Getting Real
Page 8
While pin-ups may have artistic merit, their basic function is as a commercial mass-produced image of a woman posing purely for the eye of the (likely male) spectator and to provide that spectator with varying degrees of stimulation. Objectification is the central feminist criticism of media representations: the argument being that including a woman in a media product purely because of her appearance renders her an object and reduces her status to a commodity. Of equal concern is the narrow prescription provided through media images about what constitutes female beauty. While the homogenous young, thin and white aesthetic in advertising presents obvious grounds for criticism, the notion of female idleness raises particular, seldom discussed, concerns.
I embarked on my studies expecting to find images of women engaged in domestic duties, mirroring the way women are routinely portrayed in television advertising. My content analysis, however, refuted this hypothesis: women on billboards aren’t vacuuming or tending to children; the outdoor advertising landscape appears largely disconnected from the private world. Interestingly, female central characters have not been relocated to occupational settings either: the public world appears also irrelevant. Instead, the vast majority of women in outdoor advertisements are portrayed against neutral backgrounds and their primary activity is posing, rendering characters, and their settings, as completely nondescript. Feminist writer Andrea Dworkin discussed pin-ups in a 2000 article, writing that ‘[pin-up artist Alberto] Vargas’ subject—or object, to be more precise—is some lazy, fetishistic view of women, pale women, usually blonde; the drawing itself delineates the boundaries of nonexistence, a white, female nonentity…’ (Dworkin, 2000, n.p.). Of critical importance here is Dworkin’s idea of women in pinups being nonentities. In much outdoor advertising, like the pin -up, the neutral background and the lack of activity presents no information about the identity of the woman: she is simply included to draw attention, rather than lend authority, to the product. Given that many of the advertisements in my data collection reference a woman’s sexuality—through revealing clothing, or glossed lips or a parted mouth, for example—her worth is restricted to her beauty and she functions, like the pin-up, as a figure for arousal (see Rosewarne, 2005; Rosewarne, 2007).
The bombardment of images of young, thin, white and idle women highlights many of the concerns feminists have long lamented about the effect of the media on body image, and more broadly, on its connection to sexism, sizeism, ageism and racism. While those are all significant issues, they are also concerns that get extensive airplay in our ‘raunch culture’ (see Levy, 2005) that is preoccupied with commercialising female sexuality while simultaneously delivering disturbing statistics on everything from prepubescent dieting to obesity. While these issues are critically important to a discussion of media portrayals, in this chapter, I am more interested in the distraction that such advertising encourages. The homogenous images of women in advertising convey the impression that lifestyle choices like career and family are completely irrelevant: in the world of advertising, the perfect woman is beautiful, decorative and completely without identity. For ‘real’ women, apparently appearance should be their only concern. The woman in advertising exists only as an image to draw attention to a product and as a figure to both establish, and also prescribe, beauty norms. Through her use on billboards purely because of her appearance, the nondescript woman functions to encourage female audiences to aspire to the same aesthetic she reflects. Grave concerns are presented to female audiences who have been coerced into narrow appearance-centered preoccupations. In Lyn Mikel Brown’s book Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls (2003) for example, she discusses the consequences of women’s narrow focus on image and appearance: ‘If we stay preoccupied with our own problems…we won’t notice that we are making $0.75 to the male dollar…’ (Brown, 2003, p. 32). Brown’s comment outlines a clear—and disturbing—consequence of allowing our focus to centre on micro-issues such as individual appearance: equality struggles fall by the wayside.
It has been over forty years since US feminist Betty Friedan exposed the problem of sexism in advertising in her book The Feminine Mystique (1963) and yet the advertising landscape today boasts levels of objectification and sexualisation Friedan likely could never have imagined. One notable development is the incorporation of references to pornography. Just as pin-ups have gotten progressively more explicit, so too have outdoor advertisements. Four examples from my data collection highlight this well. In a Coca-Cola advertisement, a bikini-clad woman has her lips around the top of a Coke bottle, the text ‘You know you want it’ is printed across the top. A Harper’s Bazaar advertisement showed a woman in a mini-skirt, her head tilted back, her right hand pushed down the front of her singlet, cupping her breast. A billboard for the Moonee Valley Races displayed a woman with a riding crop, the caption reading ‘Experiment at Night.’ A billboard for the BMG record label showed the pop singer Pink wearing a low-cut leather swimsuit, restrained by ropes. These four advertisements draw on our knowledge of pornography and in turn reference fellatio, masturbation, sadomasochism and bondage and discipline, and use these allusions to sell soft drinks, magazines, a gambling venue and CDs. Given there has been over forty years of feminist awareness about sexist imagery and yet the problem today is worse, we need to move beyond thinking about this issue as purely one of sexism. For the problem to be treated as serious and as something requiring urgent action, we need to consider the issue as a serious public policy problem. Public space is a public good and thus the images displayed in it need to be appropriate for the entire audience who is not only exposed, but held captive, to these public images. Sexual harassment in the workplace encroaches on the rights of individuals and can inflict a variety of negative consequences, notably making victims feel excluded from their workplace or their place of study. A very similar situation occurs in public space where women can feel excluded from public space through continual exposure to images that may embarrass, offend or otherwise harass. While feminist awareness and activism on this issue has had limited success, I propose that approaching this issue as a public policy concern and offering actual solutions to this problem are key to changing the advertising landscape.
