Opened up a girl's magazine recently (i think it was aimed at the age 8 and up) and it had the lyrics of Pussy Cat Girls written out on the back page for little girls to sing along with. The song? Loosen up my buttons.
Chorus: I'm tellin ya ta loosen up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (uh) Im telling ya ta loosin up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (nothin')
Verse: I like when the physical, dont leave me askin for more Im a sexy mama, Who knows just how to get what I wanna
What i wanna do is bring this on ya. Baby can't you see How these clothes are fittin on me And the heat comin from this beat Im about to blow
You say you're a big boy, but I cant agree 'cause the love you said you had ain't been put on me I wonder if im just too much for you Wonder, if my kiss dont make you just... Wonder, what i got next for you What you wanna do
Open up my buttons? I'm a sexy mama. You're a big boy, i'm about to blow? What were the magazine's editors thinking?! Anyway just thought of that after I read the article below, taken from today's times. I had Debbie as a lecturer in first year and she got me really interested in feminist studies. I think this piece hits the nail on the head. I am so uneased by sexual dolls being given to kids.... what was wrong with Sindy???!
Society is complicit in turning girls into sex objects
This week's news about the break-up of an international paedophile ring revealed some facts which are literally too horrific to contemplate: men videoing themselves raping their own children, some as young as five. Naturally enough, most people want to see these individuals put behind bars for life; others advocate more severe punishments, from chemical castration to public hanging.
The sense of anger and outrage people feel is justified, and there is no doubt that tracking down and imprisoning the perpetrators will save many children from a fate arguably worse than death. It is not, however, going to solve the problem - because sexualised images of children are not just the stuff of covert internet porn rings. They are all around us, and we have failed to be shocked by them.
High-heeled shoes and boots are available in Irish shoe shops for children aged five and upwards. T-shirts with "porn star" written across the chest are widely available for the same age group. Major chain-stores sell g-string and bra sets for girls ranging from five to 10 years of age. Bratz dolls, now far exceeding sales of Barbie, combine pre-pubescent, wide-eyed innocence with the clothing and make-up of the prostitute or dominatrix. Bratz Babies, which wear make-up and earrings but carry babies' milk bottles, represent an even more perturbing mix of adult sexuality and infancy.
Irish parents seem to have put up little resistance against the tide of gender-stereotyped and sexualised products and images which have recently flooded the children's media, toy and clothing industries.
The spectre of little girls wearing bra tops, shaking their bootie and singing suggestive lyrics does not appal us, at least not sufficiently to make us call for a ban on advertising during children's programming or to reject the alleged inevitability of these developments.
Increasingly we hear reports of eight-year-old girls about to make their Holy Communion availing of highlights, tanning and leg-waxing. Parents roll their eyes and say "girls will be girls".
It is time to get real. Girls, if they continue to be treated like this, will be sexual objects: in their own eyes and those of others. For all its rhetoric about a society of free choice that engenders liberal, open debate, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland has not yet had an honest public discussion on this topic.
The Irish media has routinely constructed paedophiles as anti-social "outsiders" or strangers, (homo)sexually-repressed priests or disturbed celebrities, while playing down or ignoring the fact that most child abuse takes place within the family. Statistics from the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin show that, in 2005, 19.6 per cent of reported child sexual abuse cases were perpetrated by fathers, 16.2 per cent by brothers, 26.8 per cent by another male relative and 30.2 per cent by another known person. Only 3.4 per cent of cases were perpetrated by strangers.
It is time to face up to the realities of child abuse - to acknowledge that raunch culture for the under-12s has become acceptable in the current mediascape; to face the fact that paedophilia is not restricted to small circles of anti-social sex monsters but is more commonplace than most people would like to think; and to take responsibility for the messages we are sending out to children by condoning and conspiring, albeit inadvertently, in their sexualisation.
Many of these realities are hard to stomach, but there is a real need, now more than ever, to think about them and to talk about them honestly and openly if the problem is ever to be successfully tackled.
Dr Debbie Ging is a lecturer and researcher on gender in the media at the School of Communications, Dublin City University.
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