Playboy, Brooke Shields and the fetishisation of young girls

Hugh Hefner in 2001with Playboy ‘bunnies’. EPA/Glenn Pinkerton/LVNB

The passing of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner prompted both positive and negative eulogising. From one perspective, he was a revolutionary who helped to dismantle the long-standing secrecy and shame surrounding sexuality. And from another, he simply popularised the objectification of women for the gratification of men.

The most surprising detail to emerge after Hefner’s death was that Brooke Shields had featured in a Playboy publication called Sugar and Spice when aged only 10 years old in 1975. Photographer Gary Grosse received $450 to take the photographs of the heavily made-up Shields posing naked in a bathtub. The Sugar and Spice series of books in which the images appeared promised “surprising and sensuous images of women” from contemporary photographers, coding them as “artistic”.

The ongoing controversy about the images, particularly once Shields was old enough to realise that she did not want them in the public domain, affected Grosse’s career as a fashion photographer and he eventually became a dog trainer. Yet the fallout from the exploitative images did not significantly tarnish the Playboy name or Hugh Hefner. Shields featured on the cover of Playboy in 1986 at age 21.

Today in the United States it is a felony in most jurisdictions to publish a nude photograph of a model aged under 18. However, laws about publishing images of minors were not as definitive historically and internationally, particularly if a model’s parent gave consent.

As the internet has become ubiquitous, we have become much more aware of the existence of child pornography and of the paedophiles who seek it out. Viewing and trading sexual images of children is not only a criminal act, but one of the most widely reviled behaviours possible. But pornography and popular culture have often exploited the line between girls and woman with the fetishisation of girls or women who look young.

Pornographic magazines and video have often used the trope of “barely legal” to present young women who are dressed and styled like schoolgirls, often in suburban bedrooms or school settings. As US historian Hanne Blank wrote in 2008, the depiction of “cheerleaders, students, babysitters and sorority girls” in this type of porn means that “the immaturity symbolism is insistent”.

While clearly most people are at the peak of their physical attractiveness in their youth, the fetishisation of young boys for a heterosexual female audience is nowhere near as common as the obsession with young girls within culture aimed at older men.

One obvious reason for this difference is the historic value that has been placed on female virginity in a way that it is not for men. This includes older ideas about the importance of a virginal bride for ensuring that all of her children were legitimate, to more recent notions of women with sexual experience being “sluts” or dirty.

Today the vast majority of people in countries such as the United States and Australia have sex prior to marriage. This could be one reason why girls continue to be sexually fetishised, as they symbolise an innocence and purity that most young women are no longer seen to represent.

While some community groups contend that sexualised images of girls might support the behaviours and actions of paedophiles, there is a more pervasive issue at stake here for all women. One of the legacies of Hefner’s Playboy empire and the sex culture it helped to propagate is that only very young women are sexually attractive. The oldest “Playmate” (the women who feature in the magazine’s centrefold) to have ever appeared in Playboy was 35. Few women aged in their 30s were ever featured.

Conversely, at least nine minors, aged 16 and 17 at the time of photographing, have featured in American and international editions of Playboy. In 1958 Hefner was brought before a court after publishing images of 16-year-old Elizabeth Ann Roberts in a feature entitled “Schoolmate Playmate”. Roberts was described as a “bouncy teenager” occupied by “reading and writing and ’rithmetic”, but she looks physically tiny and vulnerable in the images. The charges were ultimately dropped as Roberts’ mother had consented to the shoot.

While they are not generally focused on depicting naked bodies, women’s magazines regularly name men aged in their 40s and 50s, such as Johnny Depp and George Clooney, as among the most sexually desirable men. One of the legacies of Playboy is its contribution to the fetishisation of young women and a porn culture that toys with the depiction of women who are styled to look as if they are school-aged or just over the most minimal line of cultural acceptability (barely legal).

