During this week Babies and more has proposed to analyze in depth the worrying issue of the hypersexualization of our children, especially when it comes to girls. We have done this with an article in which we have given an overview of the problem and with a series of interviews with specialists in child psychology.
We finish today with this interview with Olga Carmona, clinical psychologist and expert in Child-Juvenile Psychopathology to whom we can read in his page Ceibe Psychology.
Is there really a pattern of hypersexualization of girls in advertising?
Yes, it exists and could be generalized to all developed countries. In 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) published a document in which the sexualizing tendency of our children in modern societies was already denounced.
What did that report say?
The APA noted a concern that the phenomenon was reflected in the entire spectrum of children, clothing, toys, video games, TV series aimed at that audience, placing too much emphasis on the benefits that eroticism can provide, especially to girls. This study showed that girls, from the age of 4 are bombarded with models of social success that succeed in life having those physical attributes that the market imposes, not for personal or professional qualities. In short, they said that sexuality ends up excluding other aspects of personality and becomes the only valid parameter to judge the worth of an individual.
What does all this materialize?
The little ones in the house are not busy playing with plasticine, coloring or learning to ride a bicycle. Now they insist on having the type of Beyoncé, dancing like Shakira, wearing tops and miniskirts that leave their navel in the air, and worry about when their parents will give them permission to get a tattoo, a piercing and a breast augmentation that allows them drive the boys crazy.
What reasons are there for this aberrant phenomenon?
The reasons are basically consumption. Fashion, the main architect of the use of girls as an advertising claim as an increasingly young Lolitas, drives this image as a powerful commercial hook to sell their products.
Our society has not freed itself from machismo, right?
On the other hand, we live in a society with deep contradictions and with large doses of double standards. Sex sells in any case, and society's attitude towards female sexuality is at least confusing and anchored in macho patterns. On the one hand, a woman who is provocatively dressed is criticized, but a girl dressed as a woman, wearing makeup, with heels and miniskirt, and a woman dressed as a girl, bordering the limits of pedophilia are accepted.
And deepening a little more could be found reasons that tend to chronify machismo, that is, if a sexuality continues to be transmitted where women respond to patterns not established by them, not even negotiated, and if done since childhood, it is much easier to have after a generation of passive women who live to meet the expectations of a world dominated by men.
Why are girls dragged to follow these patterns?
It is not that they are drawn to follow it, it is that they are being socialized, endocultured in an environment in which certain behaviors are reinforced.
If they are bombed from the cradle with an environment that tells them that if they dress in such a way, if they “disguise” women, if they wiggle as their ideals of success, they will receive social approval, they will achieve success , they (and they) will. At an early age, children learn basically by imitation, they look for models to imitate, references that tell them how to behave in a world for them confusing, indecipherable and difficult. If the message that arrives to them is that of a society that overvalues a certain idea of sex, they will accept it as valid and adopt the model.
What effects can this have on your psychosexual development?
The effects are still unpredictable, although we have already begun to find profound imbalances in the maturational development of children. There is, for example, a precocity in the appearance of adolescence, and the term preadolescence appears, which in previous generations did not even exist.
This means that our children are skipping stages of development and this always implies a mismatch. For example, we have data that in France 37% of girls claim to be on a diet, conversations about fashion and ideal weight appear before, girls are constantly stimulated by television, youth magazines, and are assuming with a perverse naturalness their status as sexual objects, they acquire the belief that society will quote them based on how attractive they are to men.
To what extent have girls' vital goals changed?
There are studies that conclude that the objectives of the girls of the second half of the last century, that is, the mothers of these girls, were to succeed in studies, be valued as people and create their own professional path, while the objective of Today's girls are a good physicist even if they have to go through the operating room.
Serve as an example that a breast augmentation operation is one of the parents' most frequent gifts before they turn 18. The girls sue him for his birthday or for Christmas and go to the aesthetic clinics with the photo of his idol to have his chest, lips or chin ... We also found an increase in the percentages of girls affected by eating disorders, mainly anorexia and bulimia, which begin between the ages of five and nine. In the case of children there is also a greater affectation than in previous years.
Is the discovery and normal development of sexuality perverted with this forced precocity?
Exactly, I would like not to overlook that this hypersexualization of the infantile universe entails a very violent approach to the world of adult sexuality, skipping stages, missing essential experiences that introduce them in an healthy way to an essential part of what will later be their life. as a couple and their way of understanding social relationships, not just sexual.
Most experts agree that we have decreased the quality of life of our children. The main index of adequate development is emotional well-being, without impositions of the adult world for those who are not, nor should be, prepared. Eroticism, sensuality, sexuality are capacities that will gradually be given, adopting their specific form at each stage of development and approaching adult patterns towards adolescence. Of course there is sexuality in children, because it is a human condition, but it manifests itself in a very different way from what the media tell us and tell them. It expresses itself in the awareness of gender identity, in knowing that it is male or female, in role plays (dads and moms), in the curiosity to know the differences in the body of the other, but there is no eroticization in it . It is a process that, if not adulterated by toxic interests, will lead them to live a free adult sexuality.
What can parents do to avoid or moderate this influence?
Be attentive, be present. Participate in the lives of our children in a real way, be interested in what they read, what they see, channel and filter the huge bombardment that comes everywhere. Dose the media. Talk, talk, talk, talk. Listen, listen, listen. Help them differentiate what is reality from what is fiction, what are values that make you grow as a person and what are ornaments, makeup.
What other things can parents do?
Offer alternatives to mitigate the effect, alternatives in which we participate that have to do with respect, with empathy, with generosity, with tenacity, with personal effort. And, above all, be a reference through the example.
For this and for everything else in education and parenting, we are your mirror and you will see the world through us, our filter will be your filter and our way of acting will definitely permeate yours.
Thus, when the difficult years come, adolescence, early or not, will have roots, will have criteria. They will not be invulnerable and of course they will be influenced by social pressures but we will have left a solid ground in their personality that will help them know how to differentiate and leave minimally unharmed from such a difficult and essential trance.
At what age should we start sex education?
From the beginning and depending on your own demand. They guide us. I am not in favor of recipes because nothing is more complex than human psychology and any recipe sins of reductionism and simplicity, but there are some general guidelines to talk about sexuality with children. Do not give more information than what they ask because they need to process each new data at their own pace and without flooding; never lie, do not invent fables of French storks that, on the other hand, do not stop but lay eggs. Do not use euphemisms to name the genitals, because that implies a hiding place, a failure to call things by name and children are expert contradiction detectors. When a child asks, the question should be returned to first know what he knows about what he is asking and where he has obtained the information.
It is complicated, of course, but indispensable.
It occurs to me that surely many parents will need to do a personal job related to their own sexuality in order to respond with affection, naturalness and honesty. Sexuality is not something parallel to our existence, but it is part of us, an essential part of our construction and journey as human beings, and as such, it must be transmitted to our children.
We greatly appreciate the psychologist Olga Carmona this interview that she has granted to Babies and more, and we hope to continue counting in the future of your advice.
We finish with this our week dedicated to In-depth analysis of the phenomenon of girls' hypersexualization and we hope that it has served our readers to know it better and mitigate its effects on their daughters and sons.
