• Gender: refers to psychological
characteristics and social categories that
are created by human culture. (e.g. Gender
roles).
• Sex refers only to the physiological
characteristics related to reproduction (i.e.
Sex chromosomes or sex organs).
Karraker et al., 1995
1
2B
Strong
G3
1
2
3
Large Featured
4
5
6
7
4
5B
6
G7
5G
6
7
8
5
6
7
8 G
9
Feminine
1
2
Hardy
3
B 4
1
2 B
Masculine
3
4
8
9
Weak
8
9
Fine Featured
9
Delicate
**Average ratings for newborn girls and boys on
four dimensions. B = boy G= girl
Theories of Gender Development
• 1- Social Learning Theory
• children are rewarded for gender
appropriate behavior and they are
punished for gender inappropriate
behavior;
• and children watch and imitate the
behavior of the gender of other people of
their own gender.
Cognitive Developmental
Approach
• focuses on thoughts.
• children are active thinkers who seek
information from their environment and
try to make sense of this information and
organize it in a coherent fashion.
• Acquire gender schemas which teach
gender appropriate behavior
Essentialist vs. Nonessentialist
discovered vs. invented
biological vs. social
inherent vs. product of interaction
unalterable vs. easily changed
enduring vs. transient
universal vs. individual
mutually exclusive traits vs. overlapping
alpha bias vs. beta bias (minimizing differences)
Interaction Theory
• local biology (Margaret Lock)
• “… this notion derives from a perspective on
human embodiment grounded in the ‘lived
body’, a body that is ‘simultaneously a physical
and symbolic artifact’, both naturally and
culturally produced. The position taken by Lock
also acknowledges the plasticity of human
biology, particularly at the level of physiology
and chemistry, and its interdependence with
culture” (Stoppard, 1997, p. 27).
What Shapes Gender Typing?
• Parents
• Peers
• School
• Media including TV and Cartoons
• Clothing
• Toys
• Books
Sexualization of Girls
Sexualization Occurs when:
• a person’s value comes only from their sexual appeal or
behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
• a person is held to a standard that equates physical
attractiveness (narrowly-defined) with being sexy;
• a person is sexually objectified, that is, made into a thing
for others’ sexual use, rather than a person with the
capacity for independent action and decision-making;
and/or
• sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
Gregory Smith (1985)
• attractive girls more likely to receive prosocial
treatment
• less attractive girls more likely to be hit, pushed
and kicked.
• no correlation between attractiveness and
prosocial treatment for the boys
• Lesson: physical attractiveness is important for
females and pretty girls and women will receive
better treatment.
• Boys learn that physical attractiveness is not
really relevant to their lives.
Cultivation Theory
• Cultivation theory: exposure to consistent
themes over time leads viewers to adopt a
particular perspective of the world, one that
coincides with the images they have been
viewing.
• what young women believe about themselves
and how they feel in the present moment was
shaped by how they were treated and what they
were exposed to when they were girls.
Rosa Brooks
• “First, we darted into Abercrombie & Fitch, joining a gaggle of
preteens checking out the T-shirts. Perhaps a slinky pink number
that coyly declared "The Rumors Are True"? Or maybe the
masculine gray one emblazoned with "Something About You
Attracts Me — I Wish I Could Put My Finger On It"?
Well, no thanks. We headed toward Limited Too, where we found
thong-like underwear sized for 7-year-old girls. My 4-year-old was
entranced: "Mommy, those underpants have no walls!"
We soldiered on, through Old Navy (where the toddler section
carries clothes that make 2-year-olds look like Britney Spears),
through Toys R Us (where ads for the scantily clad Bratz Babyz
dolls, with their bottles and their painted toenails, boast that these
"Babyz already know how to flaunt it, and they're keepin' it real in
the crib!"), and past the Disney Store (where little girls can covet
seashell bikinis like those worn by the Little Mermaid and glittery
halter tops like those worn by Princess Jasmine in the surprisingly
broad-minded sultanate of Agrabah).
• By the time we made it to CVS Pharmacy, I thought we
were out of the woods. Wrong. Those bare-midriffed
Disney princesses are everywhere — even, it turns out,
on diapers sized for people weighing 18 to 34 pounds.
• In our hyper-commercialized consumerist society,
there's virtually no escaping the relentless sexualization
of younger and younger children. My 26-month-old
daughter didn't emerge from the womb clamoring for a
seashell bikini like Princess Ariel's — but now that she's
savvy enough to notice who's prancing around on her
pull-ups, she wants in on the bikini thing. And my 4year-old wasn't born demanding lip gloss and nail
polish, but when a little girl at nursery school showed up
with her Hello Kitty makeup kit, she was hooked.
• In a culture in which the sexualization of
childhood is big business — mainstream megacorporations such as Disney earn billions by
marketing sexy products to children too young
to understand their significance — is it any
wonder that pedophiles feel emboldened to
claim that they shouldn't be ostracized for
wanting sex with children? On an Internet
bulletin board, one self-avowed "girl lover"
offered a critique of this week's New York Times
series on pedophilia: "They fail, of course, to
mention the hypocrisy of Hollywood selling
little girls to millions of people in a highly
sexualized way."
Sexualization of Girls
• Television:
• verbal sexual messages involved sexually objectifying
comments on women
• leering, ogling, staring, and catcalling at female
characters.
• deprecating words were used to describe women (e.g.,
broad, bimbo, dumbass chick, toots, fox, babe, blondie).
