Psychologists documented that even little girls in America's small-town heartland have been highly sexualized by popular culture. The study published in the journal 'Sex Roles' conducted at Knox College in Galesburg, IL found that the vast majority of young girls want to emulate dolls dressed like prostitutes rather than those wearing stylish, loose-fitting clothing.
For background, read School Sexualization Standards by NEA, Abortionists and also read Schools, Abortionists Sexualize Kids for Valentines as well as Bishops Investigate Girl Scouts' Sexualization
-- From "Girls as young as six want to look sexy: Study" posted at CNN-IBN 7/17/12
Using a different set of dolls for each question, the [research] team then asked each girl to choose the doll that: looked like herself, looked how she wanted to look, was the popular girl in school, she wanted to play with.
"It's very possible that girls wanted to look like the sexy doll because they believe sexiness leads to popularity, which comes with many social advantages," said lead researcher Christy Starr, who was surprised at how many 6- to 7-year-old girls chose the sexualised doll as their ideal self.
Starr and her team also looked at factors that influenced the girls' responses. Most of the girls were recruited from two public schools, but a smaller subset was recruited from a local dance studio. The girls in this latter group actually chose the non-sexualised doll more often for each of the four questions than did the public-school group.
According to the researchers, media consumption alone did not influence girls to prefer the sexy doll. But girls who watched a lot of TV and movies and who had moms who reported self-objectifying tendencies, such as worrying about their clothes and appearance many times a day, were more likely to say the sexy doll was popular.
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From "Why 6-Year-Old Girls Want to Be Sexy" by Jennifer Abbasi, LiveScience Contributor 7/16/12
The authors suggest that the media or moms who sexualize women may predispose girls toward objectifying themselves; then, the other factor (mom or media) reinforces the messages, amplifying the effect. On the other hand, mothers who reported often using TV and movies as teaching moments about bad behaviors and unrealistic scenarios were much less likely to have daughters who said they looked like the sexy doll. The power of maternal instruction during media viewing may explain why every additional hour of TV- or movie-watching actually decreased the odds by 7 percent that a girl would choose the sexy doll as popular, Starr said. "As maternal TV instruction served as a protective factor for sexualization, it’s possible that higher media usage simply allowed for more instruction."
Mothers' religious beliefs also emerged as an important factor in how girls see themselves. Girls who consumed a lot of media but who had religious mothers were protected against self-sexualizing, perhaps because these moms "may be more likely to model higher body-esteem and communicate values such as modesty," the authors wrote, which could mitigate the images portrayed on TV or in the movies.
However, girls who didn’t consume a lot of media but who had religious mothers were much more likely to say they wanted to look like the sexy doll. "This pattern of results may reflect a case of 'forbidden fruit' or reactance, whereby young girls who are overprotected from the perceived ills of media by highly religious parents … begin to idealize the forbidden due to their underexposure," the authors wrote. Another possibility is that mothers of girls who displayed sexualized attitudes and behaviors had responded by restricting the amount of TV and movies their daughters could watch. Regardless, the authors underlined, "low media consumption is not a silver bullet" against early self-sexualization in girls.
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Also read Children are Sexual Beings, Says White House - Masturbation OK as well as 10-year-old's Speech Mimics Obama on Gay 'Marriage'
