Wheresmykimchi, from UNICEF
Every 10 minutes, somewhere in the world, an adolescent girl dies as a result of violence. Nearly one in five girls is sexually abused at least once in her life. In the United States, 18 percent of girls report that by age 17 they have been victims of a sexual assault or abuse at the hands of another adolescent.
Why are women and girls so often the victims of violence?
Unfortunately, there is no single answer to that question. However, when women and girls are repeatedly objectified and their bodies hypersexualized, the media contributes to harmful gender stereotypes that often trivialize violence against girls.
A report by the American Psychological Association (APA) on the sexualization of girls in the media found that girls are depicted in a sexual manner more often than boys; dressed in revealing clothing, and with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness. In a study of print media, researchers at Wesleyan University found that on average, across 58 different magazines, 51.8 percent of advertisements that featured women portrayed them as sex objects. However, when women appeared in advertisements in men’s magazines, they were objectified 76 percent of the time.
Social media has "amplified age-old pressures for teenage girls to conform to certain sexualized narratives,"