Sarah S. pointed us to a blog post by Bluemilk about the recent outcry over 15-year-old Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair (below) and the more general sexualization of little girls.
Bluemilk calls out Abercrombie and Fitch, Fred Bare, and, elsewhere, Bratz Dolls.
Abercrombie and Fitch marketed a pair of thong underwear that says “wink wink” and “eye candy” to ten-year-olds. The product was pulled after protests:
Fred Bare’s summer collection includes a slide show with many images of little girls hinting at a sexuality utterly inappropriate for their ages:
And Bratz Dolls, well, are Bratz Dolls:
(found here)
(found here)
Halloween costumes too (found here):
I think it’s interesting that the Miley Cyrus cover is getting so much negative press, when these other instances include girls who are so much younger. Thoughts?
Thanks to both Sarah S. and Bluemilk!
Also in the sexualization of young girls.
15 Comments
Miley Cyrus is not a little girl. She is a sexual creature like everyone else, and she is going to express that sexuality in whatever way she chooses. She seems to have enjoyed being photographed without a shirt, and liked the image she created, and its a shame that she is catching flack from Disney for daring to be an adolescent with a sexuality and a desire to be ‘pretty’ and ‘natural’ without being ’skanky’ (her words).
15 years old is not an adult - and I think it’s stirring up trouble to portray her as one in an adult magazine.
No matter how she feels now, it is up to responsible adults (ie. her family and the staff of vanity fair) to ensure that her sexual exploration is conducted in an emotionally psychologically and physically safe way. In other words, she should be exploring her sexuality, definitely. But the place for that exploration is not the cover of an international magazine.
I think this picture is a case of adults taking advantage of Miley’s own natural adolescent sexual exploration.
What makes Miley different than the other examples is that her image and her show have been embraced by parents looking for a wholesome role-model and form of entertainment for their children.
Therefore, Miley posing in a provocative way like this is going to upset more than just the people who don’t think those young’uns should be expressing sexuality. It’s going to cause distress for people who thought this was a young’un that they could let their children adore without worrying about the message it sends.
I am conflicted, personally. Young’uns have sexuality just like the rest of us. And 15yr-olds perhaps more so than the rest of us. However, as wonderful as it would be to exist in a society which celebrates that, we don’t. Instead, we exist in a society which objectifies the women who celebrate it - whether they want that or not. Female children are learning to WANT to be objectified. If this were truly about *adolescents* in general, then this “problem” would be apparent among boys, too.
It’s a difficult subject: they think they’re being beautiful and showing their power with these displays, but they have been socialized to think this. Generally speaking, the males have NOT been socialized to think this of the women who do that. Their thoughts are more often “hell, yeah! let her put her nudie pics up! i don’t see NO problem with that! {masturbatory fodder}. Which also isn’t a problem in and of itself; it’s a problem to the extent that this masturbatory fodder only goes in one direction: women as objects for men.
Denying that the impact of such pictures is different for men than for women doesn’t make that fact go away. And posing for these pictures does nothing to fight that fact or the problem with not allowing adolescents to be sexual; in fact, without fighting the underlying norms and stereotypes, such actions only feed the gender discrepancies in our society regarding what it means to be sexual.
The real fix, IMHO, is to get pics of men and boys to be equally common, and NOT be associated with gayness.
For what it’s worth, she’s not on the cover of Vanity Fair. Bobby Kennedy is.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/04/scandale-du-jou.html
“I think this picture is a case of adults taking advantage of Miley’s own natural adolescent sexual exploration.”
I don’t feel like that is the case. She obviously wanted to take the picture or else she wouldn’t have.
This isn’t some Paris Hilton sex tape, it’s a photo for Vanity Fair done by Annie Leibovitz. Leibovitz is arguably the most respected celebrity photographer in the world.
It seems people don’t know how to handle a picture of Cyrus that isn’t taken by Disney.
“I don’t feel like that is the case. She obviously wanted to take the picture or else she wouldn’t have.”
The fact that someone did something is NO indication whatsoever that they actually wanted to do it. There are various forms of coercion, both explicit and implicit, that can be at work in people’s actions.
This is not to say that she didn’t want to take the picture. In fact, I would bet she did. But the fact that the picture was taken is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, proof of that, nor can it be held as evidence of the fact.
The taste question matters, though. Art versus porn, etc. Nudity doesn’t always have to be sexual. And sexual doesn’t necessarily mean skanky.
Some of you might want to know that whomever photoshopped the final product photoshopped the blanket covering her down a good many inches in the back. I found that interesting, since at first it was more wrapped around her shoulders.
Thanks thechrisproject, my mistake!
anonymous 11:51… fascinating! Send us a link to the original versus the photoshopped version if you have one!
Wow - the thread here surprises me — I feel like the social structures are getting lost - the increasing commercialization of childhood (we didn’t even have the word tween - created by marketers - 10 years ago), a rapidly changing media industry, the changing nature of celebrity, the increased involvement of kids in media culture… Certainly Miley Cyrus is entitled to be a sexual being, but that isn’t the point, is it? Perhaps it is for the Oprah audience, but for sociologists (even those who watch Oprah!) I would think this image (and the fall out) are interesting and significant for rather different reasons.
