Sexualisation Of Girls Essay
Good morning class,
The topic I have chosen for my PIP is the impact of sexualisation on girls. This means I’m looking at how the media and society sexualises young girls and by association, women, and how this affects girls. This topic interested me because I’ve begun to notice how quickly girls are growing up and whether it’s detrimental to their GROWTH(?).
My topic question is if the sexualisation of young girls affects their socialisation. I’m also interested in looking at the sexualisation in dance and reality tv shows.
After watching a dance recital for children, it shocked me how sexualised the dance moves and outfits were, even though the girls were in a under eight years old group. Being involved in dance, on and off, since I was five until …show more content…
fifteen, I can remember wondering why our costumes always had to show our stomachs or barely cover our butts. I always felt uncomfortable wearing dance costumes in front of adults, as if my fault that I was a girl and had to dress like this, when I the only boy in our class that was always almost fully covered. I’m interested in why it was inherent for girls to be sexualised by society. Another aspect that interested me is the amount of sexualisation of girls in the media.
The subtopics that have arisen are:
Sexualisation of girls in the media
Sexualisation in dance
Return of sexism
The effect of sexualisation on girls socialisation
For the cross cultural component I’ll be doing a focus group with Baby Boomers, people aged from 52 to 70. I’ll be comparing their answers to the answers I received from my questionnaire which was answered by people from 16-20. Through comparing these two methodologies, I can look at the concept of time. If I have time, I will also interview a person from each age group to get a deeper understanding.
The cross cultural aspect is looking at the two generations, which is related to time components. In my focus group, I’ll ask questions that I have already asked in my questionnaire, like whether the media is becoming more sexualised and ask if they can point out differences in how children are portrayed in the media when they were younger compared to know.
Some of the secondary research I have used is the book What’s Happening to our Girls by Maggie Hamilton and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter.
I’ve also looked at many studies about general sexualisation of women and girls but I have been particularly focused on a 2010 report by the American Psychological Association on the Sexualisation of Girls. This study is extremely useful because it proved me with lots of stats and is valid as it is from a VALID organisation and fairly new information.
I’ve also looked at various advertisements, tv shows, music videos and other forms of media, as well as looking at studies by Universities looking into sexualisation. The university study which was really useful was one by a 2011 study at University at Buffalo, looking at how the portrayal of women in the media has changed over time. This source is not biased and is valid but not related to my whole PIP topic, only a sub section, so it is not as useful as other studies.
I also looked at Erving Goffman’s novel Gender Advertisements which studied the ways the media constructs masculinity and femininity. The book is fairly useful and not bias, but it isn’t as valid as other studies as it was written in
1976.
The methodologies I chose were questionnaire, in order to get a larger sample size easily, which I have completely with 46 responses. The negatives about my questionnaire was that the largest portion of the respondents were aged 16-20 and female, so there are a lot of similar opinions
I am planning to have a focus group with Baby Boomers, so I can get a few different opinions but have them more in depth than a questionnaire. If I have enough time I’d also like to interview some Baby Boomers and a child psychologist.
I got some interesting answers when I asked what impacts you think are likely to occur from children being exposed to sexualised messages, like people talking about girls valuing themselves on their attractiveness rather than personal attributes, as well as developing mental health issues from constant judgement.
Some interesting answers about why sexualisation of women in the media contributes to the sexualisation of children were about children mirroring what they see
My questionnaire was fairly effective but the limitations were that I couldn’t get very in-depth answers. The results for my questionnaire were expected for most of the questions, other than the age group that were most at risk of experiencing negative health impacts. I expected the responders to say either 5-8 or 9-12 but largest response (62%) answered 13-16 years.
I’m a couple thousand words into writing my PIP and I begun to divide it up in ‘chapters’ or subtopics. I need to find more studies if possible, as well as completing my focus group and possibly having some interviews. Ideally I would like to do both but with the lack of time I think I will definitely have a focus group to get my cross cultural aspect and hopefully be able to interview Baby Boomers and as them about if sexualisation of girls effects in their micro world, as well as the miso and macro world. I will also possibly interview a child psychologist.
The core concepts in my PIP are society, through the institution(?) of dance, time because I am looking at different time periods, persons, identity, modernisation (I’m a bit confused here)
I plan to integrate my primary and secondary research by matching secondary research to my questionnaire, and trying to find parallels in either my primary research and the secondary research
My cross cultural and time components are fairly similar so I plan to talk about the two age groups for the cross cultural aspect and relate these methodologies to the time components, as well as using secondary research
So far, from my PIP I’ve learnt to make sure that my secondary research is valid and not biased.
