 "Photo: Courtesy of Vanity Fair Magazine/ Annie Leibovitz")
America’s young girls have been bombarded with vivid images of thin beautiful models living supposedly everyday lives. Children’s television shows have blurred the lines of what is appropriate behavior for our youth. The media have become a subliminal tool slyly influencing today’s youth.
According to the National Institute on Media and Family, “A child's body image is influenced by how people around her react to her body and how she looks. A pre-adolescent becomes increasingly aware of what society's standards are for the "ideal body."
Miley Cyrus played a teenage character, Hannah Montana, on the Disney Channel. In a 2008 issue of Vanity Fair Cyrus posed for a photo spread in the magazine. Teenage Cyrus’ semi-topless pictures caused an uproar. Her back was exposed and her front was slightly covered with a bed sheet.
Many parents were outraged at the teenage stars provocative photo shoot. Even with her admission of embarrassment, that was not the last time Cyrus would be seen doing something racy. And there was definitely nothing innocent about her performance at the Teen Choice Awards where she danced around a stripper pole while wearing black hot pants.
Young girls are being exposed to characters like Cyrus on seemingly harmless networks such as the Disney Channel to adult magazines such as Vanity Fair. At young ages girls have watched Cyrus, a successful fictional teenage character, having fun and being a rock star. They begin to idolize her, wanting to wear clothes like her and trying to sing like her. Then these kids see her semi-nude photos and begin to think it is appropriate to do the same. Young ladies begin to form questions about why they are not popular in school. They think maybe they are not pretty enough. Those thoughts lead to low self-esteem. Some girls have taken to sexting (sending nude pictures via text message).
According to Media Awareness Network, “The average North American girl will watch 5,000 hours of television, including 80,000 ads, before she starts kindergarten. In the United States, Saturday morning cartoons alone come with 33 commercials per hour.”
Unfortunately, reality shows have spawned questionable role models for today’s youth. With shows like The Girls Next Door, based on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, the Kardashians and For the Love of Ray J (which is one of many shows where numerous women compete to become the girlfriend of a star), adolescent girls have been given a false sense of what is respectable.
Kendra is a Girls Next Door spinoff starring Kendra Wilkinson, one of Hefner’s former girlfriends. She started her career as a stripper at Cheetahs’ nightclub in San Diego. Kendra is married to a football player Hank Basset. She recently gave birth to a baby boy. The birth was televised on her show.
In Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, a Keeping up With the Kardashians spinoff, Kourtney Kardashian became pregnant and recently gave birth to a baby boy. Many young girls watch these shows and envy the women in them.
Little girls see the wonderful lives reality stars have, and teens try to emulate these celebrities. Unfortunately, The Kardashians and Ray J became a household name after a sex tape was released featuring Kim Kardashian and Ray J. A similar thing happened to Paris Hilton when her sex tape was released. One can now better understand why adolescent girls are turning to sexting to get attention.
There are organizations such as Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and supermodel Tyra Banks’ T-Zone Foundation which have committed to help girls with their self esteem. However, campaigns like these are overshadowed by the constant stream of overly sexual images young girls see every day.
A girl’s best defense against falling victim to the negative images in the media starts at home. Parents have the responsibility to protect their children by explaining to them that the shows and characters in the media are just that—characters. We live in a media-dominated culture, and parents have to take that into consideration when it comes to raising their children. Banning everything that originates outside the home is not the cure for a girl’s low self-esteem.
In her Huffington Post story, “How to Help Girls Navigate Sexualization in the Media,” Joyce McFadden wrote, “If the sexual lessons don't come from us, girls will search elsewhere. This week it might be Vanity Fair's tutorial on Miley Cyrus. While it's healthy for girls to individuate from their mothers, does our fear of discussing sexuality push them even farther away than we intend? Do we inadvertently influence them to find other role models who unrealistically represent girls and women?”
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