In 2002 the Big Brother housemate Jade Goody stripped naked on primetime TV. The
following year Paris Hilton starred in a sex tape posted on the internet
that was viewed by millions. Last year Britney Spears flashed her genitalia
to the paparazzi, setting off a string of celebrity copycats. And two weeks
ago the singer Beth Ditto clambered out of her knickers live on stage,
tossing her undies into the crowd.
You’re nobody, it seems, until everybody has seen your never-nevers plastered
across the cover of Heat magazine. And it’s not just show-biz
exhibitionism that’s on the rise. Teenage girls are being swept up by
reality TV-style tits-out culture, becoming more willing than ever to bare
all.
Log on to social networking websites such as MySpace or Facebook, view the
videos on YouTube and you’ll find explicit photos of girls, as young as 14,
posing in their underwear or flashing for the camera. It’s not only socially
and morally worrying, but new research indicates that such practices may
cause long-term damage to young women’s mental and physical health.
Grace, 15, attends a girls’ school in North London. She has a MySpace and
Facebook page and her photo galleries are littered with pictures of her
gangly frame dressed in bra-tops, tight shorts and miniskirts. She sees it
as keeping up with fashion, just like having her tawny hair highlighted.
“Mum doesn’t like my clothes, she says I look too old, but I’m just wearing
what everyone else is. There’s nothing wrong with it. I think Mum would
freak if she saw my MySpace though; it has everything on it. She does say
that I’m growing up too fast, but I think that’s good.”
Grace (it’s not her real name) says her parents don’t pay a lot of attention
to her online life. “Mum doesn’t like me spending a long time on the
computer and when Dad saw one of the pictures he said I should take it down,
but he didn’t check all of them,” she says. Under current rules, you must be
over 14 to register with MySpace, though some politicians are increasingly
worried about teens misusing networking sites. The Attorney-General in the
American state of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, wants a state law that would
require children to obtain parental permission before creating profiles on
them.
Grace’s web profiles reveal in detail her adolescent tangles with boyfriends,
occasional vodka-swilling and snogging on the night bus. They also reveal
that she has friends from across the world, many of them men. “I suppose I
do like putting up sexy photos because it gets attention. But I do it
because it’s funny, not because I really think I’m sexy. And they’re all
idiots anyway,” she says of the men who write to her. “They think you’re
interested in them but you’re so not.”
Many of them aren’t just harmless idiots, though. This week MySpace reported
that it had identified and removed 29,000 convicted sex offenders caught
using the site. It might all seem harmless to Grace, but the comments on her
photos, posted by Grace and her friends, contain a rich analysis of her
appearance, revealing a strong preoccupation with appearing sexy. “You look
pretty fit here,” says one. “Look at your boobs, they’re huge,” reads
another. There is also a sense of one-upmanship as weekend antics are
compared. “You were so mashed last night,” reads one message. “What were
you up to in the toilet?” Another asks if a girl called Frankie “really
flashed a cabbie!”
Some feminists argue that this kind of exhibitionism is about women taking
control of their sexuality, but the trend seems to have more to do with
media adulation than emancipation. Research conducted in the past ten years
shows that girls are modelling their behaviour on women in the media. When a
poll by the Lab TV website asked nearly 1,000 girls who they considered a
“good role model”, the glamour models Abi Titmuss and Jordan topped the list.
In the same survey, 63 per cent of girls said that they aspired to be glamour
models rather than doctors or teachers, and a quarter thought that
lap-dancing would be a “good profession”.
The mental impact of all this increasingly exhibitionist behaviour among young
girls is complex, says Dr Sharon Lamb, Professor of Psychology at Vermont
University. She is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA)
taskforce, which wrote a report on the subject in April this year.
“What sexual exhibitionism encourages, and leads to, is the sexualisation of
girls; a process whereby a girl’s sense of self-worth hinges on her sexual
appeal,” she says. The report, which looked at research from the past 30
years, concluded that young girls’ preoccupation with appearance and
sexuality can have disturbing consequences for their physical and mental
wellbeing.
