Kids and sex/sexualisation

"Firstly, adult female sexuality is not about wearing high-heels and short skirts, a la Bratz dolls"

Bek has a good post up on the 'sexualisation of children' (i.e. girls). Aside from the fact I don't call myself a feminist (so I don't have to bother disassociating myself from people like this), I am very much of one mind with Bek on this issue. She makes a good point that most people don't seem to want to admit, or realise, that kids are sexual beings too. As she puts it: "Children are already sexual beings, on their own terms, not adult terms, but sexual beings nonetheless". The only thing I can add is that apart from poring over the 'sexy bits' in young adult novels, being a church-going kid I was also keen on scouring the bible for the 'sexy bits' in there, too. Take that, rabid anti-sex religious fundamentalists!

I have to say, it didn't take me until grade 5 or 6 (i.e. 10 or 11 years of age) to have a keen interest in sex. Not that I had any idea what it was, or what it involved, before the vague picture materialised in my mind after years of 'sperm meets egg'-style sex-ed classes. As pre-school-aged kids, my younger brother and two female friends of ours played 'doctors and nurses', as the typical pretext for a fascinating examination of one-another's private parts. Not that we girls knew the proper names for these bits, just that they were forbidden and all 'doctors and nurses' games had to be played in the absence of any adult's monitoring presence. We also used to play something we called 'rude TV', which largely consisted of most of us sitting in the covered 'house' part of our tree-house and one or two of us standing at the 'window' (the 'TV') and lifting up our shirts in what we took to be a pervy manner and dancing around. God knows where we got that idea, given that we didn't even have a TV. Proof, if it was ever needed, that kids will exhibit a natural fascination with such things without the influence of the media: there was no such thing as a gossip rag or fashion magazine in our little universe at that time, either.

Another thing we used to do that I truly believed at the time was forbidden and naughty was peek into a book of artistic nudes owned by my mother. The book was covered in brown paper, which may have just been a cheap way to protect it, but to my 6-year-old mind was most certainly a sign that my brother and I weren't supposed to know what was in it. This despite the fact that it was in a bookcase alongside many, many other books. Of course, I wasn't much interested in the likes of 'Nude Descending a Staircase', just the more lifelike depictions of adults sans clothing. Naked pictures of children wouldn't have interested me in the slightest. There were loads of naked photographs of my brother and I in the family photo album, whether studio shots or merely playing naked on the lawn. Seen one naked kid you've seen them all. When I was a kid it was the naked pictures of adults that were naughty and scandalous, and that book of nudes was just about the only such avenue I had for satisfying my curiousity about the naked adult body.

One of the things that I consider a real pity is that the most readily available source of knowledge about sex and my body was also one of the tools used to undermine girls' self-confidence and funnel them into a lifetime of spending on products that are touted to compensate for invented flaws. That would be magazines like Girlfriend and Dolly, then Cosmopolitan and Cleo. They were a goldmine in terms of solid advice regarding the intricacies of sex and various bodily functions, but unfortunately served to convince me of inadequacies in other areas- fashion, makeup and generally not looking like a model (but being sold on the notion that all it took to do so was to purchse product X). The magazines that tell you to 'love the body you're in' at the same time they sell you a pair of jeans that they promise will hide that big bum. And whatever is wrong with a big bum anyway? They consistently push a single, completely invented ideal body image that threatens the self-worth of anyone who doesn't live up to it.

It is a total puzzle to me as to why so many people are more concerned about kids 'becoming sexualised' than they are about the mental havoc that is wreaked upon kids who feel they can't fit in or live up to some totally artificial ideal pushed upon them by the media. I wish I had been better informed about sex and relationships as a kid, to an extent that would probably never make the pages of Dolly. I wish I had been better informed about the fact that no matter what a woman's physical attributes are, there are numerous guys who will think she is totally hot. Diversity in terms of what people find sexually attractive was a totally alien concept to me until I discovered porn and strip clubs at age 19 or so. I don't wish I had been more sheltered from the media that I was exposed to, I just wish I had been equipped with the skills to analyse what it was doing to me. I can't say my parents didn't try in that regard (my Dad in particular) but I just attributed that to what I saw as their puritanical Christian tendencies.

Whether it's Bratz dolls, baby bras, Paris Hilton or MTV we shouldn't assume that preventing kids from ever laying eyes on these things until they reach a certain age will protect them from whatever harmful effects we imagine such things exert. Maybe part of the hysteria is due to the adults involved not realising that the same artillery is aimed at their own heads.

Kids, just like adults, need to be equipped with knowledge and the critical thinking skills to make good decisions. They need to know what constitutes a credible source. This applies as much to everything else in life as sex and 'sexualisation'. There is no boogey-man corporate movement trying to turn six year olds into porn stars. What they are trying to do is turn them into lifelong consumers of their products. It's even more sinister, but almost no-one seems to be aware of it. Not to mention it's hard to grab a headline if you can't fit the word 'sex' into the story.