The Sexualization of Girls and Girlhood

The Sexualization of Girls and Girlhood
Author: Eileen L. Zurbriggen
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2012-11-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780199731657

The Sexualization of Girls and Girlhood includes the best empirical research, theory, and practice stemming from the report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Contributors discuss evidence for this phenomenon from media and marketing, to interpersonal interaction, to girls' own efforts to fashion themselves after sexualized role models around them.

Becoming Sexual

Becoming Sexual
Author: R. Danielle Egan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745669581

The sexualization of girls has captured the attention of the media, advocacy groups and politicians in recent years. This prolific discourse sets alarm bells ringing: sexualization is said to lead to depression, promiscuity and compassion deficit disorder, and rob young girls of their childhood. However, measuring such claims against a wide range of data sources reveals a far more complicated picture. Becoming Sexual begins with a simple question: why does this discourse feel so natural? Analyzing potent cultural and historical assumptions, and subjecting them to measured investigation, R. Danielle Egan illuminates the implications of dominant thinking on sexualization. The sexualized girl functions as a metaphor for cultural decay and as a common enemy through which adult rage, discontent and anxiety regarding class, gender, sexuality, race and the future can be expressed. Egan argues that, ultimately, the popular literature on sexualization is more reflective of adult disquiet than it is about the lives and practices of girls. Becoming Sexual will be a welcome intervention into these fraught polemics for anyone interested in engaging with a high-profile contemporary debate, and will be particularly useful for students of sociology, cultural studies, childhood studies, gender studies and media studies.

Redefining Girly

Redefining Girly
Author: Melissa Wardy
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1613745524

“Melissa Wardy’s book reads like a conversation with a smart, wise, funny friend; one who dispenses fabulous advice on raising a strong, healthy, full-of-awesome girl.” —Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter All-pink aisles in toy stores, popular dolls that resemble pole dancers, ultrasexy Halloween costumes in tween sizes. Many parents are increasingly startled and unnerved at how today’s media, marketers, and manufacturers are sexualizing and stereotyping ever-younger girls, but feel powerless to do much about it. Mother of two Melissa Wardy channeled her feelings of isolation and frustration into activism—creating a website to sell T-shirts with girl-positive messages; blogging and swapping parenting strategies with families around the world; writing letters to corporate offenders; organizing petitions; and raising awareness through parent workshops and social media. Wardy has spearheaded campaigns against national brands and retailers that resulted in the removal of sexist, offensive ads and products. Now, in Redefining Girly, she shares her parenting and activism strategies with other families concerned about raising a confident and healthy girl in today’s climate. Wardy provides specific advice and sample conversations for getting family, friends, educators, and health care providers on your side; getting kids to think critically about sexed-up toys and clothes; talking to girls about body image; and much more. She provides tips for creating a home full of diverse, inspiring toys and media free of gender stereotypes; using your voice and consumer power to fight the companies making major missteps; and taking the reins to limit, challenge, and change harmful media and products. Melissa Wardy is the founder of Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies, a website selling empowering and inspirational children’s apparel and products, and Redefine Girly, a blog surrounding the issue of the sexualization of girls. Wardy and her work have been featured

Packaging Girlhood

Packaging Girlhood
Author: Sharon Lamb, Ed.D.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1429906324

The stereotype-laden message, delivered through clothes, music, books, and TV, is essentially a continuous plea for girls to put their energies into beauty products, shopping, fashion, and boys. This constant marketing, cheapening of relationships, absence of good women role models, and stereotyping and sexualization of girls is something that parents need to first understand before they can take action. Lamb and Brown teach parents how to understand these influences, give them guidance on how to talk to their daughters about these negative images, and provide the tools to help girls make positive choices about the way they are in the world. In the tradition of books like Reviving Ophelia, Odd Girl Out, Queen Bees and Wannabees that examine the world of girls, this book promises to not only spark debate but help parents to help their daughters.