Especially worrying was a study by Dr Barbara Fredrickson, a professor of
psychology at the University of North Carolina, which reports that teens who
strongly view themselves as sex objects face an increased risk of developing
eating disorders, depression and sexual dysfunction. The APA report also
featured a 1998 study, in which the same researchers asked college-aged
girls to try on either a swimsuit or a sweater, assess their appearance,
then perform mathematical tests. The girls asked to wear swimsuits performed
significantly worse.
“This is how sexualisation fragments consciousness,” says Dr Lamb. “These
girls were so hung up on their appearance they literally didn’t have room in
their heads to do maths. They learn that preoccupation from the women they
look up to in the media.”
Dr Glenn Wilson, reader in psychology at King’s College London, an expert on
exhibitionism, agrees with Dr Lamb. “Girls see celebrities acting and
dressing in an overtly sexual way and think that is the best way to get
attention.”
It’s Saturday afternoon and it could be any English town centre (I’m in
Banbury in Oxfordshire). You don’t have to look too hard to see Dr Wilson’s
point. Prepubescent girls strut past in wedge heels and crop-tops. Many of
their tops bear slogans such as “Little Minx”, “Heartbreaker” or “Who needs
brains when you’ve got these?”
In a high street store a mother berates her teenage daughter for trying on a
dungaree miniskirt she considers too revealing. “What do you want to wear
that for?” she asks: “It’s hanging off you.” She tugs at the hem and one of
the straps falls off her teenage daughter’s shoulder. The girl shrugs: “I
like it. Anna’s got one,” is her only reply, before she storms back into the
changing cubicle. Does her mother worry about the message she is sending
out. “Of course,” she says. “I know she wouldn’t let herself get into
trouble, but sometimes I feel that she doesn’t know what trouble is. It
doesn’t help that all of her friends dress like it.”
Though Dr Wilson believes flirtation and exhibitionism are natural for young
girls, he says that clear lines must be drawn. “Children want to be looked
at, but wearing items like thongs and revealing clothes sends the message
that they are sexually available. It also implies knowledge of sexuality
that just isn’t there,” he says.
Dr Lamb agrees. She feels that girls are being encouraged by celebrities,
clothing designers and toymakers. She cites Bratz Dolls as a prime example.
Since their launch in 2001, the Bratz, which typically come dressed in high
heels, strappy vests and miniskirts, have become queens of the toybox, with
125 million sales worldwide. “They come with painted-on stockings! That’s
giving girls the wrong message about what their body means,” Dr Lamb says.
Unlike their main competitor, Barbie, who is endowed with glamour-model
proportions but tends to focus on the relatively wholesome activities of
dog-walking and beachside barbecues, the Bratz primary focus is on material
goods, their appearance and interactions with boys.
There is a Bratz cartoon in which the girls go on allnight shopping benders,
and also a sister range called Bratz babies, fully made-up toddlers in
brightly coloured underwear. Typical slogans on the Bratz packaging are
“Flaunt it” or “Xpress it”.
The APA report found that girls’ fear of social rejection and unpopularity
drive them to choose sexualised clothing and once they are dressed up like
that they feel the urge to perform as adults.
When I talked to a gaggle of 13 to 15-year-old girls lounging on the steps
behind the Castle Quay shopping centre in Banbury they cheerfully confirmed
Dr Lamb’s beliefs. All the girls wear revealing clothing, including the kind
of high-heeled boots that most women could barely stand in. Why do they
dress this way? “It’s sexy, isn’t it?” replies one.
“If you dress like this you get noticed,” she says, throwing her arms behind
her back, pushing her flat chest forward and striking a suggestive pose. Who
notices you? “Everyone!”
They are being noticed by more than just the passers-by on their way to the
shops. All five of the girls have posted pictures on social networking
sites. At least one admits to having posed in a bikini.
