usatoday.com/news/health/2007-02-19-sexualized-girls_x.htm?csp=34
Media cited for showing girls as sex objects
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
Advertising and media images that encourage girls to focus on looks and sexuality are harmful to their emotional and physical health, a new report by the American Psychological Association says.
The report, released Monday, analyzed some 300 studies over the past 18 months. It included a variety of media, from television and movies to song lyrics, and looked at advertising showing body-baring doll clothes for pre-schoolers, tweens posing in suggestive ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models.
The researchers found such images may make girls think of and treat their own bodies as sexual objects.
“The preponderance of evidence suggests a cause for concern in these sexualized images and the mental health outcomes for girls,” says task force member Tomi-Ann Roberts, a psychology professor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
Individual studies have found problems related to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression, but Roberts says there hasn’t been a body of work that illustrates how these problems are “directly linked” to sexualized images in ads and popular media. The group recommends more research on girls since the bulk of the studies reviewed dealt with teens and young women.
“It’s fair to say, were we to do these same studies on younger girls, you would expect to find the same results, but we have to do the studies,” says Sharon Lamb, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., who served on the task force.
The panel defined sexualization as occurring “when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use.”
