I was in a store this summer with my one-year-old daughter looking for a pair of shorts. To my infuriation, all of the shorts for girls were short-shorts, or so-called “hot pants.” I’ve been around this media-saturated, sexually exploitative, female-demoralizing culture all my life—but being confronted with the sexualization of infants, toddlers and little girls was eye-opening.
After nearly five decades of a modern feminist movement in this country, was this what it had come to? Hot pants for one-year-olds, padded bras for pre-teens, and t-shirts that read “No Strings Attached” for little girls? As we grow up into young women, we are encouraged to embrace a new role model through images in Girls Gone Wild videos: We are taught that to be sexy means baring our breasts for plastic beads at Mardi Gras or spring break. (Ironically, while women who want to breastfeed their babies in public, no matter how discreetly, are made to feel uncomfortable, harassed and even banned from public places.)
This objectification of women and little girls has saturated our culture so deeply that many women are duped into believing that this is empowerment. Not only are we seeing the pressure to be sexy forced upon younger and younger girls, but now I watch women of all ages embrace this objectification as their own sexuality. From a five-year-old who dresses up in a midriff-baring princess costume for Halloween, to the straight women at a party or bar who make out with other straight women as a turn on for their male audience, increasingly I see women and girls acting out an image they see in the media as if it were their own. It is anything but.
We teach women and girls to exude sexuality, but it is a sexuality created around them. It is certainly not for them, or of them. Rather, this sexuality requires women to be on display for the entertainment and pleasure of others. If, and when, sexuality is self-defined and proudly claimed, then it is used against women. With labels like “slut” and “whore,” we are reminded that our sexuality is sanctioned by and for others, and not for ourselves.
Nowhere is the marginalization of women from their sexuality more evident than in the politics of the day. Millions of women and girls struggle with eating disorders and self-hatred as they try to find their way through a culture that tells them at every turn that they are not good enough. It is difficult to advocate for yourself, demand the information you want or claim a stake in your own body if you don’t feel you are worth it. Additionally, our schools and government are pushing through agendas of abstinence-only education with false and misleading information, where recognition and respect of sexualities is all but non-existent. We are left with little understanding of how our bodies function, how to prevent unwanted pregnancies or the self-esteem to define and claim our own sexual selves. We have a nation with increasingly limited access to reproductive health services, especially for young and impoverished women. We are em-battled in a national fight over marriage equality and the absurd debate about whose love is legitimate. Given all this, it is no wonder that women struggle to find acceptance.
To be truly empowered, we need to be able to define for ourselves what our sexuality means, and claim our bodies as our own, unapologetically. To do this, we need to be free of these marketed notions of sexuality and beauty, which are a distortion of our true selves. We need to demand more diverse images of women in the media. We need to take a stand against those who would profit off the exploitation of our sexuality—we are not for sale. And we need to encourage and create the space for girls to be girls—to jump, run, climb and be strong in their bodies without the agenda merchanizing them.
Megan Seely is raising her daughter with her partner in northern California. She teaches Sociology and Women’s Studies at Sierra College and recently completed her first book, Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist. For more about Megan, see her website fightlikeagirl.org.