I address the shortcomings of current advertising control in Sex in Public (2007) and propose a series of policy solutions. For individuals concerned by the content of advertising, the time to quietly lament is over. In 2002, the Victorian Office of Women’s Policy in Australia published a report titled ‘The Portrayal of Women in Outdoor Advertising.’ An interesting section of this report focussed on participation in the complaints procedure. The report detailed that of the 37 per cent of female respondents who had seen an inappropriate outdoor advertisement, only four per cent formally complained. Of the male respondents, 32 per cent thought about complaining, but no man actually did. When asked why formal complaints were not made, 22 per cent of respondents claimed that they did not know who to complain to, thirteen per cent thought no-one would listen, and ten per cent did not know how (OWP, 2002, p. 13). In most western countries, advertising is ‘controlled’ through self-regulation: in Australia this is done by the Advertising Standards Board. The outdoor advertising landscape looks the way it does for many reasons, an obvious explanation being that people simply do not formally articulate their complaints and their silence is read as tacit approval, or at the very least, as acceptance. People offended by outdoor advertising need to contact the Advertising Standards Board and formally submit a complaint. Through making that complaint, the Board—as well as the advertiser who is then contacted by the Board—is made aware of your offence. Yes, it is highly likely that the Board will reject the complaint—it is after all, a board assembled by the industry working for the industry to protect the industry from the ‘heavy hand’ of government—but by formally complaining, the grievance is put on the record, which helps to deliver to advertisers a true gauge of public sentiments (see Gale, this volume). Currently, community silence on sexism in advertising is read by
advertisers as agreement, if not encouragement, and thus the landscape remains a gallery of highly sexualised images of women that harass and exclude.
The stereotyped images of women in outdoor advertising highlight a troubling public policy double standard whereby images that are completely prohibited in a workplace or school, are somehow okay for public display. It is not okay. The inescapable, unavoidable features of outdoor advertising that make the medium so tantalising to advertisers, are the same elements which make public space a public good and necessitate that the displays within are suitable for the entire audience held captive: women as well as men and children. Audiences cannot restrict their exposure to outdoor advertisements; therefore contents need to be restricted to avoid socially excluding, offending and sexually harassing those held captive to them.
All photos were taken by the author.
References
Brown, Lyn Mikel (2003) Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls. New York University Press, New York.
Dworkin, Andrea (2000) ‘Vargas’ Blonde Sambos’ No Status Quo. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/vargas.html
Friedan, Betty (1963) The Feminine Mystique. Dell, New York.
Levy, Ariel (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Free Press, New York.
OWP (February, 2002) The Portrayal of Women in Outdoor Advertising, July 8, 2008, from http://www.women.vic.gov.au/web12/rwpgslib.nsf/GraphicFiles/Outdoor+Advertising+Report/$file/outdoor-advertising-report.pdf
Rosewarne, Lauren (2005) ‘The Men’s Gallery. Outdoor advertising and public space: gender, fear and feminism’ Women’s Studies International Forum, 28 (1), pp. 65-76.
Rosewarne, Lauren (2007) Sex in Public: Women, Outdoor Advertising and Public Policy. Cambridge Scholar’s Press, Newcastle, UK.
The Psychological and Developmental Impact of Sexualisation on Children
Louise Newman
Introduction
Rosa (pseudonym) is an eight-year-old girl living with her parents and ten-year-old brother. Like many girls her age she is interested in music videos and fashion. She reads magazines aimed at the ‘tween market’ and collects images of older girls she would prefer to look like. She copies dance moves and styles she sees on television and wants to wear similar clothes. For Rosa this interest has become preoccupying. She has become anxious and told her mother that she is not good looking enough to be popular at school. She says she is fat and starts restricting her diet in an attempt to lose weight. She is depressed and tearful. She says she will never have a boyfriend. Her school work is neglected and she is referred to the school counsellor and to a child mental health service.