• comments focused on women’s bodies or body parts,
especially breasts; referred to as jugs, boobs, knockers,
hooters, cookware, and canned goods.
• men or adolescent boys leering at women or girls.
Music Videos:
• Women are presented in provocative and
revealing clothing, are objectified, and
typically serve as decorative objects that
dance and pose and do not play any
instruments.
• displayed in ways that emphasize their
bodies, body parts, facial features, and
sexual readiness.
Music Lyrics
• "So blow me bitch I don't rock for cancer I rock for the
cash and the topless dancers" (Kid Rock, "f*ck off," 1998).
• “Dontcha wish your girlfriend were hot like me?”
(Pussycat Dolls, 2005).
• “That’s the way you like to f***…rough sex make it hurt,
in the garden all in the dirt” (Ludacris, 2000).
• “I tell the hos all the time, Bitch get in my car” (50 Cent,
2005 ).
• “Ho shake your ass” (Ying Yang Twins, 2003).
Magazines and Advertising
• Presenting oneself as sexually desirable
and thereby gaining the attention of men
is the focal goal for women.
• Girls and young women are repeatedly
encouraged to look and dress in specific
ways to look sexy for men and to use
certain products in order to be more
attractive to and desired by males.
• girls depicted as sexual objects or counterparts
to adult versions; girls appear with sexualized
adult women and are posed in matching
clothing or seductive poses.
• “trickle up” and a “trickle down” framework on
girls and women (Cook & Kaiser, 2004); the
distinction between women and girls may
become blurred.
• young girls are “adultified” and adult women
are “youthified.”
• Ie. magazines CosmoGirl and ElleGirl in 2001 and
Teen Vogue in 2003.
• The trickle-down or “youthification” includes sexual
portrayals of adult women as young girls in advertising
• ie. wearing schoolgirl clothing and licking lollipops or
popsicles or wearing scaled up versions of children’s
clothing styles like baby-doll dresses and tops, knee
socks, and Mary Janes, all marketed as adult women’s
wear.
• Merskin (2004) concludes, “The message from
advertisers and the mass media to girls (as eventual
women) is they should always be sexually available,
always have sex on their minds, be willing to be
dominated and even sexually aggressed against, and
they will be gazed on as sexual objects” (p. 120).
Other examples of sexualization:
- Dolls
- Clothes
- Cosmetics
Parents Sexualization of Girls
• convey their support for cultural messages, either subtly
or overtly
• parents’ gender schemas have a significant effect on
children’s gender self-concepts and gender-related
attitudes toward others (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002).
• parents, peers, and the media all support a “culture of
dieting” for girls (Levine, Smolak, & Hayden, 1994;
Nichter, 2000).
• Example: Beauty Pagents
Consequences of Sexualization
• self-objectification fragments
consciousness.
• Chronic attention to physical appearance
leaves fewer cognitive resources available
for other mental and physical activities.
Body Dissatisfaction and
Appearance Anxiety
• Sexualization and objectification undermine confidence
in and comfort with one’s own body, leading to a host of
negative emotional consequences, such as shame,
anxiety, and even self-disgust.
• leads to increased feelings of shame about one’s body
(e.g., Fredrickson et al., 1998; McKinley, 1998, 1999;
Tiggemann & Slater, 2001).
• appearance anxiety: checking and adjusting one’s
appearance.
Mental Health
• sexualization is associated with three most common
mental health problems of girls and women: eating
disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed
mood.
• For individual women, findings across several studies
indicate associations between exposure to female beauty
ideals and disordered eating attitudes and symptoms,
such that greater exposure to thin-ideal media has been
associated with higher levels of dieting, exercising, and
disordered eating symptomatology (e.g., Abramson &
Valene, 1991; Harrison, 2000; Hofschire & Greenberg,
2001; Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, & Stein, 1994;
Thomsen, Weber, & Brown, 2002).
Physical Health
• link between body dissatisfaction and the
onset of cigarette smoking among
adolescent girls (e.g., Stice & Shaw, 2003).
Summary
• “First, there is evidence that girls exposed to sexualizing and
•
•
•
•
objectifying media are more likely to experience body
dissatisfaction, depression, and lower self-esteem;
Self-objectification has been shown to diminish cognitive ability and
to cause shame. This cognitive diminishment, as well as the belief
that physical appearance rather than academic or extracurricular
achievement is the best path to power and acceptance, may
influence girls’ achievement levels and opportunities later in life.
Girls’ sexual development may also be affected as they are exposed
to models of passivity and studies indicate that the media may
influence perceptions of one’s own virginity or first sexual
experience.
Interpersonally, girls’ relationships with other girls are affected, as
such relationships can become policing grounds where girls support
or reject other girls for reasons having to do with conformity to a
narrow beauty ideal that involves a sexualized presentation or
competition for boys’ attention.
Girls’ relationships with boys and men are affected in that exposure
to sexualizing and objectifying media has been shown to relate to
girls' and boys’ views on dating, the sexual harassment of girls by
boys, and attitudes toward sexual violence.”
• In your groups discuss the following questions,
• What are beauty pageants about? What does it
say about what the culture values?
What messages do beauty pageants send to girls
? Why don’t boys participate in beauty
pageants?
What in your view are the short and long term
effects of the sexualization of girls on their
psychological well being?
Why is the Little Miss Sunshine clip ironic?