Parents for Ethical Marketing
is a young, grassroots organization of people concerned about the effects of corporate marketing practices directed at young children.
With all my complaining about girls’ Halloween costumes, I was happy to see Halloween Vamping for Girls Wears Thin. Seems that what girls and parents want is not exactly what costume retailers are offering.
To prove it, Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me is sponsoring a Real Girls costume contest. Parents have been sending in photos of what their girls really wore on Halloween; readers can vote on their favorites. Contest ends today.
Dr. Diane Levin is interviewed in today’s Los Angeles Times about sexy Halloween costumes for little girls. Levin, co-author of So Sexy So Soon, brings the costume craze into the larger context of childhood sexualization and gender roles. Both boys and girls are affected.
She also makes a great point about the whole children’s costume industry:
But kids are drawn to try out new personas, and Halloween has always been about imagining yourself transformed in some edgy, scary way. Is this any different?
That’s always been one of the exciting things about Halloween. But there was once a time when children were trying out personas that were of their own making. When they decided they wanted to be a knight or something, they had to figure out what the knight did. It wasn’t a matter of having grown-ups – marketers — saying, “Here. This will make you look like such and such a character. You don’t need to do anything.” This isn’t about imagination. This is about marketers trying to hijack kids’ imaginations.
Levin also notes:
This year, the wigs and boots and makeup and all kinds of stuff to be grown up and sexy seem to have become part of every costume.
The children modeling the costumes online do seem to be wearing more makeup. And what is up with the shoes this year?
A friend in Boston alerted me to the best birthday present ever: CosmoGirl magazine folds.
Newsweek reviews The Porning of America, a book inspired by a father’s realization that “porn culture and I were in a death match for my daughter’s soul.”
He had battled the Bratz empire.
It’s too early to know exactly how kids who grow up in this hypersexualized environment will be affected in the long term. But Scott and his coauthor say it’s not too soon—or too prudish—to sound the alarm, and to look critically at the sexualized culture we’re exposed to every day. . . . [P]orn themes have gone from adult entertainment to prime time, seeping into nearly every aspect of popular culture. Sarracino and Scott define “porning” as the way advertising and society in general have borrowed from the ideas and characteristics central to most American pornography: sex as commodity, sexuality as overt, narrow views of women and male-female relationships, bad girls and dirty boys, domination and submission.
This isn’t about sex. It’s not about morality or sexual freedom or abstinence or teen pregnancy or any polarizing belief or issue.
It’s about kids’ mental and physical health.
Last year, the American Psychological Association put out a compelling report that described the sexualization of young girls: a process that entails being stripped of all value except the sexual use to which they might be put. Once they subscribe to that belief, say some psychologists, those girls begin to self-objectify—with consequences ranging from cognitive problems to depression and eating disorders.
Fact sheet on childhood sexualization from CCFC.
Emphasis mine. H/T Whole Kids Project.
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.
News of Scholastic removing Bratz books from their school offerings has hit the big time: Read it from celebrity blogger Perez Hilton.
Reader Vaquera points us to the Heelarious high heels for infants. More on those from Feministing and Hoyden.
And Joe Kelley from Dads & Daughters reports on Parents, Kids, and the Media.
Without admitting why, Scholastic has pulled Bratz books from their fall offerings to schools:
The company confirmed Wednesday that its fall product line for schools no longer includes the Bratz brand — a switch from last year, when Scholastic said the books appealed to “reluctant readers” and its job was to “offer materials that appeal to children where they are, not where we would like them to be.”
Could it have been CCFC’s 18-month campaign resulting in 5,000 emails to Scholastic? Details at Shaping Youth.
Corporations are willing to listen and respond to our concerns. They are concerned about their reputations. They want to keep us as customers. We just have to let them know what we want.
She’ll feel extra fab prancing around in these Hot 2 Trot wedges by Mia. . . . Crossing patent vamp straps wrap over the arches to a slingback . . . . A 1/2 inch cork textured midsole rises to a 2 1/2 inch wedge heel.
Prancing? Vamp straps? Slingback? These are children’s shoes. They would fit my six-year-old.
Oh, and they come in silver, too.
Listen, I’m sorry if you’re a bored copywriter, or a really, really bored shoe-namer: You still have to take some responsibility for what you produce.
The shoes are sold by MIA. You can contact them here.
(H/T to Mother Hen)
Corporate Babysitter
