Kids media and slut-shaming

To the various commenters upset about previous “slut-shaming” in my critiques of kids’ media, I think adults should express their sexuality how they please. (I have written more about the what I think about the issue of short skirts and their empowering potential here.)

As far as media or toys geared towards little kids, I am totally against any of it including sexualized females. I think it’s horrible that one of the few female characters in the new animated movie for kids, “The Pirates: band of Misfits,” is a “sexy” pirate. I don’t think that’s just in bad taste. I think it’s dangerous. Sexualized females are so predominant in kids movies, TV, ads, and toys that boundaries blur, contributing to the epidemic of sexual abuse of kids and also widespread child pornography. And it is all widespread.

When a girl sees Salma Hayek’ character dressed as a “sexy” pirate in a movie, is that the costume she’d going to pick if she wants to be a pirate for Halloween? Do we want little girls dressing up as sexy pirates?

Can you tell the difference between a picture of Ariel smiling coyly in her bikini top and an ad for a strip show? I can’t.

Peggy Orenstein wrote in Cinderella Ate My Daughter that when girls learn about sexuality this way, they learn sexuality as performance, instead of being agents seeking their own desire/ pleasure. Sexualizing girls does not lead to healthy, self-expressive sexuality. It leads to numbness; it helps to separate minds from bodies.

One of the best books I have ever read about grown up sexuality: Can Love Last: The Fate of Romance Over Time, Stephen Mitchell writes this:

One of the things good parents provide for their children is a partially illusory, elaborately constructed atmosphere of  safety, to allow for the establishment of “secure attachment.” Good-enough parents, to use D. W. Winnicott’s term, do not talk with young children about their own terrors, worries, and doubts. They construct a sense of buffered permanence, in which the child can discover and explore without any impinging vigilance, her own mind, her creativity, her joy in living. The terrible destructiveness of child abuse lies not just in trauma of what happens but also the tragic loss of what is not provided– protected space for psychological growth.

It is crucial that the child does not become aware of how labor intensive that protracted space is, of the enormous amount of parental activity going on behind the scenes. But as adults, we gradually learn how managed was that cocoon-like space our caregivers were able to provide. Thus the kind of certainty and control inherent in the secure attachment that children feel for there parents is partially an illusion, and it is crucial that that spell not be suddenly broken.

Protect your kids imagination. Fight for that.

11 thoughts on “Kids media and slut-shaming

  1. I think she is rather stupid the things she mention have no effect whatsoever in kids because we the parents make the last shot it seems she is incapable of controlling her daughter and try to blame the tv or dolls for is inaptitude.
    By the way if you think this is why the sexual abuse and child pronografy has increase you are way too wrong.
    Because if someone abuse sexually of your daughter the blame is of the parents,the increase on child pornografy is also the parents faults why you werent there when that happen why the parents didnt protect their childs,why you werent there when your older son started to look in other way to his little sisters friends why you didnt gave them advice

    As you see the blame is of the parents because they bring childs to the world but they dont want to protect them or being parents and thats why this kind of things happens is not the tv fault,is not the dolls fault,is the parents fault.

    By the way i can bet your daughter stoped using underwear when she was ten because of all you said you dont have control over your childs

  2. I’m sorry but how do you make the leap from sexualised adult females in films to child pornography. Any research to back that up at all?

    As for your comments about Ariel in a bikini, correct me if i’m wrong but does she wear a bikini when she is on land – infact which outfit does she wear whilst not in water which you would determine as “Slutty” – all the ones i can see cover just about every inch of skin. So that leaves me curious as to when wearing a bathing costume whilst swimming became “slutty” or sexualised. What should she wear out of interest, its just that i happen to notice that a lack of legs would make wearing a full swimming costume something of an issue.

    As for Liz – shock horror you can see her midriff. I notice her breasts, cleavage and shoulders are totally covered and her trousers are certainly no tighter then the captains, and in case it escaped your attention she is a full grown woman – not a small child. Are full grown women only allowed to dress in outfits that are suitable for small children to go out in on Halloween? If thats the case then i have issues with the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Aladin and obviously Tarzan.

    • Hi Paluski,

      Girls are sexualized in animation and in kids toys. The toys that girls are supposed to play with and the roles that girls are supposed to play are sexualized (see Bratz dolls or Cutlass Liz in Pirates!)

      Ariel is most often shown in a bikini top with her whole stomach exposed. These are cartoon FOR KIDS and this is how females characters are primarily shown. Look at the stats from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media. If it happened once in while, and females has many other roles to play, that would be one thing. But it happens all the time, to almost all roles females play, which are drastically in the minority.

      MM

  3. You just explained the difference between calling the character ‘sexualized’ and calling her ‘slutty.’ One is a description, and one is a judgement, and that is what I commented about.

    By using the word ‘slutty,’ you direct your criticism at the character, not the writers, and, as I said before, it distracts from the issue by directing attention to how shameful it is to show a woman’s body (you had referenced her visible belly button). That shame, of course, is a product of centuries of male dominance and an insistence on purity for women, which is a whole other can of worms.

    Anyway, I don’t want to get into a whole thing. I appreciate you addressing my comment, and I will continue to enjoy the blog.

    • Hi Stephanie,

      You also inspired ANOTHER post about the movie. I only used “sexualized.” Though I don’t know if I agree with you: you are saying, I think, that “slutty” blames the character whereas “sexualized” points the finger at the creator of the character, is that right? Just checked your comment and read you don’t want to get into the whole thing. Totally get that. Just know I’m thinking about what you wrote.

      MM

      • I see where Stephanie is coming from, and I think her point is that “slutty” is a negative judgement and “sexualised” is a neutral term. “Slutty” means “sexualised and therefore bad”.

        I think this is an important distinction because of the whole female purity and modesty paradigm. If my daughters, at whatever age, want to show their bellies then they should not be shamed for that. Of course there are ways of dressing appropriately depending on the situation and I support that, but this is not the same issue. There is no requirement in our culture for male purity or modesty. That’s the double standard.

  4. Yep, male writers, male producers and male toy makers; all perpetuating their sexualized vision of women and femininity. If a male were pictured with earrings and a bare midriff, he’d be gay. Sexualization and subjugation of femininity.

  5. Margot, I agree with you about this. I also think there’s something else going on here. Most of those characters in kids media are not real people who have made choices about how they want to present themselves sexually. They are constructed by writers, illustrators etc i.e. they are artificial. It is appropriate to criticise them and I don’t think that’s slut-shaming as long as the distinction is clear.

    Real people out in the world are not artificial, they are making choices about how to present themselves that are influenced by many things. I do think that criticising individuals for how they present themselves sexually can often amount to slut-shaming. Our children live in a world where they encounter many different people who should be not judged for how they look.

    PS, I still disagree with you about Taylor Swift. More minuses than pluses there.

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