SexualizationofWomen.. - Department of Psychology - York University

eing victims of commercial sexual exploitation.
Childhood sexual abuse puts girls at risk for prostitution
(Nadon et al., 1998; Silbert & Pines, 1981, 1982).
Intrapsychic Contributions
Many parents as well as marketers would likely argue that
girls want the clothes and accessories that make them
“sexy” and that it is difficult to convince teenagers and
younger girls to make less sexualizing choices. As girls
participate actively in a consumer culture (often buying
products and clothes designed to make them look
physically appealing and sexy) and make choices about
how to behave and whom to become (often styling their
identities after the sexy celebrities who populate their
cultural landscape), they are, in effect, sexualizing them-
selves. Keen observers of how social processes operate, girls
anticipate that they will accrue social advantages, such as
popularity, for buying into the sexualization of girls (i.e.,
themselves), and they fear social rejection for not doing so
(Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Nichter, 2000;Tolman, 2002).
A focus on physical attractiveness is not new; over 3
decades ago, Unger (1979) argued that physical beauty can
translate into power for girls. But the definition of attrac-
tiveness differs depending on the tastes of the culture.
Whereas yesterday’s culture may have equated “domestici-
ty” with attractiveness in women, today’s culture equates
“sexy” with attractiveness (Wolf, 1991). Moreover, there is
evidence that physical appearance was not always the
prime currency for girls’ social success. Brumberg (1997)
examined diaries of adolescent girls in the United States
over the past 100 years to explore how they discussed
self-improvement.Whereas girls of earlier eras focused
on improving their studies and becoming more well-
mannered, in the last 20 years that Brumberg studied,
girls almost exclusively described changing their bodies
and enhancing their physical appearance as the focus of
their self-improvement.
Girls sexualize themselves when they think of them-
selves mostly or exclusively in sexual terms and when they
equate their sexiness with a narrow standard of physical
attractiveness.They also sexualize themselves when they
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think of themselves in objectified terms. Psychological
researchers have identified self-objectification (Fredrickson &
Roberts, 1997; McKinley & Hyde, 1996) as a key process
whereby girls learn to think of and treat their own bodies
as objects of others’ desires. In self-objectification, girls
internalize an observer’s perspective on their physical selves
and learn to treat themselves as objects to be looked at and
evaluated for their appearance.Though portraying oneself
solely as a sexual object to be looked at is sometimes
viewed by girls and women as exercising control over their
sexuality (e.g., at some social networking Web sites), pres-
entation of the self in this way can be viewed as a form of
self-objectification.
There is ample evidence that self-objectification is
common among girls and women. For example, Slater and
Tiggemann (2002) found that girls as young as 12 years old
placed greater emphasis on their body’s appearance than on
its competence. In addition, many studies have demonstrat-
ed that girls and women self-objectify more than boys and
men do (e.g., Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, &
Twenge, 1998; Strelan & Hargreaves, 2005).
Most studies have focused on European Americans, but
one study of ninth- and tenth-grade girls showed that most
girls, regardless of race, engaged in self-objectification
(McConnell, 2001).That is, they internalized an observer’s
standard of appearance and engaged in activities designed
to enhance their sexual attractiveness. In addition, African
American and White girls did not differ in the amount of
time they spent enhancing their physical appearance,
although African American girls spent more time on their
hair and White girls spent more time on their makeup.
Nichter’s (2000) study, however, suggests that the time
African American girls spend on their appearance may have
more to do with creating an individualized and ethnically
derived “style” (i.e., one that involves personality and
Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls
attitude, in addition to physical appearance) than with
adhering to the narrow vision of the “ideal girl” depicted
in the media.Thus, ethnic differences concerning the
meaning attached to self-objectifying practices may exist.
In addition to making sexualizing choices regarding
clothing, hair, and makeup, girls and teens sometimes “act