The FTC released the results of its research on food marketing to kids, Marketing Food To Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation: A Federal Trade Commission Report To Congress (pdf).

The report recommends more of the same food industry self-regulation; critics maintain that self-regulation just doesn’t work.

Michele Simon writes:

Most importantly, the FTC should be calling on the food industry to stop marketing to children, period. If a child under the age of 8 does not have the cognitive capacity to understand that she is being targeted commercially, then how can any marketing to young children be ethical? Even older kids, while they can understand “persuasive intent,” are still unable to resist the power of marketing. It’s entirely possible that the FTC recommendations, if followed, could result in more, not less food marketing to kids. The agency is essentially encouraging the nation’s most aggressive food marketers to keep it up, as long as it’s for the “right” foods, however that gets defined.

Kids should not be taught to eat carrots and oranges because SpongeBob or even Elmo says so. Rather, they should eat when they are hungry, just as adults should. We cannot depend on marketers to make kids eat right. If the food industry just stopped targeting kids with billions of dollars worth of sophisticated unhealthy food messages, parents’ jobs would get a whole lot easier.

I recommend reading Michele Simon’s entire diary entry at Daily Kos.

CCFC co-founder Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne (of Killing Us Softly fame) talked about their new book, So Sexy So Soon, on the Today Show:

I had the pleasure of seeing both women (as well as Michele Simon) at the last CCFC Summit. I was even able to tell Jean Kilbourne (while she was trapped in line with me waiting for the bathroom) how her book Can’t Buy My Love was instrumental in motivating me to finally quit smoking.

And on that note, the House voted to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco. And by “regulate,” we mean crack down on tobacco marketing and sales to kids. The Senate has not yet voted; President Bush may veto:

The reasoning is positively Orwellian. “FDA regulates drugs and devices by approving products after weighing the benefits against the risks of a product,” the White House policy statement on the bill says. “In contrast, there is no such thing as a cigarette in which the benefits outweigh the risks. The use of tobacco products is inherently unsafe.”

Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean that the government should ban cigarettes, not stop at merely regulating them. The only other translation possible is that the White House has concluded cigarettes are so dangerous the government should do nothing about them.

Which reminds me: I’ve got tickets to the Daily Show when it’s in town for the RNC. Can’t wait. 

Read also: Big Tobacco’s Guinea Pigs: How an Unregulated Industry Experiments on America’s Kids and Consumers

At least a thousand people found their way to Corporate Babysitter via a mention in Salon.com’s Little Girls Gone Wild, an interview with M. Gigi Durham who wrote The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It.

If you’re having trouble getting your head around the sexualization of girls, this article is a great place to start. The issues – the narrow definition of sexuality, the acceptance of only “perfect” bodies, the expection to be “hot” but not sexual (in the era of abstinence-only sex education and purity balls) — are clear and concise.

I’m anxious to read the book — especially the what we can do about it part.

Need some real-life examples from advertising/marketing? Check out the posts at Sociological Images (like this one) where we found this:

Dear Washington Post celebrity/pop culture blogger,

A child can be sexualized.

A child cannot be oversexualized. That implies that some childhood sexualization is okay.

Just as there is no such thing as “child sex charges,” there is no such thing as oversexualization of children.

Thank you.

Less than 24 hours before the big Mother’s! Day! Celebration! I successfully added at least three more sessions to my six-year-old’s future therapy bill.

I made my daughter cry. Not the regular, no-you-can’t-have-a-second-donut tears but the gut-wrenching sobs of a truly frightened child.

It had already been a trying day. In the morning she was gazing at her Scholastic book order form and wishing for the Care Bear book/stuffed toy combo pack, just like so-and-so has at school.

I’ve gotten pretty good at talking my kids down from these requests, but today she would have none of it.

But mommy, you let me have a Care Bear before . . . .
I know, honey, why don’t you play with that one?
Because the dog took it outside and now it’s ruined!
Oh, well, that’s too bad, honey, but Mommy does not like Care Bears.
But — but — but, the blue one is EVERYWHERE. I see it EVERYWHERE!

Of course she does, I gripe to myself, that’s part of the 17 BILLION DOLLARS spent to make sure she sees it everywhere. So I launch into my usual talk about the toy companies and how they want her to want their toys so that can make money, etc. etc. and we move on.

Later in the day she finds a pair of old sunglasses and brings them to me. She has just learned to read and is proud of it.

Look, mommy, Hello Kitty is everywhere, too! she says, pointing to the words on the side of the sunglasses.

So now I’m annoyed.

Finally, we are getting ready to walk out the door to a birthday party when I hear a crash in the bathroom. She has pulled out a drawer too far and all its contents are spread on the floor. As I help her pick it up, she grabs a small mirror compact, a trade-show giveaway, and says she wants to put it in her pocket.
(more…)

The blogosphere is full of discussions about Miley Cyrus and her photos in Vanity Fair. I’m surprised by how many writers find nothing wrong with the photo — but then, they didn’t attend a conference on the sexualization of children recently.

With that in mind, here’s some worth reading: At Girl Media Maven, Nancy Gruver has a  great discussion going in the comments of Who’s the Grown Up Here? and a follow-up post where she discusses what all these sexualized images of girls in the media are doing to our girls. And Blue Milk has some terrific visuals to help explain why some of us have been speaking out on this for a while.

This is the kind of conversation I’m hesitant to join, because I feel so bad for this 15-year-old girl, heart of an entertainment franchise, and the life she has ahead of her.

But, Corporate Babysitter that I am, I have to say that there’s one thing missing from this conversation: Disney. Disney owns Miley Cyrus (as lifestyle brand Hannah Montana) to the tune of one billion dollars.

Now, Disney seems to be upset by the photos:

A Disney spokeswoman, Patti McTeague, faulted Vanity Fair for the photo. “Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines,” she said.

Emphasis mine. Disney would know something about creating situations to manipulate kids in order to sell something.

After all, the Disney Princess machine alone is worth four billion dollars (see Disney Reaches to the Crib to Extend Princess Magic, Wall Street Journal).

Disney is arguably the greatest marketed brand ever.

And for their part in the creation of the Miley Cyrus who appears in Vanity Fair, they should not feign indignation. They should be ashamed.