 |
| Clothes marketed to young kids often mix adult elements like padded tops with childlike flourishes like flowers or polka dots, a new study finds. |
The sexy-clothes trend
Handwringing over the sexualization of young girls is a common theme
both in the media and in the mall. In 2007, Wal-Mart pulled a pair of
girls' underwear with the words "Who needs credit cards … " on the front
and "when you have Santa" on the back from the shelves after parental
outcry. Those extreme cases get people's ire up, said Sharon Lamb, a
professor of mental health at the University of Massachusetts in Boston
who was not involved in the research. But the trend is more insidious than single cases make it out to be, Lamb told LiveScience. [10 Surprising Sex Statistics]
"It's not just this most outrageous thing," said Lamb, author of
"Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketer's Schemes"
(St. Martin's Press, 2006). "It's a lot of subtle little things, too."
In 2007, Lamb was part of an American Psychological Association Task Force that reviewed the research on
the consequences of sexualization for young girls. The task force found
that girls who buy into sexualizing media messages are more likely to
experience low self-esteem,
depression and eating disorders. One 1998 study found that girls made
body-conscious by wearing swimsuits while they did a math test in an
empty room did worse on the test than girls completing the same test
while wearing sweaters. There were no differences in test-taking
performance between boys wearing swimsuits and boys wearing sweaters,
suggesting a link between self-objectification and shame and anxiety in girls.
In one yet-unpublished study, Murnen and her research team
asked volunteers to look at pictures of the same fifth-grader dressed
in sexualized, childish-but-sexualized, or non-sexualized clothing. The
adult volunteers viewed the sexualized version of the girl as less
competent, less intelligent, less moral and less self-respecting.
"And she's a fifth-grade girl!" Murnen said. "The fact that they
consider her less moral is really disturbing, as if we do blame her for
her clothing choice."