Dilemmas of Desire

Dilemmas of Desire
Author: Deborah L. TOLMAN
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0674044363

Be sexy but not sexual. Don't be a prude but don't be a slut. These are the cultural messages that barrage teenage girls. In movies and magazines, in music and advice columns, girls are portrayed as the object or the victim of someone else's desire--but virtually never as someone with acceptable sexual feelings of her own. What teenage girls make of these contradictory messages, and what they make of their awakening sexuality--so distant from and yet so susceptible to cultural stereotypes--emerges for the first time in frank and complex fashion in Deborah Tolman's Dilemmas of Desire. A unique look into the world of adolescent sexuality, this book offers an intimate and often disturbing, sometimes inspiring, picture of how teenage girls experience, understand, and respond to their sexual feelings, and of how society mediates, shapes, and distorts this experience. In extensive interviews, we listen as actual adolescent girls--both urban and suburban--speak candidly of their curiosity and confusion, their pleasure and disappointment, their fears, defiance, or capitulation in the face of a seemingly imperishable double standard that smiles upon burgeoning sexuality in boys yet frowns, even panics, at its equivalent in girls. As a vivid evocation of girls negotiating some of the most vexing issues of adolescence, and as a thoughtful, richly informed examination of the dilemmas these girls face, this readable and revealing book begins the critical work of understanding the sexuality of young women in all its personal, social, and emotional significance.

The Lolita Effect

The Lolita Effect
Author: M. Gigi Durham
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1590205944

Pop culture—and the advertising that surrounds it—teaches young girls and boys five myths about sex and sexuality: Girls don't choose boys, boys choose girls—but only sexy girls; there's only one kind of sexy—slender, curvy, white beauty; girls should work to be that type of sexy; the younger a girl is, the sexier she is; and sexual violence can be hot. Together, these five myths make up the Lolita Effect, the mass media trends that work to undermine girls’ self-confidence, that condone female objectification, and that tacitly foster sex crimes. But identifying these myths and breaking them down can help girls learn to recognize progressive and healthy sexuality and protect themselves from degrading media ideas and sexual vulnerability.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Cinderella Ate My Daughter
Author: Peggy Orenstein
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2011-01-25
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0062041630

Peggy Orenstein, acclaimed author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex and Schoolgirls, offers a radical, timely wake-up call for parents, revealing the dark side of a pretty and pink culture confronting girls at every turn as they grow into adults. Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they? In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.

American Sweethearts

American Sweethearts
Author: Ilana Nash
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2006
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780253218025

Teenage girls seem to have been discovered by American pop culture in the 1930s. From that time until the present day, they have appeared in books and films, comics and television, as the embodied fantasies and nightmares of youth, women, and sexual maturation. Looking at such figures as Nancy Drew, Judy Graves, Corliss Archer, Gidget, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Britney Spears, American Sweethearts shows how popular culture has shaped our view of the adolescent girl as an individual who is simultaneously sexualized and infantilized. While young women have received some positive lessons from these cultural icons, the overwhelming message conveyed by the characters and stories they inhabit stresses the dominance of the father and the teenage girl's otherness, subordination, and ineptitude. As sweet as a cherry lollipop and as tangy as a Sweetart, this book is an entertaining yet thoughtful exploration of the image of the American girl.

Girls, Moral Panic and News Media

Girls, Moral Panic and News Media
Author: Sharon Mazzarella
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0429516657

Mazzarella examines the representational politics behind journalistic constructions of US girls and girlhood through a series of contemporary in-depth case studies which work to document a wider cultural moral panic about the troublesome nature of girls’ bodies. The public concern and media fascination with youth so evident in the United States today is a century-old phenomenon. From the flappers of the 1920s to the bobbysoxers of the 1950s, from the hippies of the 1960s and on to the ever-present pregnant teens, this fascination has played out in the media and has consistently focused on (primarily White, middle-class, heterosexual) girls. A growing body of research has revealed the manner in which journalistic practice constructs such girls as problems. Girls, Moral Panic, and News Media takes a broad look at U.S. news media constructions of girls, girlhoods, and girl’s bodies/sexualities through a series of contemporary in-depth case studies including news coverage of the 2008 Gloucester (MA) High School "pregnancy pact," teen gun control activist Emma González, and the sexualization of "early puberty." In general, the news media constructs girls’ bodies as troublesome and in need of adult surveillance and policing. These case studies document a cultural obsession with girls’ bodies—an obsession that often approaches moral panic. This book will be key reading for researchers and instructors in the rapidly growing international and interdisciplinary field of Girls’ Studies, and scholars of Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Communication and Journalism.