http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/
Sexpot Virgins: The Media's Sexualization of Young Girls
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on May 24, 2008, Printed on May 24, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/
Professor M. Gigi Durham discusses the corporate media's sexual objectification of girls and how to help young women fight regressive media messages.
In 2006, the retail chain Tesco launched the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit, a play set designed to help young girls "unleash the sex kitten inside."
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As M. Gigi Durham points out in The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, Tesco's attempt to sell stripper gear to kids is just one instance of the sexual objectification of young girls in the media and marketplace. Some of the many other examples include a push-up bra for preteens, thongs for 10-year-olds bearing slogans like "eye candy," and underwear geared toward teens with "Who needs credit cards ... ?" written across the crotch.
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What's the "Lolita Effect," and why is it harmful?
The Lolita Effect is the media's sexual objectification of young girls. In the Nabokov novel the protagonist, who is 12 years old at the start of the book, is the object of desire for Humbert Humbert the pedophile. In the book you're put into the mind of the predator; Lolita, in Humbert's view, initiates the sex and is very knowledgeable and all that. Nowadays the term Lolita has come to mean a little girl who is inappropriately sexual, wanton, and who sort of flaunts her sexuality and seduces older men. I'm very critical of that construction in the novel and in real life because little girls can't be held responsible in this way. They're not born with the understanding or intention of seducing older men, and the burden of responsibility can't be placed on children. They're just too young to knowingly enter into these kinds of relationships. The Lolita Effect is the way our culture, and more importantly our corporate media, have constructed these little "Lolitas" by sexualizing them and marketing really sexualized items of clothing and behaviors to them -- constructing them as legitimate sexual actors when they aren't.
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