The images of Brooke Shields published in Playboy’s Sugar and Spice series have been widely circulated in the wake of Hefner’s death as an example of why he should not be celebrated. People are certainly right to be alarmed by images that figure a 10-year-old as an object of sexual desire. However, it is important to see the images of Shields as simply the most egregious example of the way that magazines such as Playboy have contributed to a culture that fetishises girls.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Girls, "Tramps" and "Hookers": Target and the Girls' Clothing Debate

Target leopard print girls' shorts

We hardly ever hear public fretting about what boys are wearing. No railing about whether a boy is dressing in clothing that is not "age appropriate" or that might entice paedophiles. Yet the subject of what girls are wearing, as the recent media attention given to Target's clothing line for girls attests, is one that many parents feel strongly about. The debate began when a school teacher and mother, Ana Amini, posted the following message on Target's Facebook page:

''Dear Target, Could you possibly make a range of clothing for girls 7-14 years that doesn't make them look like tramps … You have lost me as a customer when buying apparel for my daughter as I don't want her thinking shorts up her backside are the norm or fashionable.''

Amini's comments resonated with tens of thousands of parents who "liked" her post or added their own supportive responses. When the social media backlash became a news story, a chorus of parents agreed that many of the clothes on the racks in Target for girls aged from seven to fourteen resembled those of "hookers" and "prostitutes".

The outrage spawned many opinion pieces. Dannielle Miller rightly pointed out that we shouldn't be shaming girls by labelling them "trampy" regardless of what they might be wearing, while others emphasised that it is adults who place any sexualised connotations on clothing choices. The heroine of my undergraduate years, Helen Razer, and Clementine Ford both offered up stories of their own girlhoods in their calls for the virtual lynch mob to calm. Together the articles suggest that for some time girls have innocuously worn revealing clothing, like crop tops or lycra pants, and that girls don't perceive a sexual element to this: it's just like a game of dress-ups.  Razer writes that "kids just see cloth and it is we who see meaning" and Ford proposes that "Clothes can't make children's look 'sexy'. They're inanimate objects." 

I agree with Razer that very young children don't derive significant meaning from clothing—although by the time they hit primary school, you won't find many boys who want to wear skirts or pink in public— but in the age group that is relevant here, from around seven-years-old and upwards, there is a major awareness of the various meanings of clothing. To not see any meaning in clothing, kids would have to be raised apart from our society and culture, with no access to the internet, magazines, advertising, video clips, movies, television or books. 

Branding is just one of aspect of clothing that children understand. I recall desperately wanting a pair of Converse All Stars in grade five but being forced to suffer the indignity of wearing an imitation brand. The shoes were practically identical to the much-longed for Cons, but the logo on the side panel was tellingly different to me and every other kid in my grade. But at least the merciless teasing was reserved for the boy whose family was so poor that he had to wear beaten-up Dunlop Volleys (this was prior to their hipster, ironic reclamation). Even children under 10 know that particular brands are authentic and are "cool" in comparison with generic items or house brands from Big W.

In addition to knowing about how clothing helps to communicate their gender and cultural savvy, girls also understand that clothing plays a part in how attractive or pretty they are seen to be. Cordelia Fine has noted how much more often people compliment young girls on what they are wearing or their prettiness, whereas comments about appearance are rarely delivered to boys. Girls are taught to understand that how they look impacts upon how they are valued. We know that even primary school aged girls are concerned about their weight and understand that being overweight makes them unattractive according to the thin body ideal.

We ought to think about girls' awareness of the importance of being attractive in tandem with the fact that girls are reaching puberty at an increasingly younger age. Breast development—the onset of puberty— is now beginning at an average age of nine years and ten months, according to a Danish study in 2006. Girls absorb from the culture around them what an ideal woman looks like and, as they develop physically, it is unsurprising that they seek to emulate the fashion that is popular for young women, or seen as attractive to boys and men. Girls may have always loved to play with Mum's make-up in the mirror or stalk around in high heels, but the age at which girls actually start wearing these tools that are intended to accentuate feminine attributes seems to be lowering. Or at least mainstream stores like Target seem to offer more clothing that mimics women's fashions without modification for the pre-teen market. So why is it a problem if girls wear all kinds of women's clothing styles? And need this imply sexual readiness to anyone?

What the History of Girlhood Can Tell Us

Richard Westall, Queen Victoria as a Girl

Razer makes a nod to the history of childhood by noting that children were once dressed in the same clothing as adults. Medievalist Philippe Ariès influentially claimed that childhood itself was not "invented" until the modern period, as before this time they were seen, and treated, as miniature adults. (Although there is much debate on this subject, and Ariès' assertion that children were dressed like adults seems to rely on the evidence of family portraits, which is the equivalent of looking at wedding photographs and suggesting that all little boys wore suits in the 20th century.)

