However innocuously presented (in fact, innocence is fetishised), we pretty much don’t know how to see a girl without objectifying her (even when we are feminist). Watching my pre-schooler I have moments where the thinness of her shoulders or the jut of her hips reminds me of images from fashion magazines – images of adults, or rather images of girls who are supposed to be what adults look like. More specifically, certain portions of her body, certain natural postures of hers are associated for me with the selling of a product; it is the very essence of objectification. It annoys me when I catch myself in the act of transposing. Lauca isn’t particularly aware of fashion images, she has almost no control over mine or anyone else’s interpretation of her physical self. The female body really can’t just be.
The problem is not that young bodies are beautiful, it is that, particularly in the case of young women, their bodies have been used to symbolise commodified pleasure, and when everything about you represents consumption you can be terribly vulnerable. The appreciation of youthful beauty would not be so troublesome were it not to come with the sense of entitlement that is the leering eye. In our culture young women are both sexualised and silenced – a terribly dangerous combination for them. Kate Harding sums this up beautifully (in a particularly fine article if your heart can bear to read any more of this Polanski stuff):
Kampmeier told me, “There’s a scene in my film where Dakota’s character is singing ‘Hound Dog’ on the bed, moving her legs back and forth in a very innocent expression of her love for this song.” As Kampmeier tells it, Fanning wasn’t intending to play it as sexual in any way, nor was she directed to — but in the film, a 17-year-old boy is watching, and projecting his own interpretation onto it. Says Kampmeier, “I had men in audiences watch that and say, ‘Well, she’s asking for it.’ Women say, ‘No, she’s just being natural, being herself.’ Why is a young girl seen as asking for it when she’s just exploring the experience of being alive in her body?” It would seem to come down to whether you identify with the 12-year-old girl or the 17-year-old boy watching.
This is what too many people fail to understand about adolescent girls when it comes to sex, rape and personal agency: The experience of being alive in their bodies makes them sometimes sexual, sometimes curious, sometimes desirous, sometimes totally innocent — and at all times vulnerable to other people’s interpretations of their behavior, of their decisions, of their very existence in bodies equipped with brand-new womanly features. And all they have to counter those interpretations are their own voices — voices that are routinely ignored, dismissed and silenced.
But this is not an argument for purity or for restraining young women.
Five minutes after we ended the interview, Kampmeier called me back to say she wanted to add one more thought: “When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity — which is what gets the religious right up in arms — it’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. And trying to keep her ‘pure,’ repressing her sexuality, silencing her voice, also takes away wholeness. It’s two sides of the same coin.
“I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure,” she said. “I want her to grow up whole.”
And this is what annoys me about the “we can sexualise girls because, of course, girls are sexual creatures”. Yes, they are sexual, but we as a world are so, so far away from having the integrity or the space or the respect to be able to interpret their sexuality, and their sexuality belongs to them.
Great post. It used to make me rage talking to my young students and the assumptions they made about being ‘looked at’ and their responsibility to meet the expectations of being looked at in certain ways by changing themselves. It makes me rage still.
bluemilk, that is bloody well said
Yes. Great post.
Spot on!
This is an excellent post – I love it. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you. Good food for thought.
This is great and so true – and then what happens to these girls when they hit puberty? I was all of 11 when I started to develop, I was fully unable to feel comfortable with my new, more sexual parts. It’s sad that little girls can’t run and play and feel safe in themselves. People talk about how the way young girls dress now is so sexual. I keep thinking back to the 70s when EVERYONE (or just about) wore very short shorts and tank tops. What makes now so different from then?
Says Kampmeier, “I had men in audiences watch that and say, ‘Well, she’s asking for it.’ Women say, ‘No, she’s just being natural, being herself.’ Why is a young girl seen as asking for it when she’s just exploring the experience of being alive in her body?”
This raises another good question, which is “If a young girl does want to be naturally sexual, why is that seen as ‘asking for it’?” There is no excuse for rape. There is never an excuse for it.
“The problem is not that young bodies are beautiful, it is that, particularly in the case of young women, their bodies have been used to symbolise commodified pleasure, and when everything about you represents consumption you can be terribly vulnerable.”
This is just spot-on. Such a thought-provoking post. Thank you.
Perhaps you’re not transposing her body into the ads, but noticing how the ads use childlike poses to represent youth and beauty. Because youth, beauty and wealth are apparently all that we should ever want and if you have one, you can probably get the other two.
I love your blog, by the way.
Hmm interesting question you have raised.
[…] girls in growing up than to be sexy. Also, the sexualising of little boys is not orientated towards reducing them to consumable items as it is with little girls, instead their sexuality is expressed through their response to and […]
Sorry but this annoys me.
Why do we assume that children are being sexualised? I am 45 and I am yet to exprience a situation where I have sexualised a kid.
I see kids in all sorts of play and, forgive me but, I never see them as sexual. I see them as socializing, I see them as exploring their humanity, I see them as a human being growing into itself.
I have to admit I get sick of this emphasis on sexuality.
Yes, there will be some sick sh*ts who choose to see the world as their own personal porn and there will be some sick sh*ts who see the world as something that they can “save”. Both these sorts of people are an annoyance to me as they seem to be unable to get their minds out of their pants. I attribute it to a sort of social immaturity – a sort of arrested development if you will.
It’s SO adolescent.
Piggles My Love – nice nickname, by the way. The sexualisation of children is a repulsive idea, I grant you that, but just because you find it disgusting doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. Check out my archives and see what you think of some of the examples myself and others are talking about.
https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/category/bratz-hatredpornificationsexualising-children/
Children have genitals, too. Think about it.
There are huge forums and quabbles just dedicated to parents who wonder if they should stop their toddler/young child from “touching themselves”.
Though sexuality expands when one hits puberty- they can act sexually from very young ages. It’s hardwired in.
I completely agree, Bluemilk- it’s like the whole world has their head in the gutter! It’s okay to see those things, but to not be objective about it? …That’s dangerous water.
Humans are born sexual. My baby son had erections every morning I changed his diaper, much to my surprise!
I love the idea of “wholeness” and sexuality is a part of that. Part of our humanness.
The perversion stems from going to either extreme and either denying children as human and sexual, or objectifying them as such.
Children are sensual beings, touching, tasting, exploring everything with every part of their bodies. It cracks me up to see my 16 month old daughter hump a pillow innocently and quite obliviously to anything other than she enjoys the feeling. And I agree, it belongs to her, and her only…I can only facilitate and validate her wholeness.
Beautiful post!
I’m not particularly down with innocence as a concept, but I’m thinking that: we talk about innocence as meaning lack of sexuality, but I think in a way, an infant’s innocence, is that they have not yet learned that the world thinks that war is more moral than masturbation, they have not yet learned the kind of cruel, sadistic obsession with punishing people for their sexuality that so many adults have, they just know that touching their genitals feels good, so they do it and they smile and giggle and squeal (or put on their concentration face) and are joyous. I don’t really want to promote innocence as something that must be preserved and desired, but I hope what I’m saying makes some kind of sense. Namely, that society is so screwed up that we want to preserve children’s “innocence” by robbing them of their shameless, harmless joy, something that’s hard to hold on to as you get older and realise how many people hate sexuality, particularly in children.
This post is one of my All Time Favorite Articles and is so very eloquently empowering. Each time someone comments, I receive a notice in my email. I love that two years after it was posted, comments are still being generated.
I could not comment below to Claymore, so I have responded to my own original comment instead (it is however directed to Claymore).
First, I completely agree with you on the concept of “innocence.” But with some clarification. I actually looked up the word in the dictionary & within the context of this discussion, I think when I wrote about my child innocently “humping a pillow,” I was referring to the “lack of knowledge” meaning of the word, rather than “lack of shame, guilt, or sin.” Being an English major, words are both fascinating and empowering to me.
As far as children and innocence is concerned (and the word here, being used as lack of knowledge), there is a time when knowledge is gained about the limitations of the world & sadly, I think this in many ways this hampers our joyful experience. Especially if this knowledge is not delivered in healthy ways.
One such example is that I am currently breastfeeding my two and a half year old daughter. As she gets older, and the stares of bystanders increases, I am gradually nursing her more and more discreetly. While I admire mothers who publicly nurse their older children, I worry that the public reaction might somehow taint my own daughter’s perception of something that is natural, normal, and fundamentally a relationship that she gets to decide to terminate when she is ready. She will learn soon enough that society sexualizes the breast to such an extreme that they are more comfortable seeing a near naked breast on a beer commercial than seeing my toddler nurse. She will learn soon enough that many people consider this relationship “perverted” “abusive” and even “incestual.” It’s quite sick how others have no problem projecting their own perversions onto the very natural act of breastfeeding.
But my daughter is innocent of this social perception, and while she still needs and wants our nursing relationship, I feel it is important to protect her from any messages that are negative.
And so I feel the same in other areas of parenting my daughter. To protect her from the inaccurate information until she is older and has the solid foundation of self-love and acceptance to process the information and hopefully reject it as something that is not truth for her.
Lovely, lovely post.
[…] surely there is a way of slamming the sexualisation of children without robbing young women (or even children) of their sexuality. I know, maybe for starters we could stop compressing children’s and […]
This is such a lovely, strong post. I agree.
“Why do we assume that children are being sexualised? I am 45 and I am yet to exprience a situation where I have sexualised a kid.”
Piggles My Love: Yes, you are not. But there are others who are. The problem here is not that humans are born sexual, or that we all have genitals. The problem is that meaning is a personal thing. My meaning of sexuality in kids is diferent to yours because I am a pshychologyst, and my neighbour’s idea might be diferent because he/she might be a pedophile.
As A.Y. Siu said, ” “If a young girl does want to be naturally sexual, why is that seen as ‘asking for it’?” There is no excuse for rape. There is never an excuse for it.”
There are girls who are! (You might want to check Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Aphrodite archetype) They are naturally more inclined to sensual experience and more interested in sexuallity. But nothing is an excuse for rape. NOTHING.
Again, lovely post blue milk. Thank you for it.
I’ve just discovered your blog and love it,it’s spot on, compassionate and full of humour.
This one took me back to the 70s Reclaim The Night Campaign in England where the slogan was “Whatever you wear, wherever you go, yes means yes and no means no”.
I use this again and again with the young women I work with who have been abused and continue to blame themselves.
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