I just looked at the blue milk post — it seems the Miley image is the least problematice of the bunch. WDYT?
What of the 6 year old girls on the rocks — do the Miley arguments here still hold — would’t have made the images if they hadn’t wanted to.. etc?
“Nudity doesn’t always have to be sexual.”
Nudity? Where? Many modern fashions worn by girls her age (and younger) reveal more skin than this photo, but then again I suppose that explains why “the males” are always compulsively masturbating and using poor grammar, not that I don’t see no problem with that (as I retire to the bathroom with the latest issue of Vanity Fair).
One more thing- 15 year olds are not “little girls,” unlike the girls in the images below hers. She could have a little girl of her own by now, as many do.
Was she manipulated? Sure; by everyone, but that’s Hollywood. It was clear in the NY Times article that she (Ms. Cyrus) was initially happy with the photo, but when the parental backlash started she was ordered to change her tune seeing as how profits were at stake. Disney is hyper-aware of its own interests and vigorously protects them, so there’s no way in hell that the execs were unaware that one of their assets was doing something like this, as Disney is trying to claim. They impressively managed to maintain plausible deniability after it went downhill, but then again it got her name out in the media even more, so she will continue to be bankable and her parents can relax about paying the bills.
Quoting from the NY Times article:
“…Gary Marsh, the president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, was quoted in Portfolio magazine saying, “For Miley Cyrus to be a ‘good girl’ is now a business decision for her. Parents have invested in her a godliness[sic]. If she violates that trust, she won’t get it back.”
That sounds like a thinly-veiled warning to me, but at this point she won’t need that particular kind of trust back (just ask Mary Kate and Ashley!).
http://i28.tinypic.com/6f9mhi.jpg
You can also see that they photoshopped her hair to make her look more disheveled. In the final product it does look like she’s just gotten up from having sex.
I also don’t recall such a big backlash when Vanessa Hudgens had nude photos leaked on the internet. Is she not too, a big Disney star with a fan base comprised of young girls?
Shaping Youth has been writing about the Miley mess/role model reverb extensively from a media literacy/deconstructionist perspective (e.g. it’s not the 15-year olds but rather the TINY TOTS that idolize the teen that need clarity) http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=1434
http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=1429
But frankly, the visuals you show here are EXACTLY the kind of behavioral cues that give merit to the ‘trickle down’ impact (as we’ve seen documenting this in our film Body Blitz: Media, Shaping Youth!)
It’s beyond disturbing that I asked a few middle schoolers (12) the other day to ’strike a modeling pose’ for the camera (testing out a theory, not to mention an iphone!)
Result? One straddled a chair, one looked over a shoulder in ‘come hither’ style, and one dropped to the floor and draped herself over a stuffed animal in a sultry “innocent but playful” POV…Mind you, these are kids that KNOW about our mission at Shaping Youth, so it’s not as if there isn’t media literacy coming into play here…still, this was their snapshot of what a ‘model’ looks like.
Point? The loaded sexualized images put out there in the media MATTER, impacting mind, body and spirit from the get go. Yep. Even among those ‘in the know’…Yowza.
I would just like to comment to the people who keep saying that Miley Cyrus is not a little girl. The human brain does not stop developing until the age of 25. A 15 year old child is far from an adult. Perhaps the reason that so many 15 year old female children wind up as child mothers is just this issue that is being discussed here.
I find the DQ ad to be disgusting, but unfortunately (as someone who works with children ages 5-18 on a daily basis) it’s a true picture of what is happening with children today. It is also a contributing factor to how child molesters delude themselves into thinking that it is o.k.–because “she/he’s a sexual being–so why not?!”
The “why not” goes right back to the brain development issue. A 15 year old does not have the brain development of a 25 year old or even an 18 year old for that matter. They are easily manipulated and do not have the capacity to make a decision such as this because they don’t have the capacity to think in the long term of how it will affect their lives.
15 year old children don’t have the ability to think past the “right now” effectively. Similar to the belief all children have that nothing bad will ever happen to them. Logically they know bad things happen but they don’t really believe it will happen TO THEM. It’s the same thinking errors that cause them to underage drink, engage in unprotected sex, drive too fast and experiment with anything or anyone who comes their way.
I realize that I have gotten way off track, but you folks who think that a 15 year old is not a child–think again. You are deluding yourselves.
4 Trackbacks
[...] in the sexualization of kids: the Miley Cyrus scandal ‘n stuff and modeling, tramp stamps, and stripper poles for kids. addthis_url = [...]
[...] real-life examples from advertising/marketing? Check out the posts at Sociological Images (like this one) where we found [...]
[...] the time (nor the stomach) to tackle the foolishness of this fashionista absurdity that’s trashing childhood with vapid values of pop culture drek today. (gee, tell us how you REALLY feel, Amy, [...]
[...] of a much-milder version of it in a Barbie doll. (Especially since the market already includes Bratz dolls — it’s not as if the doll market is sexually innocent.) As near as I can tell, the [...]