Browse through the pages of MySpace and you’ll find hundreds of revealing
pictures of young girls. A search on the video site YouTube, one of the most
popular sites on the internet, reveals young girls dancing for cameras in
their underwear, or video diaries detailing their sex lives. Egged on by
their friends or by people they meet online, young girls have even been
stripping or masturbating in front of webcams.
Dr Lamb believes that these girls engage in dangerous exhibitionist behaviour
because they are increasingly encouraged to perform and to take on the role
of a successful sex object. This is linked, she says, to an increase in the
incidence of depression, self-harm and eating disorders. In her private
practice Dr Lamb sees many college-age girls who have suffered as a result
of such exhibitionist behaviour: “One of my clients flashed her breasts for
a camera,” she says. “She now feels that she will never live down the shame
of it. In the moment, these girls feel powerful, but it is short-lived and
the negative results are lasting. Girls often experience a drop in
self-esteem, can become depressed and fail to form intimate relationships in
the future. This kind of behaviour is a growing trend and carries serious
consequences for girls’ mental health. We need to tackle it, now.” The
problem is becoming increasingly evident at that epicenctre of
self-exposure, the world of reality television. Dr Honey Langcaster-James, a
consultant psychiatrist at the University of Hull, is a TV psychologist who
has appeared on Big Brother and its Psychology Show. In
her private practice she sees former reality TV stars, including some of the
more recent Big Brother contestants. Using one-to-one coaching she
helps them to deal with traumas caused by sudden media intrusion, ardent
fans and the abuse that occasionally comes their way.
Dr Langcaster-James believes that children need more information about the
implications of exposing oneself (often all-too literally) in the media.
“Reality stars have little longevity and can end up emotionally damaged, but
we rarely see that side of fame; the worry, the constant attention can make
life horrible for people. If we did see it, I think girls would cotton on to
the negative implications of their behaviour.”
Dr Wilson adds that while we cannot ban children from watching screens, we
need to reduce the average six hours and 32 minutes a day that children
spend doing so. “It’s no new suggestion, but children should be cultivating
real-world friendships and interact with people outside of the computer,” he
says.
While much of the responsibility for this problem lies with the media, the
clothing manufacturers and the celebrities themselves, Dr Lamb believes that
solving the problem starts at home and in schools. “Media literacy is a key
goal. Encourage girls to cast a critical gaze over the media and they will
begin to realise that they have a choice about how they are perceived,
singularly and as a gender. Then we might see some change,” she says.
But while criticism of the media is the answer Dr Lamb hopes for, it is girls
criticising each other that is beginning to change attitudes among some
groups. “There is a backlash beginning,” she says. “Girls quickly go from
being popular to being derided for their slutty behaviour. It’s sad because
they do all these things to fit in, but go too far and they are soon turned
against.”
This is especially apparent in America’s growing Modesty Movement, exemplified
by modestyzone.net, a website founded in 2005 by Wendy Shalit, the author of
Girls Gone Mild, published last March. The site advocates modest
behaviour and features tips such as skirts should fall no more than four
fingers above the knee.
Modesty Zone also features a blog, Modestly Yours, which has 21 regular
contributors who comment on topics such as fashion and celebrities. In
recent years, clothing stores such as modestapparelUSA.com and
dressmodestly. com have joined the site in promoting cover-all outfits. In
the UK, pureclothing.co.uk offers thin tops designed to maintain coverage
while allowing girls to wear the latest fashions.
Shalit claims that it is the parents who are engaging in sexually
exhibitionist behaviour and that their children are pulling on the reins.
In her new book she says that parents are increasingly willing to accept
children’s desire to be “bad” instead of “good”. Because children naturally
rebel against their parents, the new trend is for them to act in responsible
ways. If Shalit is right, mums who dress in stilettos and a miniskirt will
have their children queuing for floor-length skirts by the end of the day,
because it seems the one thing that will never go out of style for teenagers
is challenging their parents’ expectations.