Yet, apart from this one comment, the history of how girls appearance has been regulated and how girls are supposed to transition to womanhood have been absent from the discussion. If we look at the policing of girls' dress across the past century and a half, we find that there has always been anxiety about girls being appropriately covered and restrained by their clothing. As I have blogged about previously, make-up was also seen as fraught in the 19th century, especially for young girls who still had their virtue to preserve. (Married women were less susceptible to the risk of damage to their moral character through the sexual associations of cosmetics).

Franz Winterhalter, Queen Victoria, 1842 

When you read girls' books from the nineteenth century, as I do, you'll notice many references to girls "putting their hair up". Young girls wore their hair loose, but when girls of the middle and upper classes reached an age at which they were considered mature enough to be available for marriage they generally wore their hair up in public. This transition carried a great deal of ideological baggage. It was somewhat "trampy" for a girl of marriageable age to continue to wear her long hair loose because of its sensual associations. Just as Islamic women often reserve the sight of their hair for their husbands in the home, so would the proper Victorian woman keep her hair "modest" in public. By putting her hair up, a girl was signalling that she was ready for marriage, but also that she was a good, virginal type. At the same time, a girl might also begin to wear longer skirts. So clearly the protocols for entering womanhood worked to cover more of girls' bodies and contain their sexual appeal, unlike the general movement of today's girls into wearing more revealing clothing and accentuating their sex appeal as teenagers.

These changes in what girls wore and how they styled their hair would usually happen in advance of their "coming out", where they were introduced to "society" and might be presented to suitable bachelors. This would happen at around the age of eighteen, and debutante balls, which were still popular at high schools in Australia until fairly recently, continued some of the old-fashioned traditions associated with a girl "coming out" or being presented to eligible men.

Most cultures have some form of ritual associated with coming of age that marks the transition between childhood and adulthood. In Australia today, most of us don't practice any of the formal rituals that once helped to demarcate girlhood from womanhood and clearly identify the moment of transition. When we see thousands of parents reacting to "short shorts" for girls in Target, perhaps it also owes something to the haziness of where girlhood ends and womanhood begins, rather than solely being a paranoid reaction to perceived paedophilia or sexualisation. I would argue that clothes are more than just "inanimate objects" and that children do understand the meanings that our culture ascribes to them. The confusion among adults, however, about what girls should wear says much about our own uncertainty about girlhood and girls coming of age in a culture that is increasingly fixated on women's sexual attractiveness.

The Diva Controversy: Binning the Playboy Bunny for Girls

What is wrong with a store selling Playboy merchandise? I’ve seen Playboy car seat covers in auto stores and lighters and keyrings in novelty stores for years. The world’s biggest adult entertainment/porn brand has well and truly emerged from magazine racks and sex shop DVD displays. Diva, a chain of Australian budget jewellery stores, took the prevalence of Playboy accessories to what they thought was its logical conclusion by stocking a range of Playboy jewellery, including the iconic “bunny”, a plastic bow-tie necklace, and pendants proclaiming the wearer to be “Miss February”.

What Diva failed to consider was their responsibility to their customer base, which includes a significant proportion of pre-teen and young teen girls. If we’re in any doubt that the chain markets its accessories to girls, consider the following points. The chain’s logo is a pink heart. They stock Twilight jewellery (including an “I Heart Vampires” rubber bracelet). They also sell replicas of celebrity engagement rings, such as the “Katy Perry” for $7.50. This is an affordable store, selling accessories that are appealing to, and within the budgetary reach, of girls aged from 9-13. The following photograph shows the Playboy range shelved immediately next to the “Young Divas” range of plastic colourful accessories for girls.

The range was heavily promoted by the store, including large “Diva for Playboy” banners displayed in store. A campaign led by Collective Shout mobilised hundreds of Facebook users to complain on the store’s official Facebook page. Sadly, many older girls expressed their upset at their discussion of accessories being interrupted by concerned parents, to the point where a number proclaimed their love for the Playboy merchandise and others abused concerned women as sexless, ugly hags. Diva was oddly silent as the war played out in social media, but were busy behind the scenes deleting comments with which they did not agree, especially those who posted a clever ad parody featuring a girl wearing rabbit ears with the caption “When I grow up I want to be a porn star”.

