A qualitative study of children, young people and 'sexting ... - NSPCC

A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting’
and gender positionings in relation to ‘sexting’. This in turn, it is hoped, will enable development of
appropriate resources to support different groups of young people the better to avoid or deal with
‘sexting’ insofar as this is problematic for them.
putting concerns over sexting into context – the ‘sexualisation’
of culture
The ‘sexualisation of culture’ has become a major focus of interest and concern in the last decade (e.g.
McNair, 2002; Gill, 2003; McRobbie, 2004; Levy, 2005; Paasonen et al., 2007; Attwood, 2009; Durham,
2009; Levin & Kilbourne, 2009; Dines, 2010). The phrase is used to capture the growing sense that
western societies have become saturated by sexual representations and discourses, with pornography
increasingly influential and porous, permeating contemporary culture. Porn stars have emerged as
bestselling authors and celebrities; a ‘porno chic’ aesthetic can be seen in music videos and advertising;
and practices once associated with the sex industry e.g. lapdancing and pole dancing have become newly
‘respectabilised’, promoted as mainstream corporate entertainment or fitness activity. This shift speaks to
something more than the idea that ‘sex has become the big story’ (Plummer, 1995:4) but denotes a range
of different things:
‘a contemporary preoccupation with sexual values, practices and identities; the public shift to more
permissive sexual attitudes; the proliferation of sexual texts; the emergence of new forms of sexual
experience; the apparent breakdown of rules, categories and regulations designed to keep the
obscene at bay; [and the] fondness the scandals, controversies and panics around sex’ (Attwood,
2006: 77).
Brian McNair (2002) has argued Western society has become a ‘striptease culture’ preoccupied with
confession, revelation and exposure. This is connected to an ongoing breakdown or renegotiation of
the boundary between public and private, which is itself the outcome of multiple, intersecting factors
including the partial success of the women’s and sexual liberation movements, shifts in media regulation
away from censorship and towards ‘an informed consumer model’ (Bragg & Buckingham, 2009), and
the possibilities opened up by rapid technological change. More broadly, sociologists would situate
claims about ‘sexualisation’ within the wider canvas of developments in advanced capitalism in which
relationships are taking on more fluid and ‘liquid’ forms (Bauman, 2003), intimacy is transforming
(Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995), and sex is playing a more central role in ‘projects of the self ’ (Giddens,
1993; Featherstone, 1990; 1999).
Growing concerns about ‘sexualization’ can be seen in the UK coalition government’s renewed emphasis
on child ‘sexualisation’ and ‘commercialisation’ as a key areas to be addressed (DCMS, 2010; DfE, 2010;
HM Government, 2010) .The proliferation of public and policy reports includes, in the last two years
in Britain alone, a Home Office report by Dr Linda Papadopoulos (Papadopoulos, 2010; see also APA,
2007), a report commissioned by the Scottish Office (Buckingham et al., 2010) and, most recently,
Reg Bailey’s (2011) report Let Children be Children (this building on the Byron Review, 2008, which
examined ways of helping young people safely cope with increasing exposure to and use of sexually
explicit materials via new media technologies). It is also seen in a plethora of popular books, about the
sexualisation of girls, with titles such as So Sexy, So Soon or What’s happening to our Girls? Stories about
‘sexualisation’ also form an increasing proportion of news items, and it is clear that the topic is given
prominence by editors as a matter of major public interest.
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