I have to be careful about the questions I ask in my questionnaires to avoid offending people. It is also important to use observation as a methodology because the exploitation of children would be unethical
The topic I have chosen for my PIP is the impact of sexualisation on girls. This means I’m looking at how the media and society sexualises young girls and by association, women, and how this affects girls. This topic interested me because I’ve begun to notice how quickly girls are growing up and whether it’s detrimental to their GROWTH(?).
My topic question is if the sexualisation of young girls affects their socialisation. I’m also interested in looking at the sexualisation in dance and reality tv shows.
After watching a dance recital for children, it shocked me how sexualised the dance moves and outfits were, even though the girls were in a under eight years old group. Being involved in dance, on and off, since I was five until …show more content…
fifteen, I can remember wondering why our costumes always had to show our stomachs or barely cover our butts. I always felt uncomfortable wearing dance costumes in front of adults, as if my fault that I was a girl and had to dress like this, when I the only boy in our class that was always almost fully covered. I’m interested in why it was inherent for girls to be sexualised by society. Another aspect that interested me is the amount of sexualisation of girls in the media.
The subtopics that have arisen are:
Sexualisation of girls in the media
Sexualisation in dance
Return of sexism
The effect of sexualisation on girls socialisation
For the cross cultural component I’ll be doing a focus group with Baby Boomers, people aged from 52 to 70. I’ll be comparing their answers to the answers I received from my questionnaire which was answered by people from 16-20. Through comparing these two methodologies, I can look at the concept of time. If I have time, I will also interview a person from each age group to get a deeper understanding.
The cross cultural aspect is looking at the two generations, which is related to time components. In my focus group, I’ll ask questions that I have already asked in my questionnaire, like whether the media is becoming more sexualised and ask if they can point out differences in how children are portrayed in the media when they were younger compared to know.
Some of the secondary research I have used is the book What’s Happening to our Girls by Maggie Hamilton and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter.
I’ve also looked at many studies about general sexualisation of women and girls but I have been particularly focused on a 2010 report by the American Psychological Association on the Sexualisation of Girls. This study is extremely useful because it proved me with lots of stats and is valid as it is from a VALID organisation and fairly new information.
I’ve also looked at various advertisements, tv shows, music videos and other forms of media, as well as looking at studies by Universities looking into sexualisation. The university study which was really useful was one by a 2011 study at University at Buffalo, looking at how the portrayal of women in the media has changed over time. This source is not biased and is valid but not related to my whole PIP topic, only a sub section, so it is not as useful as other studies.
I also looked at Erving Goffman’s novel Gender Advertisements which studied the ways the media constructs masculinity and femininity. The book is fairly useful and not bias, but it isn’t as valid as other studies as it was written in
1976.
The methodologies I chose were questionnaire, in order to get a larger sample size easily, which I have completely with 46 responses. The negatives about my questionnaire was that the largest portion of the respondents were aged 16-20 and female, so there are a lot of similar opinions
I am planning to have a focus group with Baby Boomers, so I can get a few different opinions but have them more in depth than a questionnaire. If I have enough time I’d also like to interview some Baby Boomers and a child psychologist.
I got some interesting answers when I asked what impacts you think are likely to occur from children being exposed to sexualised messages, like people talking about girls valuing themselves on their attractiveness rather than personal attributes, as well as developing mental health issues from constant judgement.
Some interesting answers about why sexualisation of women in the media contributes to the sexualisation of children were about children mirroring what they see
My questionnaire was fairly effective but the limitations were that I couldn’t get very in-depth answers. The results for my questionnaire were expected for most of the questions, other than the age group that were most at risk of experiencing negative health impacts. I expected the responders to say either 5-8 or 9-12 but largest response (62%) answered 13-16 years.
I’m a couple thousand words into writing my PIP and I begun to divide it up in ‘chapters’ or subtopics. I need to find more studies if possible, as well as completing my focus group and possibly having some interviews. Ideally I would like to do both but with the lack of time I think I will definitely have a focus group to get my cross cultural aspect and hopefully be able to interview Baby Boomers and as them about if sexualisation of girls effects in their micro world, as well as the miso and macro world. I will also possibly interview a child psychologist.
The core concepts in my PIP are society, through the institution(?) of dance, time because I am looking at different time periods, persons, identity, modernisation (I’m a bit confused here)
I plan to integrate my primary and secondary research by matching secondary research to my questionnaire, and trying to find parallels in either my primary research and the secondary research
My cross cultural and time components are fairly similar so I plan to talk about the two age groups for the cross cultural aspect and relate these methodologies to the time components, as well as using secondary research
So far, from my PIP I’ve learnt to make sure that my secondary research is valid and not biased.
I have to be careful about the questions I ask in my questionnaires to avoid offending people. It is also important to use observation as a methodology because the exploitation of children would be unethical