non-fic speech

“Sex As A Commodity”
Walk through the halls of a middle or high school, maybe even a mall, and you’ll find at least one girl garishly dressed. They weren’t genetically coded to pick out the tightest shirt or share the same shoes as a hooker, and they probably didn’t teach themselves to apply makeup on most of their face. It’s a combination of media and childhood influences that taught these young girls that beauty depends on a product’s visual appeal.
Media and merchandise can do damage a young girl’s development and, sometimes, even their health. As the youth are fed with beliefs that there is a specific bar set on “beauty,” their self-esteem, emotional and sexual development, and mental and physical health can be risked.
Let’s start at the beginning. As a child, sexualized images fly over their heads because most of their focus is based on the toys they play with, like Barbie or Bratz. But since fantasy and imagination play such an important part in how children play with them, these particular dolls can limit their views when they grow up.
The American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls released a report in February 2007 targetting the Bratz dolls by its name. The report highlights sexual societal messages aimed at pre-teen girls and its worrisome influence on girls as young as four.
Even Scholastic Inc, a discounted book distributer for students and teachers, took a hit on the dolls by actually pulled Bratz products off their roster. Now, in North America and Canada, Scholastic refuses to market any of those products because of increasing parents and psychologists’ complaints about the Bratz’s “precocious sexuality.”
Bratz dolls are seen as the edgier version of Barbie. It’s obvious with their more-skin-than-clothes mantra and the items they choose to pair it with, like fishnet stockings and feather boas. Their facial expressions are also more on the edgy side with their Angelina Jolie-like lips and seductive eyes. Because young girls emulate these figures, it’s important to separate reality versus fantasy. They may want to dress up like them, but to what degree? The young girl may think she’s being “fashionable” but it can translate to oversexuality and other people may pick up on it.
Though Barbie has a more wholesome appeal versus the Bratz dolls, they’re also criticized too. If Barbie were a real person, she’d be standing at 7 feet tall with a waistline of 18 inches and a bustling of 38-40. This is so unrealistic that she would need to walk on all fours just to support her proportions. She is seen almost everywhere at toy stores and tv, being the first doll to become an adult figure in the child’s life. Over time, she became an icon, a role model, a figure for young girls and changes the child’s role of caretaker to passive bystander or observer of a figure who had it all.
It’s true that by the time a girl hits seventeen, she has received over 250,000 such commercial messages through the media. Body images regarding weight or appearance are most likely shoved into their heads. These messages pollute their clarity of mind because it can typically lead to the fear of being overweight, becoming malnourished or excessively thin, and ultimately to clinical eating disorders. Did you know that eating disorders are the most lethal of all of the mental health disorders, killing 6-13% of their victims, and of that 87% of whom are under the age of 20?
Aside from the possibility of developing eating disorders, there’s other potential health risks too. When young girls become oversexualized, it shatters their confidence with their own self that can lead to shame or anxiety. The problem gets darker when there’s another possibility of developing low self-esteem and sometimes depression, since they can’t measure up with these false standards.
Teen People magazine surveyed their readers and this is what they got. 27% of girls said that the media pressures them to have a perfect body. 68% of girls in a study of Stanford University students felt worse about their own appearance after skimming through women’s magazines. The number one wish for girls 11 to 17 is to be thinner. And appallingly, girls as young as age 5 have expressed fears of getting fat.
In a survey I conducted myself, 77% of random responders agreed that toys like Barbie and Bratz can impact a child’s development while 44.4% agreed that the impact is a negative one.
Is the power found in these plastic dolls just to get boys to look at you and like you? Because these images are sold as a kind of feminist-inspired power, many girls don't realize that this kind of power is not the kind that will help them to be successful, happy adults.
But how bad is really these dolls? Perhaps more than the average person would notice. As consumers, we never look beyond the image, especially when purchasing toys. But these subliminal messages that marketers are responding to cause more damage than meets the eye. Producer’s are taking advantage of a young girls' desire to look sexy, something pop culture suggests is more valuable than being smart. There’s an emphasis on attractiveness and we can see it everywhere, everyday.
As John Muir once said, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”