A petition with over 6,000 signatures calling on Diva to remove the Playboy line from its stores was variously rejected when presented in person to several outlets. Diva really did not want to publicly engage with parents who were labelling their store as an aid to paedophiles and facilitator of the sexualisation of children in the name of greed. Instead, it seems that the chain has silently conceded that despite their claims that Playboy was a ‘fashion’ brand with no connection to porn, that the thousands of parents and concerned adults pounding their Facebook page with comments could not be entirely ignored.

Remaining stock has been removed from display, and according to reports on the Collective Shout Facebook page, boxed up for return to head office. The Diva website has removed all but one item from the Playboy range: the diamante bunny head ring that is “a must for all Playmates”. If the range has been such a good seller, as has been variously claimed, then one would expect the stores to be ordering in more products and new stock, rather than returning them to headquarters. Clearly public pressure has made it untenable for the store to continue to sell the Playboy range.

The Diva controversy is an intriguing example of contemporary corporate attitudes to public opinion in which businesses invite comments, feedback and interactivity, but only wish to preserve a culture of compliments and remove any trace of criticism. It also shows the utter failure of such businesses to practice corporate responsibility when their livelihood depends on the spending of children. Perhaps McDonald’s could make a few extra bucks if they installed a bar adjoining the playground at each restaurant? Heaven knows most parents being nagged into eating there could do with a drink. But perhaps, despite their unhealthy options that are marketed to children, McDonald’s has to draw some kind of line because of their major appeal to
children and young adults.

In addition to these things, Diva’s attempts to justify Playboy jewellery as appropriate for marketing to a primary audience of girls under 16 is a further demonstration of the creep of pornified expectations of women to a younger and younger audience. Whether or not we believe these expectations are harmful to women, it is harder to make the case that a 12-year-old should have the freedom to publicly declare herself a “Playmate”. There was a report of one girl of this age purchasing a bunny necklace because she simply liked the look of the rabbit. While this girl was clearly not ready to know about the Playboy empire and what it means for women, the adult world around her would take very different meanings from her display of this symbol. (Thankfully, she never got the chance to find out what the reaction might have been when her parents saw what she had bought at the mall that day.)

The ideal Playmate focuses on making her appearance pleasing to men. She is readily sexually available and happy to not only put herself on display, but to meet any request that a male might have, including to share a man with a bevy of other attractive women. After all, this is the fantasy of the Playboy Mansion, in which the now elderly Hugh Hefner maintains an entourage of young women ready to meet his sexual needs (even if they must be in decline these days). The very thought that girls who are still forming their identities would feel these pressures is disturbing and shameful when peddled by retailers who rely on girls for their business.

That Diva could not even make a simple public admission that marketing Playboy merchandise alongside Winnie the Pooh jewellery was wrong is a sad sign that businesses are not concerned about the exploitation of girls, but merely their bottom lines. While this is seemingly one battle won, the overwhelming force of sexualised images impacting on girls is a much larger war with no sign of a truce in sight.

The Lack of Cheer in Cheerleading

There's no doubt that US cultural influences formed the bulk of my childhood entertainment. My family rarely watched Australian public broadcaster ABC, with its mix of documentaries, British dramas and newscasts that were delivered in what we (being a family in which no one had yet completed high school) perceived as "snobby" accents, but which I now recognise as the mark of education and travel. Heaven forbid someone had actually lived in another country for a year or two: we never even travelled interstate!

What I could access through our small-screen television became a cultural junk food diet of sitcoms, teen films and "dramas" such as Beverly Hills 90210. With a predominantly American intake of films and television, the figure of the cheerleader was an easily digestible sign of successful femininity. She stood in contrast to bookish and unattractive girls. Not only was the cheerleader good looking, she was athletic, popular and considered successful, but in a way that supported men, rather than overshadowing their sporting "achievements". Recent films such as Bring it On emphasise the backstabbing and bitchiness inherent in any all-female competition, and also its sexualised nature as one tag-line proves: "A Comedy About The Crazy Things Girls Do To Be On Top."

I remember an older high-school girl who travelled on my school bus. She had become a cheerleader for a new Australian Rules football team that had been established on the Gold Coast. I stared at her spiral-permed hair, heavy Cover Girl pancake makeup (masking a reasonable dose of acne) and the pom poms that she once carried on the bus in awe. She was the living embodiment of everything that I had seen via American culture. She was the peak of what a girl could achieve within that realm of thinking. Several years later, I saw her at a fleamarket stall with her friends, clearing out belongings they no longer wanted or needed, and the pom-poms were among the items for sale. I knew that I could not simply buy them and transmogrify into a cheerleader. It would take a certain type and look of girl to become one, and even possession of the coveted bunches of plastic were not going to make it happen.

