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

A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting’
Ratings
The interviews and focus groups with boys often touched on the subject of how young boys negotiated
popularity at school and in their local areas. Boys presented the possibility of mugging and gang-related
violence as commonplace in their local areas. While boys presented themselves as generally confident
in dealing with the threat of violence in their local areas (such as knowing which areas were safe to
travel through, and being protected by being ‘known’), and some boys were confident to ‘opt out’ of
systems of popularity in school, the exchange of images of girls, as well as more ‘off-line’ behaviours
such as ‘touching up’ girls in the corridors, could be seen as strategies adopted by boys to perform and
be ‘respected’ by other boys. Participants described to us a system of ‘ratings’, in which fighting, being
involved in crime, wearing designer clothes and sharing evidence of sexual experience were all part of
the performance of masculinity. Boys got ratings for being brave, having money and getting girls.
One way of getting ‘ratings’ was to have pictures of girls on your phone. These would be girls that the boys
knew and would be bikini shots, cleavage shots or, ideally, topless pictures. One 15 year old explained to
us that he has a folder of 30 such images on his phone, sent to him by girls and young women.
I: And what are they – like what is like the purpose of keeping them all?
R: I don’t even know you know. I don’t know, they are just on my phone. But I don’t watch them
unless I am showing someone.
I: You don’t watch them, I don’t believe you. [Laughter]
R: Nah, you should believe me.
I: So like you have got them on your phone and so that is just so that you can say, ‘I’ve got 30
pictures on my phone’?
R: Kind of, like say other people they are like ‘Oh I got this girl to do this’, I will be like, ‘Look at
my phone’. (Kaja, year 10 School Two)
Both the boys and girls explained the different values attached to different kinds of pictures. Kylie (year
10, School One) explained this process as a kind of ‘competition’ for the boys to get certain girls to send
sexually explicit pictures. Kaja, the year 10 boy we met earlier with 30 pictures on his phone, went on
to explain that boys get higher ratings for getting a picture of a girl who would not be expected to send
such a picture.
So the circulation of pictures can be understood in one sense as a form of popularity currency, particularly
among boys. The risks associated with this are profoundly gendered. Girls risk being labelled a ‘slag’ or
a ‘sket’, while boys risk being labelled ‘gay’ if they don’t participate or if they challenge other boys. Given
that other ways to get ‘ratings’, such as fighting, crime and expensive consumer items can be difficult for
boys to navigate, particularly if they are not especially strong or can’t afford designer clothes, it could be
argued that collecting and circulating images of girls carries less risk for boys.
Similarly, some of the boys talked about the pressure to tell their friends that they’ve had sex. Munch
screens of BBM conversations with girls and sexual pictures of girls was one way that boys could ‘prove’
to their peer group that they were sexually active.
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