will be a valuable guide, helping young people reclaim their freedom.
Tim Costello, CEO, World Vision Australia
Each one of us who cares about a daughter, sister, niece or friend needs to take personal responsibility and join this call demanding a future free of exploitation for all our girls. Parents, teachers, girls themselves and all those who care about and work with girls should read this book.
Coleen Clare, CEO, Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
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.
The Hon. Kate Ellis, Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth, Parliament of Australia
Congratulations to Melinda Tankard Reist and the writers of Getting Real for ‘Getting it Right’, for calling it like it is, exposing medicalisation, commercial sexualisation and objectification of our girls, drawing the parallels with sexual assault, anorexia, bulimia and suicide.
Every girl deserves a childhood full of love, trust and support to grow in safety and happiness. Not to be seen as ‘thin, hot, sexy’ but as ‘unique, adorable, talented’. It is time to speak up for the right of every child to grow freely with hope.
Our modern culture is preoccupied with sexualising the experiences of childhood. Getting Real unmasks the tactics of those who mercilessly target children with messages that confuse and distort their development. It offers insights about how to reclaim childhood and support the critical discourse of children’s rights.
Joe Tucci, CEO, Australian Childhood Foundation
This book does a wonderful job of adding a much needed feminist approach to the debate on the sexualization of girls. By exploring the issue from a number of perspectives, Getting Real brings into stark focus the social and psychological costs of turning our girls into sex objects – costs that we ignore at our peril.
Gail Dines PhD, Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College and author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
Getting Real is an important contribution to the discussion of the sexualisation of girls. This profoundly disturbing issue is a public health problem of international concern. This book is essential reading for parents, educators, and everyone who wishes to make the world a safer and healthier place for all children.
Jean Kilbourne, EdD, author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids
If you weren’t convinced of the urgency of the situation this book will light a fire in your efforts to change the world for the next generation.
Captain Danielle Strickland, Social Justice Director, Salvation Army
Getting Real unflinchingly tracks the abuse that, with the pervasive penetration of pornography, becomes normal culture. In the sexuality where objectification of children and infantilization of women converge, the less power you have, the sexier you are. Girls increasingly live in a world pornography has made. This book shows what needs to be stopped and why.
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
This is an outstanding collection of contributions addressing a significant problem in our community, namely the abuse of children and particularly girls by sexualising and exploiting them for commercial gain. Most people would be justifiably critical of child prostitution as many of the authors are, but few realise that some of the most respected commercial organisations in our community have no compunction in effectively doing so by their similar abuse of children in advertising. This book fills a real gap.
The Hon Alastair Nicholson AO, former Chief Justice of the Family Court and founding patron of Children Rights International
Children today are exposed to sexual imagery from their earliest years, to sex as a product and our bodies as commodities. The consequences, particularly for girls, are unmistakably negative.
Getting Real wipes away the hot, sexy sheen of the environment in which girls develop, to reveal the ugliness underneath.
Dr Cordelia Fine, Honorary (Fellow), School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry, University of Melbourne
Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls is a must read for anyone that cares about the future for our children, particularly those who have the power to make a difference…all adults. In particular I recommend that this book be read by parents, educators, health professionals, policy makers and those that work in the media. I am optimistic that by revealing and informing the general public about these atrocities, we can return childhood to a place of innocence, safety and joy.
Dr Naomi Crafti, Education Officer at Eating Disorders Foundation of Victoria. www.eatingdisorders.org.au
Now in its second printing!