Jane (pseudonym) is a fifteen-year-old girl being treated for depression and low self-esteem by a mental health service. She is a reserved young woman and is intelligent but underperforming. She has little motivation to succeed at school and struggles to see herself as having control over her own life. She feels unattractive and says that she has few qualities that will help her fit in socially. She has low self-esteem and has become isolated. Jane judges herself against media representation of female attractiveness. She sees sexual activity as a way of gaining popularity and has entered into poorly judged and exploitative relationships with older boys. She feels abandoned and rejected. Jane is confused about what she should expect in relationships and thinks that having sex will lead to closer emotional relationships.
The ‘sexualisation’ of children refers to the imposition of adult sexual themes and images on children at a developmentally inappropriate stage and in a way which may compromise child psychological development. It includes overt sexual imagery as well as the reinforcement of adult definitions of attractiveness for children and young people. In the extreme it involves the use of children for adult sexual gratification and child pornography. This has aroused significant public concern and calls for increased regulation and monitoring of the exposure of children to adult sexual themes. With sexualised images seemingly proliferating, we need to ask if we are damaging children by exposing them to sexual themes either directly or indirectly.
In many ways this is a deceptively simple question and one that has prompted a heated debate. Polarised views are expressed with some denying the existence of so-called ‘sexualised’ images of children, let alone evidence that these may put children at developmental risk. The debate as it has unfolded has tended to be reduced to one about the rights to sexual expression and discussion. Those who have raised concerns about the use of adult sexual themes and images in overt marketing to children, or in a way that exposes children to adult material, are labelled as puritanically ‘anti-sex.’ Those in favour of sexual themes in community spaces are (self-styled) as libertarian, anti-censorship and paradoxically pro-feminist. Somewhere in the midst of this are real issues concerning the needs of children for care and protection from exploitation, and the rights of children and adolescents to sexual development and expression as developmentally appropriate. The parameters of the debate are not always clear, with little attempt to define what ‘sexualisation’ of children refers to and the difficult issues around clearly defining sexual exploitation and measuring the longer term impacts of ‘premature’ sexual exposure.
Despite these inherent difficulties, this is without doubt a matter of concern for child protection and mental health groups and one where models of child development are central. Various child developmentalists and child advocates are urging greater regulation of this material in the interests of children, but even this is contested by the ‘freedom of expression’ argument. The ‘sexualisation’ debate could be better informed if based on understanding contemporary models of children’s social and psychosexual development and the impact of sexual trauma on psychological health. There is a clear need to separate the child protection issues from the rights of adults to sexual expression and community values around this.
Several key issues arise in this debate. Have attitudes towards public use of sexual themes changed in western societies and for what reasons? Are more children exposed to adult sexual themes and images and is this necessarily resulting in psychological harm? Are there long-term consequences of any sexual exposure? Are there particular values promoted in sexualised material? The central issues then are around exposure, content, implicit values and consequences.
Child sexual development
Sigmund Freud (1905/1976) created great controversy by describing the sexual nature of infants and children and the key role of sexual feelings in human development. By breaking a major taboo he paved the way for thinking about the role of parenting and the importance of children’s early experiences in shaping later sexual functioning and relationships. For Freud, children were ‘sexual’ beings, but ‘infantile’ or childhood sexuality was not equivalent to adult sexuality. The young child is learning about sexuality in the context of relationships with parents and has a series of developmental stages prior to reaching any defined adult type sexual identity involving sexual preference and the capacity to enter into relationships involving sexuality and emotional intimacy. Freud described the child’s development of sexual identity as closely related to the development of ideas of gender identity and generational roles. An excess of sexual arousal, or conversely, excess anxiety around sexual expression, may result in difficulties in sexual development. As far back as 1896, Freud was concerned that repression of sexuality or early sexual trauma could result in developmental problems.
Many of Freud’s early ideas about sexual development remain important. Whilst current terminology may be different, the concept of childhood sexuality and the understanding that children are interested in, and experience, bodies and sexual feelings and have emergent models of sexuality, are central to most developmental accounts. The parent or adult carer of the child shapes the child’s experience of their body and designates some bodily parts as ‘sexual,’ but at the same time does not engage with the child as a sexual partner or object. The adult
understands the child’s experiences as ‘child-like’ and does not see them as adult sexual behaviours. If the adult cannot maintain the separateness and distinction between adult and child sexuality, the child is exposed to confusing and disturbing anxieties.
Exposure of children to adult sexual images may be confusing and disturbing for young children who have not yet come to understand the nature of sexual interactions. Involving children directly in adult-type sexual imagery such as having them wear adult style fashion and underwear and engage in ‘mimicry’ of adult sexual behaviours is likely to be more disturbing. It fundamentally denies the existence of the child’s need for their own sexual development and the difference between adult and child sexuality. Both are developmentally inappropriate and ignore the difference between child and adult sexuality.
Child sexual exploitation
The World Health Organization Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention (2006) defines child abuse as the following:
Child abuse or maltreatment constitutes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or dignity, in the context of a relationship or responsibility, trust or power.