A common refrain is that to acknowledge sexualised clothing, toys and products marketed to girls is to ‘shame’ them for their ‘choices’. The sexualisation of girls has very little to do with girls' choices, and much more to do with companies, advertisers and marketers - whose financial interests are at stake. 

Calling out retailers that manufacture and sell padded push-up bras and g-strings for pre-pubescent girls, clothing and underwear with sexualised and suggestive slogans and merchandise embedded with the logo of global pornography brand Playboy is not shaming girls. It is holding them accountable.

Another accusation from sexualisation deniers is that accurately labelling children’s clothing as sexualised is tantamount to arguing children are inviting sexual attention or even sexual assaults from grown men. We in no way suggest girls or victims are responsible for crimes against them. Research shows the sexualisation of children may actually play a role in ‘grooming’ them for abuse.

Dr Emma Rush, co-author of Corporate Paedophilia report writes: “Premature sexualisation also erases the line between who is and is not sexually mature, and as such, may increase the risk of child sexual abuse by undermining the important social norm that children are sexually unavailable.”

This is not an issue of personal offence or taste. Our opposition is based on documented evidence of harm.

Researcher Rebecca Whisnant distinguishes between offence and harm. Offence is “something that happens in one’s head”,  but harm is “an objective condition, not a way of feeling; to be harmed is to have one’s interests set back, to be made worse off, to have one’s circumstances made worse than they were...Whether a person is harmed does not depend on how she feels.”

A company attempting to paint those who object to their routine sexual exploitation of women and girls as easily offended, prudish, moralisers or religious fundamentalists is a deliberate tactic to silence those who might threaten their profits.

Some people who oppose our work challenging the sexualisation of girls claim that those who object to sexualisation are the ones sexualising children.

The claim that identifying or speaking about children being sexualised constitutes sexualisation is a deliberate misrepresentation of what sexualisation is and how it works. The problem is not with child advocates identifying where adults have sexualised children - but in adults sexualising children. While it’s convenient for those with vested interest to paint critics this way,  companies who choose to deliberately costume, style and pose children in adult, sexualised ways for profit deserve to  be called out and held accountable for the harms they cause. (See also: 'What is sexualisation?')

According to The American Psychological Association, sexualisation occurs when:

1. a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
2. a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
3. a person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
4. sexuality is inappropriately imposed on a person

Any one of these is an indication of sexualisation. The fourth is especially relevant to children. When children are imbued with adult sexuality, it is often imposed on rather than chosen by them. Self-motivated sexual exploration, on the other hand, is not sexualisation by our definition, nor is age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality.

Opposing sexualisation is not the same as opposing sex or sexuality. We are for a culture in which individuals are able to develop and express healthy sexuality. To achieve this we must resist a culture that tells us we are no more than the sum of our sexual parts.

This video put together by Renee Chopping, provides a useful introduction to the issue.

See also:

Corporate Paedophilia: Sexualisation of children in Australia, Emma Rush, Andrew La Nauze, The Australia Institute, October 2006 

Letting Children Be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia, Emma Rush, Andrew La Nauze, The Australia Institute, December 2006

American Psychological Association Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualisation of Girls (2008) 

Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, ed Melinda Tankard Reist (Spinifex Press 2009)

‘The Market is Eating Our Children’, Dr Emma Rush, February 10, 2012 

Sexual objectification occurs when a person (most often a woman) is treated as a body or series of body parts for others’ use and consumption, when her physical attributes and sexual capabilities are regarded as representative of her whole self or seen as determining her worth.

Objectifying representations of women include depictions of women without heads or faces, reduced to a single body part, portrayed as interchangeable, as a stand-in for an object or defined by their sexual availability.

When women are treated as sexual objects and their value is based on their physical attractiveness and sexuality to the exclusion of other characteristics, skills and attributes, this is harmful. It leads to sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination and men’s violence against women. It reinforces women’s status as second-class citizens, as existing for men’s sexual use and enjoyment, rather than fully human.

The harms of sexually objectifying portrayals of women are well established. A review of twenty years of research, from 109 publications containing 135 studies found:
“consistent evidence that…everyday exposure to this content is directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women…exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.” We have long argued the objectification of women should be regarded as a discriminatory practice, a form of sexual harassment threatening the health, well-being and status of women and girls.

See also:

The Sexy Lie - Dr Caroline Heldman TED talk https://www.collectiveshout.org/watch_sexual_objectification_explained

The CHIPS test https://www.collectiveshout.org/what_would_advertising_look_like_without_objectification

Keeping Women in their Place: Objectification in Advertising - Jennifer Moss https://www.collectiveshout.org/as_subtle_as_the_pose

‘Women’s bodies are not sex aids: The backlash against corporate exploitation of women’, Lydia Turner, MTR, November 1, 2010 https://melindatankardreist.com/2010/11/womens-bodies-are-not-sex-aids/