Week 6-So Sexy So Soon

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).

       Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1-8). New York: Ballantine Books. Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf