Child as Sex Object - Images of Children in the Media (From Educator's Guide to Preventing Child Sexual Abuse, P 40-46, 1986, Mary Nelson and Kay Clark, eds. - See NCJ-104251)

• NCJ Number: 104254
• Author(s): J Kilbourne
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: Network Publications
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The advertising media's presentation of children as sex objects conditions media users to view children as sexually seductive and as objects for pleasure.

Abstract

'Harper's Bazaar' featured a girl approximately 5 years old heavily made up and with her hair done in a sophisticated style. An ad for furs portrayed a girl approximately 11 years old wearing a fur, high heels, and made up, accompanied by the statement, 'Get what you've always wanted.' Whereas, the media are presenting children as grown-up sexual objects, women are being presented as childlike, i.e., thin, naive, and chaste. Overall, the effect is to cultivate a female sexuality associated with childlikeness, i.e., passivity, dependence, and vulnerability. The mature, independent woman is not presented as the cultural ideal of femininity. Media advertising reflects the culture's fear of assertive women who do not conform to a submissive 'feminine' role. What must be done to prevent the sexual abuse of children is to portray role models for relationships of equality and noncoerciveness between adults and children and between men and women. Media advertising is not likely to change, but the dominant social and cultural institutions should expose such exploitive advertising and present mature concepts of sexuality and relationships. 23 references.