Posted on: Monday, August 27, 2001
Island Voices
Media blitz targets young girls
By Betty White
Principal of Sacred Hearts Academy, an all-girls school in Kaimuki
Adolescent girls face physical, emotional, mental and spiritual challenges in today's society.
Today's girl is more ambitious, more confident and more adventurous than ever before. But, she is not without king-size challenges to good and wholesome living.
Adolescent girls are the chief marketing target for products from cosmetics to clothing, from television programming to big-budget movies. And consider those Internet sites, magazines and CDs that have made their way into our homes. Often, they affect our young girls in ways that are neither age appropriate nor developmentally appropriate. The implications of early sexualization of young girls by the media is disturbing.
One has a hard time finding a song or movie that does not include sex, drugs, foul language, money, power or the mistreatment of others. The TV characters our girls see and emulate do not sleep in separate beds and say things like "Gee golly" and "shucks."
Many of my students are walking advertisements for an all powerful media. They purchase
T-shirts, hats and backpacks embossed with the ubiquitous Nike swoosh. When out of uniform, they sport images of their favorite heavy metal bands and sports teams. Research data tell us that they will have racked up 22,000 hours of television viewing by the time they graduate from high school, which is twice the amount of time they will have spent in school.
Some of our girls are starving themselves, undergoing surgery, giving strange colors to their hair, piercing their bodies and spending precious energy on their appearance when such intense energy could be better spent on motivating their inner self.
Media messages screaming "thin is in" may not directly cause eating disorders, but they help to create the context within which girls quickly place a value on the size and shape of their body. Many girls are convinced that their bodies are in constant need of improvement, that they need to look young, beautiful, made up, sprayed up, very thin and perfectly groomed at all times.
Growing up is a great adventure that is full of promise, but that promise is best fulfilled when our girls are given a safety zone, and guidance is available, good examples abound, and expectations are clear.
Mary Pipher, author of "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls," says that we should encourage our girls not to look like Britney Spears, but to look, dress and behave in a way that is appropriate for their chronological age. Middle school dances populated by 12- and 13-year olds should not be venues for girls to wear revealing clothing and engage in freak dancing that is blatantly suggestive and overtly sexual. And it's equally troubling when we see that these girls have little understanding of the implications of their behavior.
Media literacy to help our girls become critically literate and reactive to the powerful influence of advertisers is a must.
We have to convince our girls that each of them is a competent individual whose ultimate goal is to make herself financially independent and trained to assume leadership roles in her family and community.
Our young ladies must realize that real women and advertising images are two different things.
They need encouragement to work through difficult relationships with people important to them, not to move on quickly when things become complicated. And, always, they need to be steered toward friends their own age.
Parents should pay attention to family conversations. Are makeup and designer clothes the most important things discussed? Doing volunteer work, playing musical instruments, and going to sporting events give daughters a different message.
A disappointing test grade should not be described as the worst thing that ever happened. This type of disappointment is a part of life.
Not enough is being done to teach girls how to manage this problem; instead, we abandon them to media messages that say they can shop and shout their way out of the depressive states in which they think they are stuck.
Our girls need to learn to manage their hurts and disappointments with people they trust through honest conversation, self-reflection, journal writing, poetry, art, dance, physical activities, and, sometimes, a quiet talk with the Master — all positive acts that require full engagement of the self in a world that is real, not electronic or synthetic.