These reflections were sparked by the suggestion that the National Rugby League should ban cheerleaders from its games due to numerous recent controversies relating to a sexual assault and the omnipresent objectification of women. How could football players be asked to treat women respectfully- to not abuse their position and status as the ultimate Australian male- when the very system of football itself placed women on the sidelines as entertainment based on their physical attractiveness for the enjoyment of male spectators? General opinion on discussion forums did not seem to locate a connection between women treated as entertainment (it's just for fun!) and situations that spiral out of control like the 19-year-old woman who consented to sex with two football players and wound up in a room with five times more men masturbating and rubbing their genitals in her face.

Researcher Catherine Lumby said that the problem did not lie with the cheerleaders: "I take a strong view that how women are dressed has nothing to do with it. I refuse to condemn women for cheerleading or for dancing as ballerinas in skimpy tutus for that matter." Of course, she is right that the mere presence of a scantily clad woman does not authorise sexual assault (witness a Brisbane man this week claiming he raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter because she wore shirt skirts) or even Neanderthal attitudes to women in general. The Minister for the Status of Women, Tanya Plibersek, put her suggestion for the NRL to change to alternative forms of pre-match entertainment (such as drummers) in terms of needing to please mothers to ensure that the the NRL appealed to "the next generation of football fans". So, in short, the only reason you might want to remove the barely-clad women from the football field on a winter's evening is because mothers might be upset and not want to encourage their sons to participate further in the sport. We wouldn't want to try something else for the simple reason that many women might not like or enjoy it, full stop.

The only serious calls I have seen for the banning of cheerleading are in India, where its recently developed IPL cricket series has brought Americanised cheerleading to a different cultural context. There are other faint murmurs about overly-sexualised routines in other parts of the world needing to be toned down. I'd like to hear more about how women could be recognised publicly as more than than celebrators of male achievement. It's not simply about sexualisation, but creating heroes of men and ornaments of women. So long as a school girl on a bus like my eight-year-old self might see a cheerleader as a successful woman, there is a problem with all-female cheerleaders at football matches. And the masculine terrain of football is just the place that needs to break down stereotypes about women as mere accessories to successful men.

"Up-Ageing" Girls Ditch their Dolls

For a start, I feel old because I did not know there even was a "Generation Z" until I read the newspaper today. I'm also supposed to feel old because an article in it describes the way that women of my generation packed their dolls away aged about 10 or 11, while girls are now tiring of brushing knots out of polyester hair at an average age of 6 or 7. The study cited in the article suggests girls are moving on to technological play a lot earlier, preferring to spend their leisure time on gaming systems, iPods and PCs.

The researcher, Mark McCrindle, argues that "they're [girls] moving into a technological world much earlier and it's partly coming from their peers … but it's also partly coming from parents who are pushing their children towards more structured educational toys," he said. This all sounds feasible, but why is this specifically problematic for girls? It is discussed here as a sign of childhood being "eroded" and as a follow-on effect of the premature sexualisation of girls.

Strangely it seems like it's a problem for girls to move on to gaming and electronic gadgets (even an iPod is mentioned, which hardly seems gendered in that surely boys and girls enjoy music). Did the study consider at what age boys are giving up action figures and cars? Might it not be that they are similarly developing a penchant for electronic goods at an early age? And perhaps if there has been a time-lag for girls up until now it has been part of the gendering of toys and computers. Would it have been sufficiently "girly" for an eight-year-old to be into gaming ten or twenty years ago? (Not to deny any exceptions, as I was particularly enamoured of my Commodore 64 in 1987.) How is the context different now when almost every Australian home has a computer (or two), internet, and a substantial majority have a gaming console as well?

Play with dolls fulfils a kind of preparatory function for mothering. Girls toys include ovens and irons because these are jobs it is imagined that they will one day perform. For boys we manufacture imitation power tools and lawnmowers because these tough jobs are male. Mums and Dads are probably not sticking to these gendered norms as represented in the toy aisle as firmly as in the past. Maybe girls ditch dolls earlier because they see Mum taking her laptop to work and want to emulate her in the same way that girls of previous generations wanted a replica kitchen to model Mum's daily routine?

