Sexualistation of Young People

and views of what is appropriate
and acceptable. The psychological
ramifications of sexualisation, from
violence in teenage relationships to
self-objectification, are seen across
diverse class systems, suggesting
that the issue of sexualisation is not
confined to either a single race or class.
Sexualised
content and the
mainstreaming of
pornography
9. Children and young people are
exposed to an unprecedented
range of media content, through an
ever-growing number of channels.
Furthermore, the proportion of
that content which is sexual or
even pornographic is increasing at a
dramatic rate. Until relatively recently,
there was a way to at least try and
ensure that these were targeted to
the right audience. However, there is
no ‘watershed’ on the internet, and
sexualised images and adverts may
appear anywhere and are often sent
indiscriminately to e-mail accounts and
mobile phones.
10. With proliferation comes
normalisation. It is no surprise
therefore that when researchers
examine the content of young
people’s web pages they find that
young teens are posting sexually
explicit images of themselves on social
networking sites, and self-regulating
each other with sexist, derogatory and
demeaning language. 8
11. In order to genuinely understand
one of the main factors at play here,
namely how young people internalise
the messages they are exposed to,
8 Ringrose (2008)
it is important to look at the social
scripts children are being influenced by
and what makes children susceptible
to them.
Magazines, marketing and
advertising
12. A dominant theme in magazines
seems to be the need for girls to
present themselves as sexually
desirable in order to attract male
attention. 9 Worryingly, there is also a
trend for children in magazines to be
dressed and posed in ways designed
to draw attention to sexual features
that they do not yet have. At the same
time, advice on hairstyles, cosmetics,
clothing, diet, and exercise attempt
to remake even young readers as
objects of male desire, 10 promoting
premature sexualisation. 11 In the case
of boys, ‘lads’ mags’ contain a high
degree of highly sexualised images of
women that blur the lines between
pornography and mainstream media.
The predominant message for boys
is to be sexually dominant and to
objectify the female body.
13. Over the past three decades there has
been a dramatic increase in the use
of sexualised imagery in advertising.
While most of this imagery features
women, 12 there has also been a
significant increase in the number
of sexualised images of children. 13
Sexualised ideals of young, thin, beauty
lead to ideals of bodily perfection
that are difficult to attain, even for
the models, which perpetuates the
industry practice of ‘airbrushing’
photographs. These images can lead
9 Carpenter (1998); Durham (1998); Garner,
Sterk, and Adams (1998); McMahon (1990)
10 Duffy and Gotcher (1996)
11 Rush and La Nauze (2006)
12 Reichert et al. (1999)
13 Tankard-Reist (2010)
Sexualisation of Young People Review
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