News Hit

On an average spring day, a young father takes his daughter to the park. She wobbles in on her pink bicycle with youthful and innocent laughter. She sits in the baby swing, the only one where she will fit, and her father dutifully starts pushing.

This father and daughter bonding is becoming a more unusual occurrence. As she is pushed higher and higher, the girl moves further away from her father. This girl is five. According to statistics, the gap between them get bigger as she grows older.

Recent studies have shown that by the time she reaches the age of six, this girl is likely to feel pressure to buy brand name clothes. At eight she may begin limiting her food intake, and at age ten could be having Brazilian waxes. If this young girl follows the data before her, at age 12 she is likely to be participating in oral sex, and at age 14 could have had up to 20 sexual partners.

These are the newest group of statistics uncovered by the Herald Sun that show the increased aging of young girls into too young adults.

“They (children) are not emotionally ready for understanding the implications of sexual relationships,” says Professor Louise Newman, Director of the Monash University centre of Development Psychiatry and Psychology. “We’re seeing young people putting themselves at risk and making poor choices.”

Further studies by The Age have shown a double in regrettable sexual activity over the last six years, from 19% to 38% of year 10 to 12 students who have agreed to sex without actually wanting to.

Another study conducted by The Age of 1000 students and their parents also uncovered that while 22% of parents believed their children were sexually active, the reality was that 31% of the students were. Additionally, 13% of parents admitted that they would not know whether their child had participated in sexual intercourse, and 20% of parents had not discussed any sort of sexual education with their child.

“It’s difficult because peer groups have so much more influence than parents,” says Julie Gale, founder of the Kids Free 2B Kids organisation that aims to decrease the amount of sexualised images in advertising. “It’s a time where a lot of parents actually give up.”

“There’s something important about having a period of childhood where a child doesn’t have to scrutinise themselves and worry about being attractive in a sexual sense,” Newman says. “A lot of young children look up to their siblings and try to copy them. The younger one will certainly be influenced.”

“Children can sometimes idolise the older sibling and want to imitate them, therefore unconsciously forcing that child to grow up faster,” says Sarah*, owner of Children’s Makeup Parties*. “Where the age gap widens, this can in some cases put pressure on the youngest.”

As cited in the Herald Sun, child development experts say that children are becoming increasingly sexualised, entering their tweens, the developing years between childhood and teenagers, at the younger age of six.

“It’s part of the conditioning process,” says Julie Millowick, deputy head of photography at La Trobe University. “Particularly if you’re female you’ve had this conditioning ever since you could absorb this kind of information. It’s a totally unrealistic expectation on young people.”

“In the media we’re saturated with generally tragic stories of so called celebrities,” says Newman. “We’re living within a popular culture that romanticizes these sorts of disturbed and dysfunctional individuals, and children are not in a position to evaluate that.”

Gale says that with companies employing anthropologists and neuroscientists to help market their products, children are being further manipulated by advertising and are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

“They (the companies) are using a lot of implicit messages that kids, even if they’re taught media literacy, can never unwrap because it’s affecting the subconscious mind,” she says. “It’s telling us much more about the commercial imperative,” Newman says. “The tween market is a created market, and if there’s profit to be made we’re likely to see these extensions.”

But Sarah defends businesses such as her own which give young girls a few feminine hours of fun, including jewellery stations and party games.

“I am not teaching girls’ makeup application or suggesting they wear makeup everyday,” she says. “I am hired as a treat for a birthday party. I am yet to come across a child who tells me they wear makeup on a regular basis.”

“It depends on what kind of glamour parties,” Gale says. “It’s consumerism gone mad in one respect. What happened to parties in the backyard and having a bit of fun?”

“In the end the decision is up to the parents,” says Sarah. “Little girls wearing bras and matching knickers is a different story.”

Indeed, major clothing chains have been slammed for promoting products to children that are deemed too adult. Examples include adult slogans on baby and toddler wear at Cotton On, and crop top style bras being marketed to toddlers at the family store Target.

“I’ve taken them (Target) to task before, and I did get them to withdraw some sexualised underwear for girls around the age of eight,” Gale says. “But there are a lot of general department stores who need to get a whole lot more savvy about why it’s not a good idea.”

“Recent inquires we have made have allowed media to keep advertising, to self regulate,” says Newman. “And what we’re seeing is the failure of self regulation.”

Newman has also received phone calls from paedophiles, describing to her their use of advertising material with children in it for sexual purposes.

“These are constructed images,” says Millowick. “There’s somebody in charge of directing the model and making a decision about what the models wears or doesn’t wear. All of these decisions are crucial to how the photo is going to be interpreted by the viewer.”

However, constructed advertisements have not raised the issue of art versus pornography; it was the photographic exhibition of Bill Henson in 2008, and then references to Polixeni Papapetrou that have sparked controversy.

“The incredible hysteria that happened around the Bill Henson issue brought forward a lot of rash, extreme statements that were either completely inaccurate or partially inaccurate,” defends Millowick.

“In 2003 when Polly (Papapetrou) made that work it was widely exhibited to great acclaim, and not once was there a reference to any sort of exploitation of the child or any kind of sexual reference. Unfortunately her work got dragged into it, quite unfairly.”

“I don’t think there’s any need for children to be portrayed naked for any purpose, art or otherwise,” Gale states. “Children are certainly not old enough to give proper consent.”

Yet Newman disagrees where the content of the photograph does not promote or encourage the exploitation of children or young people.

“There’s nothing wrong with representation of children and human development for the purpose of capturing that in an artistic way,” says Newman. “The problem is how that’s shown, where that’s shown and who watches it. Whether these should be on public display is another issue.”

The sexual exploitation of children and teenagers is a growing issue not just in Australia, but around the globe. And further American trends of sexualisation and the negative impact it is having on individuals are beginning to reach Australian borders.

In the past year, 350,000 teenagers from the United States had cosmetic surgery. Reported in Dolly magazine, one 18-year-old had liposuction to her stomach, legs and hips, along with receiving breast implants, to fit into her ideal formal dress.

“How widespread it is we don’t really know,” Newman says of the trend. “But it certainly happens.”

“We’ve got young ones here requesting various cosmetic procedures, and of course there’s absolutely no reason why a 15 or 16-year-old would need to have Botox. We live in a society that overemphasises stereotypical images of female beauty.”

Further controversy has been sparked by the reworking of toddler idol, Dora the Explorer, into a tween image. While the image is marketed to an older age group in an attempt to keep them in touch with their childhood, it can also have a negative effect on the younger audience.

“This sort of souped up, sexualised Dora is very inappropriate,” says Newman. “They (children) don’t need to be exposed to that.”

Some parents disagree; stating that the previous image was unfeminine and that the reworked character depicts what a young girl looks like in the modern world.

“It’s hard to measure,” Gale says. “We tend to say that one doll, one billboard, one TV show might not make a difference, but it’s the onslaught of these sexualised messages that has an impact.”

“I don’t want to wrap kids up in cotton wool, but unless we actually do bring in some policy and legislative changes, unless we do keep educating parents as well as the corporate world that we’re on a downward slide with sexualisation, it will keep on getting worse.”

“What needs to happen is some serious research in Australia,” says Newman. “There’s no reason to expect that we won’t follow the American trend where these sorts of advertising and images have saturated the market.”

But until then there is one innocent girl in a park whose future may still be marketed by the corporate world. She sits back on her bike to leave and wobbles once again, a sign that the training wheels have only recently been removed.

A sign that one day, she too, will have to grow up.

*Name and company name have been altered for privacy purposes.