Cross-posted from Tracee Sioux at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

“Kids close your eyes!”

How many times do you find yourself trying to protect your children from harmful and destructive images while watching family television?

Two years ago, while watching television, I was assaulted with an image of a woman wearing a see-through nightgown, nipples protruding and visible, erotic soft lighting, floating in a bathtub. It was intentionally erotic, except that she had been violently and bloodily murdered and this erotic woman was, in fact, dead.

“What the heck is going on?” I thought. “Why are my children and I being subjected to this kind of sexually violent imagery in a commercial?”

So, I wrote the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission used to be the people who governed our airwaves. They used to control when and what was allowed to air during times when children were expected to be viewing television. Remember when they wouldn’t let radio stations play George Michael’s, I Want Your Sex?

Many months later they wrote back.

“Each network or television station has control over what it airs during commercials. You’ll have to write each network to complain about every commercial you feel is inappropriate,” they informed me.

“What? Who made that stupid rule?” I wanted to know.

And now that I’ve read So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane Levin, Ph.D, and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D, I know who made that stupid rule.

As a point of fact and matter of record it was specifically: Ronald Reagan who got the “deregulation of the media” rolling. George H.W. Bush furthered the problem with the telecommunications act of 1996.

The euphemism for more sex and violence on TV is “deregulation of the media.”

Sounds innocuous doesn’t it?

Essentially, deregulation means fewer laws. Fewer laws governing what? What companies can sell and who they can sell it to, when they can run an ad, and what the ads’ message can contain.

The motive? To stimulate the economy allowing telecommunications companies more freedom to make more money.

To that end, deregulation has been a fantastic success.

Companies spend about $17 billion annually marketing to children, a staggering increase from the $100 million spent in 1983, according to Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

Unfortunately, their freedom to make more money by advertising whatever they like in front of whichever audience they buy airtime for - is infringing on my freedom and my children’s freedom to not be subjected to sexualized violence and objectification of people on television.

This is especially upsetting to me in regards to commercials where I, and children who don’t know better, are a CAPTIVE AUDIENCE and there is no implied consent, as there is when choosing to watch a sexual or violent movie or TV show.

Did Ronald Reagan mean for deregulation of the telecommunication industry, including children’s television, to result in hyper-sexualized and all-too violent advertising for children? Was this his intention?

Was it the intent of the George H.W. Bush and Congress in Telecommunications Act of 1996 to further open the floodgates for marketers to legally target children, instead of targeting their ads at parents?

Who cares?

This is the result. This is where we’re at.

I know for a fact the religious conservatives who voted for them would not have been in favor of such legislation if they had understood the kinds of sexual and violent imagery which would be coming at children from every direction. But, again, who cares?

It is from here we have to make a choice. Do we want to allow this kind of thing and all its consequences on our culture, our children and our own minds to continue?

I was just reading in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles” by Marriage Williamson, this morning, the definition of one of the most beautiful miracles - Changing Our Mind.

The fundamental change will occur with the change of mind in the thinker.

We can change our minds.

Right now. There are numerous bills before Congress that would re-regulate our children’s media and make parents, as opposed to marketers the primary influence over our children’s minds. Visit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for direct links to find out about the bills and send letters directly to representatives.

Stay tuned to Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me as Tracee Sioux gets into the ideas presented in So Sexy So Soon and the practical steps to change our own minds, our schools, our culture and our media’s influence over the role of sex in our children’s lives.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Child Sexualization, Media Reform, American corporate capitalism, Guests, Legislation, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.