And if dolls are waning in popularity then someone better tell the people behind the new Australian Girl doll. These dolls are meant to resemble their girl owners in age and are presented as thoroughly Australian in their netball uniforms and beachwear. The creator of the doll, Helen Schofield, was also motivated by the sexualisation of girls and wanted to counter "the negative impact of popular culture on young children". I'm interested to know whether a range of non-violent boys' toys are being developed at the moment to stem the negative impact of popular culture on them. Or is that less exciting than stemming the tide of pre-teen g-strings?

"Heelarious" High Heels for Baby Girls

"Your little one will look fabulous in these soft crib shoes designed to look like high heels! "

Do we laugh or cry at this new range of baby shoes designed to imitate adult high heels? Of course, it's made clear on the designers' website that the "shoes", brand named "Heelarious", are effectively soft booties that cannot be walked on. Which is a relief because I'm not sure childcare centres have Imelda Marcos shelving available for filing all these heels away at nap-time.

The shoes do come with a disclaimer, though: "WARNING: May cause extreme smiling and hysterical laughter when in use." Needless to say there has been necessary outrage (and here) about whether these "heelarious" shoes are perhaps not as innocently amusing as their creators make out. The shoes come in a range of colours: black, hot-pink or animal print. The look being sought with this choice of colours and patterns is clearly a sexualised, adult one, which is then being promoted as a source of humour. Why anyone would care to make their own baby girl the subject of this "joke" is beyond me. Worst of all, the shoes appear to actually be selling well, with the website taking wholesale orders and a gigantic list of stockists. And can we even imagine what the creators will conjure up when they say they are planning a product for boys?

I wonder if boys will derive as much benefit from their product as girls purportedly will do. A reporter on the US Today show felt there was a career move to be had by wearing the baby heels: "Little girls can get a jump start on their strut and be top-models-in-training before they leave the crib.” Let's hope there was some tongue planted in that cheek.

What's Happening to Our Girls? Same as Always?

I promise to be a good blogger. After three weeks overseas, I am returning to regular posting. I have been buried in Girl Guide books for the past week, but set out this evening to find something contemporary to discuss in my "first-post-back".

I must start out by saying that I find it problematic when people make judgements of books that they have not yet read. I am about to do something of the sort, but am aware it must be more of a comment on the way that this newly published book is being marketed. I will save the review of the substance of Maggie Hamilton's What's Happening to Our Girls for when the book arrives in my mailbox.

Hamilton conducted two years of interviews with teachers, medical professionals and girls themselves in order to "get an insider's view on what girls are experiencing at present, from birth to the teenage years." Professor Ghassan Hage, at a university seminar a month ago, spoke about undertaking years of research, publishing his conclusions in the newspaper and the resultant frustration of someone who has thought about the topic for five minutes saying simply "I disagree". I don't wish to deny the work Hamilton has done here, nor that her research was rather extensive and may support her conclusions. However, some of the promotional information for this book seems to draw on long-held beliefs about controlling the behaviour of women, rather than reflecting any startling new trend. While there are undeniably issues of concern to do with the commercialisation of childhood, the prevalence of eating disorders and sexual abuse, I cannot agree with the statement that "in a few short years our girls have become vulnerable."

The first question posed on the Penguin publishing website for the book asks "Why are girls as young as five years old concerned about their looks and addicted to shopping?" Is this statement projecting some naive version of childhood on today's young girls? From the point at which we can recognise what is considered attractive in our culture, we begin to compare ourselves to others.

As a five-year-old, I knew that my short brown hair was not subject to the same admiration as the long, swinging ponytail of a light-blonde classmate. Why did I feel the need to wear my best dress (bought for a ball) to the opening of a "house" my grade one class had built out of egg cartons? The suggestion in this statement that very young girls have only just begun to be aware of their outward appearance and how it compares to that of others seems to nostalgically recall that girlhood was once a period of innocent, carefree days (untainted by the gendering affects of our culture) climbing trees and collecting tadpoles. The very first magazines for girls published in the UK in the 1880s project a strong concern with maintaining the attractiveness of the body and fashion.

And I must ask if it is even possible for a five-year-old with no income and mode of transportation to have a shopping "addiction". Perhaps a vain parent who wishes to treat their child as an extension of their designer identity, but an "addiction" seems a strong term to use. Incessant nagging does not an addiction make.

The next question the book seeks to answer concerns the twin evils of sex and alcohol: "Why are they having sex and binge-drinking so young, responding to chat-room predators, and bullying their peers via email and text messages?" I must read the book to discover what "so young" translates as. The overall cast of this sentence is that girls are victims more than ever before, and are persecuting one another to a greater extent.

Is teen sex a new phenomenon, or just one that is not as concealed as it once might have been? Can we compare the age at which girls were married in the past and look at the age at which sex is now deemed acceptable (rather than something to be concerned about) in light of changing historical perceptions? This statement is concerned about girls having sex at all. It's perhaps a well-worn point, but the political and media attention devoted to girls having sex and drinking alcohol as a tragedy, compared with the low-volume of comment on these issues as they relate to boys, reveals that when young people drink and have sex it is only considered problematic as it relates to girls. The mere act of girls drinking is troublesome. They don't even need to drive while smashed or get in a fist fight for it to be enough to enact a new law dissuading them from drinking sweet, fizzy alcoholic drinks.

The point about chat-room predators seems a little bizarre in that it seeks to find an answer for the actions of criminals in the behaviour of children. We may as well ask why children used to sometimes fall prey to men who offered them a bag of lollies if they got into their car. Are we blaming girls themselves for the adult creeps who lie to girls online for sexual gratification?

Finally, is an alteration in the media used for bullying indicative of a shocking increase in its prevalence among girls specifically? If email and text messages had been a method for victimising those at the bottom of the high school scrapheap in the past, would they would have been invoked with just as much hierarchical glee as embarassing notes on lockers, vicious rumours and practical jokes? And what about the use to which boys are putting their camera phones? Remember the girl who was sexually assaulted, urinated on and then subjected to a video of the incident being uploaded to YouTube?

One of the key claims of the promotional book blurb is that girls "are being forced to grow up faster than ever before." Faster than girls who once became wives before puberty? Faster than pre-teen girls who were compelled to work as soon as they were able to help support their families little more than a century ago (and still today outside the affluence of the West)? Faster than girls who grew up during World Wars and the Depression?

I'm pleased to see a study of how culture works to the detriment of girls being published by a major publishing house, and will read it keenly and post again afterward. The publicity for What's Happening to Our Girls? nevertheless presents a nostalgic view of girlhood in the past as devoid of sex, drugs and torment about appearing appropriately feminine.

Productless Girls are Pornographic

The controversy surrounding a photographic exhibition by an Australian artist has revealed a disturbing aspect of the way girls are regarded in contemporary culture. Bill Henson is renowned internationally for his photography, and is particularly known for his images of adolescent bodies. This is not the first time that he has exhibited work that features "children" unclothed. Yet this is the first time that the idea of obscenity charges have been raised and whipped the nation into a tut-tutting frenzy. It is also the first time that an Australian Prime Minister has seen fit to make judgement on where the line between art and pornography is drawn. Kevin Rudd did not simply suggest that we must tread carefully when exhibiting images of underage girls, but declared that the photographs in Henson's present--and now censored-- exhibition are "revolting".

Henson's current works are not new in their subject matter. What then has provoked this random outrage? Is it perhaps our own guilt at the overt sexualisation of girls projecting sex into every naked image we see? I heard discussion on talkback radio last week that called for footage of babies and toddlers scampering about on lambswool rugs in TV advertisements for nappies to be scrapped because paedophiles could find the content arousing. If every nude image of a child is viewed from within a context of paedophilic fear then we inadvertantly sexualise children ourselves. Of course the internet has allowed the worldwide trade of paedophilic images, to the horror of us all, but we adopt indiscriminate moral outrage and paranoia in return. This may be entirely understandable if it was not for the competing, accepted representation of highly sexualised girls and young women in men's magazines, pornography and advertising generally.

On the one hand, we can find dozens of DVDs and magazines in chain sexshops with titles like Barely Legal that play up the youth of the girls featured for the excitement of what we would define as "normal" heterosexual men, but when an artist features a non-sexualised naked girl in the context of an exhibition we culturally define it as paedophilic fodder. A girl bending over in a schoolgirl's uniform displaying her genitalia is an accepted, although X-rated, cultural norm. A naked girl's body when photographed for display in a gallery, however, is "un-Australian" according to Australia's opposition leader, Dr Brendan Nelson. Does a year or two difference in a girl's age really explain why sexy "barely legal" girls are ok, but a basic artistic nude is not? Perhaps we need to invest in some strategically-placed fig leaves?