Search results for sexualization girls

From Our Archives: Halloween

Lisa Wade, PhD on October 21, 2013

It’s that time of year again!  We are about to embark on ten straight days of Sociological Halloween Images.  In the meantime, enjoy our collection of Halloween posts from years past or visit our Halloween-themed Pinterest page.

Just For Fun

Halloween, Politics, and Culture

Race and Ethnicity

Gender

Gender and Kids

The intersection of Race, Class, and Gender

And, for no conceivable reason…

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Power, Mickey Mouse, and the Infantilization of Women

Lisa Wade, PhD on August 8, 2013

Here and there the media becomes interested in the sexualization of little girls and, when they do, I often get a call from a reporter or two.  I’ve yet to see any of them pick up on what I think is the really interesting story.  They want to talk about child models, little girls in beauty pageants, and the transitional tween years for Disney star prodigies, but I always want to add into the mix the infantilization of adult women.

The sexualization of girls and the infantilization of adult women are two sides of the same coin.  They both tell us that we should find youth, inexperience, and naivete sexy in women, but not in men.  This reinforces a power and status difference between men and women, where vulnerability, weakness, and dependency and their opposites are gendered traits: desirable in one sex but not the other.

Now, thanks to @BonneZ, I know that this has something interesting to do with Mickey Mouse.

The original Mouse, Stephen Jay Gould has observed, was a kind of nasty character.  But, as he has evolved into the “cute and inoffensive host to a magic kingdom,” he has appeared increasingly childlike. This six figures below indicate Mickey’s evolution over time:

1

Childlike features, Gould argues, inspire a need to nurture: “When we see a living creature with babyish features,” he writes, “we feel an automatic surge of disarming tenderness.”   Allison Guy observes that we see a similar trend in recent toy makeovers — larger eyes, bigger heads, fatter stumpier limbs — but we see this primarily in toys aimed at infants and girls, not boys:

1 2 3

Guy interprets this trend as the “result of a cultural imperative for women to embody both the cute and the sexual.”  So, women don “cute” clothes with colorful patterns associated with children and wear “flippy skirts” and “baby doll” t-shirts. They wear eyeliner to give the illusion of the large eyes of childhood, foundation to hide the marks of aging on the face, and pink on their cheeks to mimic the blush of youth.  They are taught these imperatives from an early age.

What does it mean that feminine beauty is conflated with youthfulness, but masculine beauty is not — that we want women to be both cute and sexual?  It means that we feel comfortable with women who seem helpless and require taking care of, perhaps we even encourage or demand these traits from women.  Perhaps these childlike characteristics are most comforting in women who are, in fact, the least needy; I submit that we are more accepting of powerful women when they perform girlish beauty.  When they don’t, they are often perceived as threatening or unlikable.

So, yes, the sexualization of girls is interesting — and no doubt it’s no good for girls and likely contributes to older men’s sexual interest in young women — but it’s not just about sexualizing kids early.  It’s about infantilizing adult women, too, as a way to remind women of their prescribed social position relative to men.

Cross-posted at Jezebel and Pacific Standard.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

From Our Archives: Halloween

Lisa Wade, PhD on October 30, 2012

Enjoy our collection of Halloween posts from years past or visit our Pinterest page with all of our Halloween-related imagery:

Just For Fun

Halloween and Politics

Race and Ethnicity

Gender

The intersection of Race, Class, and Gender

And, for no conceivable reason…

 

Boy and Girl “Toddler” Cookie Monster Costumes

Lisa Wade, PhD on October 25, 2012

On the heels of yesterday’s post, illustrating the gender binary in Halloween costumes, compare the “Toddler Girls” vs “Toddler Boys” Cookie Monster Halloween costumes at Party City:

“We’re not joking when we say gender expectations and sexualization start early,” writes the blogger for Radical Notions.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Sexual Objectification (Part 1): What is It?

Caroline Heldman, PhD on July 2, 2012

This is the first part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. Cross-posted at Ms.,  BroadBlogs, and Caroline Heldman’s Blog.

Around since the 1970s and associated with curmudgeonly second-wave feminists, the phrase “sexual objectification” can inspire eye-rolling. The phenomenon, however, is more rampant than ever in popular culture.  Today women’s sexual objectification is celebrated as a form of female empowerment.  This has enabled a new era of sexual objectification, characterized by greater exposure to advertising in general, and increased sexual explicitness in advertising, magazines, television shows, movies, video games, music videos, television news, and “reality” television.

What is sexual objectification?  If objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like an object (a non-thinking thing that can be used however one likes), then sexual objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure.

How do we know sexual objectification when we see it?  Building on the work of Nussbaum and Langton, I’ve devised the Sex Object Test (SOT) to measure the presence of sexual objectification in images.  I proprose that sexual objectification is present if the answer to any of the following seven questions is “yes.”

1) Does the image show only part(s) of a sexualized person’s body?
Headless women, for example, make it easy to see her as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact:
We get the same effect when we show women from behind, with an added layer of sexual violability. American Apparel seems to be a particular fan of this approach:

2) Does the image present a sexualized person as a stand-in for an object?

The breasts of the woman in this beer ad, for example, are conflated with the cans:

Likewise, the woman in this fashion spread in Details in which a woman becomes a table upon which things are perched. She is reduced to an inanimate object, a useful tool for the assumed heterosexual male viewer:
Or sometimes objects themselves are made to look like women, like this series of sinks and urinals shaped like women’s bodies and mouths and these everyday items, like pencil sharpeners.

