The Sexualization of Teenage Girls

Lea Michele, star of Glee, along with her co-star, Dianna Agron, posed in quasi-pornographic photos for the October issue of GQ magazine. She's supposed to be a high school role model.

We all become acutely aware of our sexuality during puberty. This isn't what sexualization is about. The definition of sexualization, according to the American Psychological Association:

(1) a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or sexual behavior, 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 upon a person. (Especially relevant to children).

We therapists tend to see the issues with sex and teenage girls as multivariate, meaning it isn't only one thing, certainly not television that is the problem, when it comes to kids and sex. What we worry about is the trauma associated with sex, the violence, the pain, dysfunctional relationships, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, rejection, family conflict. Not an exhaustive list, but something to discuss with our teenage children.

And yes, sexualization. Ask a teenage girl if she gets pleasure out of performing certain sex acts that she has told you she does with her boyfriend and she'll look at you like you're crazy. Why would she get pleasure? This is what she's told a girl is supposed to do. Why question that?

One of the workshops we're doing at Relationship-Wise, Inc is educating kids about sex in relationships, and another, timely apparently, is about television. We help them think critically about what they see on TV, and talk about what they watch, discuss how dead-on or how completely off programs can be. We even do this with little children, but on their level.

It's good to think about what you're laughing at, sometimes, at all ages.

The parental complaint about television is that it normalizes sex and violence, two dynamics in our lives that Freud talked about a hundred years ago. Our basic human drives come down to these two: love and aggression, meaning sex and violence. We're supposed to tame them both. We can only imagine what Freud would have said about television grooming teens for sex, feeding the soft porn industry.

The Parent Television Council is on it, is disseminating findings of a new study conducted under the auspices of the APA, the American Psychological Association:

Sexualized Teen Girls: Tinseltown’s New Target--A Study of Teen Female Sexualization in Prime-time TV

. . . mass media messages miscommunicate the true definition of what it means to be female. . . . the message is that their sexuality is their primary identity and most valued commodity.

The findings:

Being underage and female, as opposed to being an adult and female, is associated with more sexual content on television. Older female characters are more likely to have sexual dialogue, but younger female characters portray more sexual behavior.

98% of the sexual incidents on TV involving underage female characters occurred with partners with whom they did not have any form of committed relationship.

Only 5% of the underage female characters communicated any form of dislike for being sexualized. (They don't comprehend what this means).

One or several instances of implied nudity and/or sexual gestures (e.g. suggestive dancing, erotic kissing, erotic touching and/or implied intercourse) were in every onscreen scene that contained sexualized depictions of underage girls.

Conclusion in layman's language

We know from previous research that girls exposed to sexualizing and objectifying media are more likely to experience body dissatisfaction, depression, and lower self-esteem. They look at themselves and think, I'm not pretty enough, not thin enough, not sexy.

It is only a matter of time they'll be talking about breast enhancements.

And "the most powerful medium in the world – television – is exacerbating rather than reversing that trend."

We have work to do.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT