The war on girls

by Steve Biddulph

Steve Biddulph, is a psychologist who wrote the million-selling book Raising Boys, Manhood and The Secret of Happy Children. Now he is worried about girls, as he writes in this article, exclusive to New Times - the newspaper of the Uniting Church in SA.

Most people know me for my work to improve the lives of boys and men. But in the last five years, girls have once again swung into focus with some serious risk factors threatening their health and happiness.

A new problem - which we termed ‘premature sexualisation’ - is impacting almost all girls to varying degrees. It shows up in a variety of ways. For instance, girls as young as five feeling that they are too fat, or not sexy enough in their looks, becoming depressed and anxious, and altering their eating behaviour in harmful ways. A whole pre-occupation with clothes, fashion, make-up, at an age when girls used to be far more interested in fun, sport, friends, creativity, make-believe, the outdoors. And perhaps worst of all, in girls in their mid-teens, a marked increase in sexual activity of a risky and unhappy kind.

There have always been a small number of girls who had multiple sex partners by their mid teens. These were mostly girls from troubled or disrupted homes, who became involved in sex out of a need for emotional security or self esteem. However this number has suddenly risen in the last decade, and now includes girls from more average family backgrounds. This category - multiple (three or more) sexual partners before leaving school, rose from 8-15% in just the last six years.

At risk of sounding like an anxious father, or worse, a wowser, my concern is not that girls are having more sex, but that it is not happy sex; a huge 38% told a national survey that they had experienced unwanted sexual intercourse in the last twelve months.

Why is this happening? The answer is twofold.

First, the media environment - posters, music videos, movies, advertising, girls’ magazines, TV dramas, in a vast snowstorm of images, is teaching girls three things

Your looks are the most important thing about you.

Sex is something you can trade for love.

Your body, face and clothes are never good enough.

If we don't act more concertedly as parents - especially of younger girls - from toddlers onwards, then we allow these messages to stand.

That brings us to the second factor. In the last 50 years there has been a dramatic reduction - perhaps as much as 80% - in the time mothers, aunties and other older women spend in conversation with growing girls. Women today have become too busy to surround girls with ‘wise woman’ perspective, as well as just loving concern. Girls today look to their equally confused peers for affirmation. Their values are often confused. Young girls have been abandoned to the cold winds of marketers, who just want to keep them insecure and buying more stuff.

The once tender, exploratory and magical experience of young love, unfolding at a pace that is their own - one of the most special experiences that life has to offer, is being lost. Young people's emotional development is being rushed and blighted. It’s a really sad situation.

We have to act on two levels - becoming much more involved as parents, aunts, and involved friends of young girls. Really spending time with them, finding ways of having fun that don't involve looks, shopping or attracting the opposite sex. And we have to pressure politicians to restrict media which exploits and misuses sex and does not respect boundaries around childhood. What is being lost is too precious.

The gains of feminism could all be thrown away if we don't show enough love to growing young people, and help them sort out who they are and what they want to do.

 

The Uniting Church SA is bringing Steve Biddulph to Adelaide for a series of parenting seminars as part of the Uniting People campaign in October 2010. Steve attends Pilgrim Uniting Church in Launceston, Tasmania.