3) Does the image show a sexualized person as interchangeable? 
Interchangeability is a common advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are fungible. And like objects, “more is better,” a market sentiment that erases the worth of individual women. The image below advertising Mercedes-Benz presents just part of a woman’s body (breasts) as interchangeable and additive:

This image of a set of Victoria’s Secret models, borrowed from a previous SocImages post, has a similar effect. Their hair and skin color varies slightly, but they are also presented as all of a kind:

4) Does the image affirm the idea of violating the bodily integrity of a sexualized person that can’t consent?

This ad, for example, shows an incapacitated woman in a sexualized positionwith a male protagonist holding her on a leash. It glamorizes the possibility that he has attacked and subdued her:

5) Does the image suggest that sexual availability is the defining characteristic of the person? 

This ad, with the copy “now open,” sends the message that this woman is for sex.  If she is open for business, then she presumably can be had by anyone.

6) Does the image show a sexualized person as a commodity (something that can be bought and sold)?

By definition, objects can be bought and sold, but some images portray women as everyday commodities.  Conflating women with food is a common sub-category.  As an example, Meredith Bean, Ph.D., sent in this photo of a Massive Melons “energy” drink sold in New Zealand:
In the ad below for Red Tape shoes, women are literally for sale:

7) Does the image treat a sexualized person’s body as a canvas?

In the two images below, women’s bodies are presented as a particular type of object: a canvas that is marked up or drawn upon.

——————

The damage caused by widespread female objectification in popular culture is not just theoretical.  We now have over ten years of research showing that living in an objectifying society is highly toxic for girls and women, as is described in Part 2 of this series.

Caroline Heldman is a professor of politics at Occidental College. You can follow her at her blog and on Twitter and Facebook.

This Month in Sociological Images (April 2012)

SocImages on April 30, 2012

Tenure!

Lisa Wade is celebrating the news that, come Fall, she will be a tenured professor at Occidental College!  Now that she’s in the “golden handcuffs,” she can say all the stuff she’s been holding back on Twitter and Facebook. :)

New Course Guide:

New Pinterest Page: 

Best of April:

Two of our posts received over 1,000 “likes” on Facebook this month:

Other popular posts in April include:

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.

You can also follow Gwen’s great Twitter feed or find Lisa on both Twitter and Facebook (she just joined this month!).

Most of the rest of the team is on Twitter too: @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, @jaylivingston, and @wendyphd.

Links this Month: 

Course Guide for Sexuality & Society

Lisa Wade, PhD on January 12, 2012

Course Guide for
SEXUALITY AND SOCIETY
(last updated 01/2012)


Developed by Amanda M. Jungels
Georgia State University

 

Integrating/Interrogating Biological and Social Views of Sexuality

Challenging Evolutionary Perspectives on Sex/Sexuality

Social Construction of (Biological) Sex


Social Construction: Changing Views on Sexuality

 

Sexuality and Social Categories

Social Construction of Gender

Transgender/Third Gender/Gender Queer

Social Construction of Sexual Orientation

 

Learning about Sex/Sex Education           

Sex Education

Abstinence vs. Comprehensive Sex Ed

Sexual Practices

 

The Sexual Body

The Female Body

Menstruation

 

Presenting the Female Body as Unclean: Removing Body Hair

 

Presenting the Female Body as Unclean: Douching

Bodily Modification and Female Genital Cutting

 

Social Construction of the Male Body/Male Sexuality

Presenting the Penis as a Dangerous Weapon

 

Representing Sex

Sexualization of Children’s Products

Sex in the Media

Ejaculation and Phallic Imagery

Sex and Violence

Objectification

Infantilization of Women

Forced/Coerced Sex

Sexual Script

Rape Culture

Use of Alcohol as a Tool for Coercive Sex

Sexual Assault Prevention Campaigns

 

Commercial Sex

Pornography

Contemporary Views on Prostitution

Historical Perspectives on Prostitution

Sex Trafficking

Other Forms of Sex Work

Social Control of Sex Work

 

Reproduction/Abortion

Reproduction

Abortion

 

Sterilization

 

Contemporary GLBT Issues

Gay Rights Movement

GLBT Parenting

Same-Sex Marriage

GLBT-Related Legislation

“Baby Lips”: Thanks for the Infantilization, Maybelline

Lisa Wade, PhD on December 16, 2011

Cross-posted at Ms.

Maybelline’s brand of lip gloss, “baby lips,” is a straightforward example of the infantilization of adult women:

We should be worried about the infantilization of women for two reasons:

First, it’s directly related to the sexualization of young girls.  The two phenomena, when considered together, clearly point to the convergence of female children and adult sexuality.  As I wrote in a previous post:

…on the one hand, women are portrayed as little girls, as coyly innocent, as lacking in power and maturity. On the other hand, child-likeness is sexy, and girls are portrayed as Lolitas whose innocence is questionable.

Second, the need for women to look like babies to be beautiful (and the requirement for women to be beautiful), turns aging into a trauma for women.  Susan Sontag, in her (truly beautiful) essay The Double Standard of Aging, put it this way:

The great advantage men have is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man… A man does not grieve when he loses the smooth, unlined, hairless skin of a boy. For he has only exchanged one form of attractiveness for another…

There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every gray hair, is a defeat.

A very lucrative defeat for Maybelline, if we buy into it.

More of the quote at a previous post.  And, for more on the infantilization of women, see our posts on baby teeth, lady spanking, Glee, this collection of examples, a vintage example, and the Halloween edition. Link via BagNewsNotes.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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