Ok this may be a bit rambling but some things have been going round in my head and I need to get them out there to see if anyone else has any ideas about the subject.
I'm 25, my brother is 18. The difference I see between my peers and his is quite shocking, with regard to sex and the sexualisation of women. It makes me wonder why, in such a short amount of time has this happened. I started to think about what has changed in this time.
The loss of childhood - I went out all the time. I used to be bouncing off the walls waiting for an acceptable time to go get my friends. We then rollerbladed, had bike rides, collected frog spawn, climbed trees etc etc. Then, and I think it started to happen around the time of Sara Payne, children seemed to stop playing out as much. My 8 year old neice never plays out and cannot ride a bike!! I think theres a certain sadness to the fact that parents think there their children are safer indoors when there are probably more sexual predators online than there are trawling the streets.
Accessibility of porn - until I was an adult the only pornographic thing I saw was a joy of sex book found in a friends parents bedside table and a playboy jigsaw found in another friends attic. We actually did the jigsaw which is bit strange. The Internet we got when I was a teen but it was so incredibly slow it would have taken 3 days to google the word porn. The computer was also huge and in a room where it was constantly seen my family members. Now kids have laptops and smartphones. Anything can be accessed straight away without parents being aware.
The rise of the glamour model - I was aware of page 3 models although they were not advocated in our household and I didn't know much about it. Now nuts/zoo is cheap and easily accessible, as well as being tolerated by most people. Katie Price is heralded as a role model and her (porn star) look replicated by a lot of people. The playboy image is sold to children on pencil cases, my pencil case had Hanson on it and came free with smash hits.
Clothes - I find a spongebob squarepants bra and knickers set, which I have seen in New Look, rather disgusting. The clothes and shoes aimed at teenagers is shockingly sexual. I also notice a big difference between how I dress for a night out and how younger women do.
TV - now I must admit some of the tv I would sneak a peek at as a teen was rather risqué. There was queer as folk, footballers wives, sex and the city etc. If anything it seems post watershed has calmed down a bit but pre watershed they seem to be constantly pushing the boundary of whats acceptable. Although I only had 5 channels on my little portable. With many teenagers having a lot more channels can they access similar programmes to what I saw easily?
Music videos - the Britney spears video where she dressed as a sexy schoolgirl is quite wrong but seems tame compared to what there is now. Katy Perry, Rhianna et al have videos that make me feel uncomfortable. Yet you can walk round shops hearing about whips and chains exciting them or liking the way it burns when a violent partner sets fire to them. Makes Oops I did it again seem rather preferable.
I can't really think of anything else at the moment although I'm sure there's more. Does anyone have any thoughts on what I've said or anything to add? Am I talking absolute bull poo and completely missing the obvious reason why this is happening?
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
Sexualisation - why is it happening?
LilBB · 23/06/2011 09:02
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