I am writing a feature article on this topic because I believe this is happening to our girls at a rapid rate. I see it with my cousin who is 15 now and she is incredibly more sexualized than I was even at the age of 20. It's sad and I really think the media is to blame (visual media and music lyrics) and access to media has become omnipresent in the 21st century. A report in the APA found evidence that "the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development"
The APA says that "schools should teach media literacy skills to all students and should include information on the negative effects of the sexualization of girls in media literacy and sex education programs". Dr. Zurbriggen says "as a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings--ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls" But instead it seems like it is more important for girls to be hot than to be smart.
5 comments:
Charity-
I totally agree that girls especially need to learn media literacy skills because ads ARE a big part of body image. I think your feature article is going to be great!
I'm also doing a minilesson on the social myth of beauty for my unit on The Bluest Eye. I'll let you know if I come up with any interesting sites!
An espcially important topic Charity. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
And I'm happy to see you, Savanna, working on "The Bluest Eye."
Awesome topic for your feature article. I'm excited to read it when you're finished with it. Perhaps you were inspired by that other feature article we had to read for Sarver's class by Tom Wolfe. This is such a prevalent issue in the world today (and schools especially), and it is tough to understand the sexuality that is facing adolescents today. We can understand it somewhat, but what can we do now?
yeah I was a little inspired by the tom wolfe piece, but it mostly inspiration from my 15 year old cousin who came down to visit me for a few days. some of you met her and she is truly the one at the heart of my story and passion for this topic. THanks for responding and commenting!
Unfortunately, the media gives everyone a false impression of what being a girl/woman should be. Everything points to someone who is sexual, thin, attractive. No wonder today's female students grow up with such distorted views of their bodies and feel so inadequate. They don't take the time to understand the photographs, etc. they are looking at are Photoshopped and god knows what else. Just take a moment and take an old photograph and work with it in photoshop - anything is possible and there is nothing "real" about the results. Like my Photoshop professor said one day - "I don't own a single photograph of myself where I am not young and thin."
If only we could convince our teens of this. My favorite commercial these days is, unfortunately, for Slimfast bars. It has merit, however, in that it talks about being interested in your "hips and not your hip bones" and it actually uses women who are "normal" in size and not your traditional model-thin person. So, maybe there is still hope for the future.
Post a Comment