The Hypersexualisation of young teenage girls in mainstream media - why?
By Frances Bullock
TW: Grooming, abuse.
When I was a teenager I was obsessed with playing with my friends and staying out for as long as possible before my parents would shout at me to come and eat my dinner. Social media hadn't really taken off back then and Facebook was entirely new, so growing up there wasn't much pressure coming from outside influences. In today's society there is so much stress on how we ought to be and there's an increasing obsession with making teenagers grow up so quickly that we barely even get a glimpse of innocence from the second they're thrown into the limelight.
A lot has clearly changed since I was a teenager, with children aged 2-5 watching around 32 hours per week of TV and those aged slightly older's statistics only slightly less due to schooling. It's not uncommon to see children with their own phones or even toddlers using their parent's devices to keep them entertained. It's no wonder that today's youth are so easily influenced when social ideals are constantly pushed in their faces without them even realising.
Not only has social media been having an impressive if not scary influence on today's youth, it's also giving people a platform to be able to groom them into submission. Young celebrities such as Millie Bobby Brown (best known for her role in Stranger Things) are seen all over social media and magazine covers looking much older than her actual age. Millie in particular has been subjected to a lot of media coverage surrounding her appearance, something that no 16 year old ought to endure. There have been rumours about older men in the music industry grooming her over popular social media platforms such as Instagram which have escalated when Millie chose to defend the man who was apparently grooming her. This kind of behaviour isn't just limited to celebrities and they also cannot be blamed for it. If you look at any teenage girl nowadays they will look the same - makeup done, hair extensions and extremely grown up outfits, something I as a teenager had no clue about.
However, I think it's important to remember that this isn't entirely new to us. There was a cultural shift in the 1990s where society began to treat girls like women, forcing them to grow up before they should. I think all women can agree on is that we had to grow up much faster than our male peers, VeryWellMind states that women are simply raised with certain stereotypes - most of which aren't realised by parents, teachers and other people in positions of power. Britney Spears appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1999 aged 16 in just pyjama shorts and a bra whilst clutching a stuffed toy, Natalie Portman played a role in the film 'Leon' aged 12 about a young girl who seduces a much older man, Dominique Swain played the notorious role of a young girl who also seduces an older man in the classic film 'Lolita' aged only 15. Are you noticing a theme here? Does it make you uncomfortable? Well listen to this. Make note of this number: 10. Brooke Shields did a promo shoot for 'Pretty Baby' and in this shoot Shields was decorated in makeup, she had been oiled up and worst of all she did all of this nude. Remember that number I told you about? I'm sure you've figured it out by now. Brooke Shields was 10 years old when this traumatic event happened. To make matters worse, when Shields decided to take legal action to gain the rights to the photographs in order to stop them being reproduced she was denied and in turn lost her court case. What's becoming apparent here is that not only is there an incredible pressure on young girls to quickly adapt to societal standards, there is also an obsession with turning prepubescent girls into sex symbols whether they like it or not. Hinshaw writes:"Definitions of sexy and pretty have narrowed enormously in recent years-with the ever escalating demand that girls turn themselves into sexual objects. For a girl to fit the acceptable look now requires almost superhuman commitment to dieting, waxing, applying makeup, and shopping, and for some girls, plastic surgery has also come to seem like a minimum requirement. These trends begin at frighteningly young ages."
The issue is that the blame is being put on these young girls for being what some call "jail-bait' - a term used to describe a minor who an adult finds sexually attractive. Our society is still refusing to recognise that these girls are a product of grooming and hypersexualisation, something that social media, television and music videos drill so deeply into our heads. Every day we see images of how we ought to be and eventually we start to become those things without realising. Another huge influencer is the pornography industry, a media giant that displays images of perfect women and perfect men together. So not only are teenagers comparing themselves to the people on screen, they also learn to imitate behaviour and despite the 18+ restrictions, teenagers still have such easy access to it with a BBC Three survey finding that 60% of people around the age of 14 had seen pornographic content (with only 22% saying they had been purposely looking for it).
Evidently sex is all over social media, and with typical sign-up age restrictions being 13+ it's not exactly surprising that our young people are changing to meet the standards being broadcast to them. Safeguarding today's youth is more important than ever, but we must begin to understand that these changes are unlikely to be reversible and therefore we must learn to educate these vulnerable minds on the effects of what they're consuming rather than pushing blame onto them regarding something out of all of our control.