Here is the blog I referenced in the online lecture analyzing the 15-page pictorial in a 2011 French Vogue issue featuring girls dressed as adult women in provocative poses.
This is a great example of the same pattern we are using in our Class Business blogs of building interest, establishing credibility with and educating your audience through citation of experts, and concluding with why this issue is important. Note how it is visually easy to scan for key ideas through the short paragraphs and sub-headings, with pictures throughout to hold reader interest.
I personally find photographs like this to be super sad. Not only are they portraying what the media thinks a woman “should be” but they are also taking away their childhoods in a sense. These kids should be dressing up like princesses, not socially constructed women. The images these kids are supposed to show are brainwashing these young girls into what society wants them to grow up as.
A good example of this is the show Toddlers and Tiaras. The girls are paraded around in “glitz” gowns and their make-up is put on like adults. They even go to the lengths of getting fake teeth and fake hair to make them look older and more beautiful. They are praised for their beauty and looking close to perfect. Mothers freak out if their girls don’t look like they are airbrushed to perfection. What example is this setting for the girls?
Although she was not as young as the girls featured in this article, this post reminds me of the controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus’s risqué Vanity Fair photo-shoot. Miley was 15 at the time when the photo of her draped in a sheet showing her bare back created turmoil for her reputation. Although the young girls in the photo-shoots may have found this experience fun, it could be damaging to them as young females. As stated in the APA report, “when the difference between adult women and girls is blurred, girlhood itself becomes sexualized”. This hyper sexualizing may create confusion for these young girls later on in their lives. I believe editors should refrain from photographing young girls in adult clothes (heals, revealing dresses) until they are at least 16-years old.
When I see photos like this when flipping through magazines or surfing the internet, I think to myself, that this whole idea of little girls dressing up as “sexy” women is so odd to me. As a rising senior, I look back and wish that I was a child again at some times and these little girls, modeling with sophisticated and sexy clothing, is ruining their youth.
I know that some younger girls want to look like this but looking “sexy” at such a young age is giving these girls the wrong sense of sexuality. This is definitely an important that needs to be addressed because this is not healthy for younger girls. It also does not help that they themselves are seeing older women dress like their younger and this allows the younger girls to think it’s okay to look like that. The media is providing a false image of what is “sexy” for these little girls and more steps should be taken to fix that.