Sexualistation of Young People

than an act of intimacy. 334 Given this, it is
perhaps not too much of a leap to posit
a link between the messages being sent
out to boys and the normalisation of
aggressive – or even violent behaviour –
towards girls and women as demonstrated
in the next chapter.
335
Early sexual activity
The UK has the highest teenage
pregnancy rate in western Europe. 335
Almost 43,000 girls aged 18 or
under became pregnant in 2007.
Young people continue to be
disproportionately affected by sexually
transmitted infections (STIs): despite
making up just 12 per cent of the
population, in 2008 16–24-year-olds
accounted for 65 per cent of new
Chlamydia cases, 55 per cent of new
cases of genital warts and 17 per cent
of new syphilis diagnoses. Although
the total number of gonorrhoea cases
fell by 11 per cent between 2007 and
2008, the Health Protection Agency’s
Sexually Transmitted Infections
Department believes that there is
still a ‘substantial pool’ of people with
undiagnosed STIs.
Sexual objectification
“Although sexual objectification is but one
form of gender oppression, it is one that
factors into – and perhaps enables – a host
of other oppressions women face, ranging
from employment discrimination and sexual
violence to the trivialisation of women’s work
and accomplishments.”’ 336
Sexual objectification occurs when a
person is portrayed solely as a sexual
object, and viewed as a collection of
sexual and physical attributes rather
334 Marsigilio (1988); Nzioka (2001)
335 UNICEF (2001)
336 Fredrickson and Roberts (1997)
than as an individual. While media
images objectify both men and women,
women are significantly more likely to be
portrayed in a sexually objectified way.
A survey of advertising images found that
women were three times more likely
than men to be dressed in a sexually
provocative way. Around 80 per cent of
the images showed women in sexually
explicit postures, while in half of all images,
women were represented by a body part
or parts only, compared with 17 per cent
of men. 337
When objectified magazine images of both
men and women were shown to children
aged between six and 12, the girls showed
significant awareness of body esteem
issues and a tendency to internalise
the images. Moreover, girls who were
uncertain as to how to respond to the
thin, sexy ideal presented to them tended
to have lower self-esteem than girls
who consistently rejected the images. 338
Research also shows that pornography
leads viewers – both male and female – to
view women as sex objects. 339 See page
46 for more detail.
Lap-dancing and
glamour modelling
With the ubiquity of sexualisation and
the increasing pornification of society
has come the mainstreaming of the sex
industry, as exemplified by the proliferation
of lap-dancing clubs. Sexualisation – and
the commodification of women and girls
– is now so ingrained in our culture that
lap-dancing is widely viewed as acceptable,
‘making the harm of commercial sexual
exploitation invisible’. 340 The number of
lap-dancing clubs in the UK currently
stands at around 300. 341 Increasingly, such
337 Reichert (1999)
338 Murnen and Smolak et al. (2003)
339 Peter and Valkenburg (2007)
340 Object (2009)
341 Home Office (2009a)
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