Sexualistation of Young People

Sexualisation of Young People Review
5. Sexualised content and the
mainstreaming of pornography
“With all the unregulated pornography available
online it feels like we’re tending a small part
of one corner of the garden while a jungle of
exploitative imagery grows around us.”
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Peter Johnson, Head of Policy, British Board of Film Classification 130
Introduction
Advertising doesn’t just sell products;
it sells aspirations and identities.
The proliferation and accessibility of
advertising images and messages make it
increasingly difficult to target them at the
appropriate audience. With the advent of
mobile internet, it is almost impossible to
guarantee that messages are only being
seen by the age group for which they
are intended. There is no ‘watershed’ on
the internet, and many adverts are sent
indiscriminately to mobile phones and
e-mail addresses. A child with a mobile
phone literally has access to pornography
in their pocket.
With proliferation and accessibility come
normalisation. From the café culture of
lap dancing clubs, to push up bras for
8-year-olds, we’ve reached a point
where it’s seemingly acceptable to use
130 Evidence provided to the Review by
Peter Johnson, British Board of Film
Classification (2009)
photographs of barely clad actresses
and models, along with sexually explicit
strap lines, on the covers of mainstream
magazines and stock them alongside the
comics in high street newsagents. High
street stores sell video games where the
player can beat up prostitutes with bats
and steal from them in order to facilitate
game progression. The message is clear
– young girls should do whatever it takes
to be desired. For boys the message is
just as clear: be hyper-masculine and
relate to girls as objects. It’s no surprise
therefore that when researchers
examine the content of young girls’ web
pages they find young teens are posting
sexually explicit images of themselves on
social networking sites, and self-regulating
each other with sexist, derogatory and
demeaning language.
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