I agree with the contentions of the authors of So Sexy So Soon. I believe that children
are exposed to both overt and covert sexual messages via the media and popular
culture. This type of influence reduces the length of childhood. Thoughts and
ideas beget action. Once action is taken and sexual experiences have occurred,
childhood is over. A whole host of feelings, thoughts and issues that a child
is not equipped to deal with follow. One can never return to innocence. Media
is not only to blame. Parents are responsible for controlling their children’s
exposure to media of all types. Children who have unmonitored access to TV,
DVDs, social media, the internet and cell phones are open to inappropriate influences
(Levin & Kilbourne, 2009).
Little girl’s clothing with words like “Baby Doll”, “Juicy”,
or “Cutie” printed on the butt are a common example of the sexualization of
children via their clothing. Words printed on a garment are meant to draw
attention to the area on which they are printed. In this case, the message
attracts attention to the child’s bottom. When I taught Pre-K, I had a girl in
my class who was prone to performing for her peers. One morning during free
play, she grabbed a slender cylindrical block, fluffed her blonde, curly hair
before singing (with gusto) “Before He Cheats” and dancing provocatively before
an audience of her classmates. She knew all of the words to the song which
included references to sex acts, violence, vandalism and alcohol consumption.
The popularity of songs like, “Disco Stick” and “I’m Sexy and I Know It”
amongst preschool children tells me that parents may not monitor the music to
which their children listen. A third example of sex in the media and pop
culture is the increasingly younger age at which children are describing
themselves and others as hot or sexy. A friend who teaches in a school age
recreation program, conducted an activity during which each child wrote his
name on a piece of paper and taped it to a table. Next, the children milled
around the room and wrote one compliment on each child’s piece of paper. While
gathering up the completed papers, my friend noticed that, on one of the girl’s
papers, someone had written “She’s so hot!”. A class meeting followed regarding
the incident. The girl to whom the compliment was written admitted privately to
the teacher that she had written the comment about herself.
According to Levin and Kilbourne (2009),developmentally
inappropriate sexual messages delivered to young children could affect their
definitions of feminity, masculinity, the polarization of gender roles, a
skewing of the value of people, frighten and confuse children, cause sexual promiscuity
and precociousness (p 2). Early childhood educators can counter this influence
by questioning issues regarding gender stereotypes, sexual messages, and
provocative utterances by facilitating thought provoking discussions and asking
questions that help children to question their actions and influences (p3).
