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Article Excerpt
On February 20, 2007, the American Psychological Association [APA] published the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (available at www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html). An appointed task force of six psychologists and one public member joined together to fulfill the following charge:
The Task Force will examine and summarize the best psychological theory, research, and clinical experience addressing the sexualization of girls via media and other cultural messages, including the prevalence of these messages and their impact on girls, and include attention to the role and impact of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The Task Force will produce a report, including recommendations for research, practice, education and training, policy, and public awareness. (APA, 2007a, p. 1)
This particular report followed on the heels of several APA stances and policy resolutions that were presented over the past few years that have been critical of the impact of media on children and youth. (2) The authors of this newest APA report were thorough and ambitious, analyzing approximately 280 peer-reviewed journal articles, 80 books and book chapters, and dozens of other sources. (3)
The APA (2007a) task force defines sexualization as a condition that occurs when a person is subjected to at least one of the following four conditions:
1. A person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics.
2. A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy.
3. A person is sexually objectified--that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making.
4. Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. (p. 2)
The task force concluded that the sexualization of girls is pervasive in U.S. culture and that this negatively impacts girls' "cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality, and attitudes and beliefs" (APA, 2007a, p. 2). The authors provide numerous possible interventions to reverse the incidence of girls' sexualization and its negative impact.
The APA task force report is a welcome addition to ongoing conversations about constructions of sexuality and girlhood, particularly in relation to commercial media. While recent APA interest in media has focused on how violent media images negatively impact children and youth, this particular report articulates how contemporary psychological literature can explain how sexualized (but not necessarily violent) images negatively impact girls and women. In an historical time and place where people's understanding of themselves and the world is increasingly "mediated" by multimedia messengers (de Zengotita, 2005), this report is important and timely. Additionally, by providing this report to the public in accessible language combined with pragmatic points of action for concerned citizens, the APA continues to take the lead in a growing movement within academia toward public scholarship and activism.
It is due to the magnitude of this report, and its impact beyond psychology, that we have taken the time to construct this response. In the pages that follow, we engage a burgeoning set of interdisciplinary contributions on the topic of sexualization, media, and gender. In so doing, we enter the conversation as "outsiders" to psychology but insiders to feminist and public scholarship and a range of other disciplines including sociology, public health, queer studies, media studies, and sexuality studies. While recognizing the strengths of this report, we also challenge its central thesis: Sexualization should be designated as a harmful and dangerous process that only has negative impacts on girls and women.
Stakeholders in Sexuality and Girlhood
Before summarizing and evaluating the content of the APA task force report, we first consider how the APA's interpretation of sexualization is framed by broader (North American) discussions around sexuality. Sexuality and girlhood are topics that command significant attention from numerous stakeholders. (4) Each of these constituencies is diverse both within and across their positions on what the "problem" is with sexuality and girlhood, and each differs in their assessment of who stands to gain or lose when girls are sexy, sexual, and sexualized. For example, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, social conservatives have long been concerned with keeping girls' and women's sexuality confined within racialized, classed, and patriarchal boundaries (Hill-Collins, 1990; Hooks, 1984), resulting in campaigns to keep girls and women (hence, family, race, and nation) pure of sexual "corruption."
For different reasons, feminists too have a long history of activism concerning girls, women, and sexuality, sometimes resulting in awkward alliances with conservatives. While feminists and conservatives often hold opposing positions, many in both camps bristle against the notion of sexuality as a marketplace good. This joint discomfort with commodified sexuality is particularly evident among those who take stances against sex work, as was the case in the anti-pornography work of the 1980s and 1990s (Dworkin, 1989; MacKinnon, 1987, 1993) and contemporary anti-trafficking activism and legislation (Chapkis, 2005). The APA task force joins this opposition to commodified sexuality by specifically identifying the similarities between mediated (e.g., advertisements) and material (e.g., prostitution) forms of selling sex: "[G]irls and women in prostitution are by definition sexualized--objectified and treated as sexual commodities" (APA, 2007a, p. 17). The language of objectification is then used widely throughout the report to refer to media images and other cultural products.
While feminist scholars and activists generally oppose the concept of sexual objectification, there is no feminist consensus on the issue of what should be done about it. In fact, feminist activists have long recognized both the pleasures and dangers of sexuality (Vance, 1984), articulated most strikingly in the so-called "feminist sex wars" of the 1980s and 1990s. Over the past century in the United States, many feminists have trumpeted liberation from sexual double standards (English, 1983; Jong, 1973; Kamen, 2000; Marks, 2001; Snitow, Stansell, & Thompson, 1983; Tone, 2001), underscored racialized notions of sexualization (Hill-Collins, 1990; Hooks, 1990; Hunt, 1999), and discussed compulsory heterosexuality (Pharr, 1988; Rich, 1980). Others have directly addressed the dangers of patriarchal constraints on female sexuality by focusing on domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, pornography, sexual trafficking, and more (Dworkin, 1989; Sedgh, Jackson, & Ibrahim, 2005). Still others have pressed past danger arguments about sexuality to focus on female sexual agency and pleasure in heterosexual sex (Jackson, 1996; Segal, 1990), the role that sexual pleasure plays in shaping contraceptive use for pregnancy or HIV and AIDS protection (Higgins, 2007; Higgins & Hirsch, 2007, 2008), and the freedoms associated with alternative sexualities and sexual practices (Bright, 1998, 2000; Califia, 2000).
While recognizing the many dangers that women are subjected to on a global scale, this commentary situates itself on the "pleasure" side of the pleasure danger continuum. We take this position not as a denial of the dangers many girls and women face domestically and worldwide, nor as a denial of the raced, classed, and sexed inequalities that deeply intersect with the likelihood of girls and women bearing the brunt of these dangers. Rather, we take the position of Wendy Chapkis (1997), who terms "sex as a terrain of struggle, not a fixed field of gender and power relations" (p. 26), and has a "commitment to locating sex within a cultural and political context" (p. 28) while "understanding sex to be a cultural tactic which can be used both to destabilize male power as well as to reinforce it" (p. 29).
In what follows, we first briefly summarize the main claims and findings of the APA report. We then offer a critique of the APA task force's sexualization thesis, drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary work on gender, sexuality, and media studies. We conclude with a call for developing a more progressive feminist girl movement on media, sexuality, and sexual health that more fully embraces sexual agency, sexual rights, and sexual health for girls and women.
Brief Summary of the APA Task Force Report
Working within the parameters of the APA (2007a) charge (quoted earlier), the task force focused on four goals:
To "(a) define sexualization; (b) examine the prevalence and provide examples of sexualization in society and in cultural institutions, as well as interpersonally and intrapsychically; (c) evaluate the evidence suggestive that sexualization has negative consequences [italics added] for girls and the rest of society; and (d) describe positive alternatives that may help counteract the influence of sexualization." (p. 2)
Again, the APA (2007a) task force defines sexualization as a condition that occurs when a person is subjected to at least one of the following four conditions:
1. A person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics.
2. A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy.
3. A person is sexually objectified--that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making.
4. Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. (p. 2)
According to the task force, only one of these four factors needs to be present to indicate sexualization. The concept of sexualization is then distinguished from "healthy sexuality," which the task force describes as "an important component of both physical and mental health, fosters intimacy, bonding, and shared pleasure, and involves mutual respect between consenting partners" (APA, 2007a, p. 2).
The APA report documents that sexualized images of women and girls are prevalent in U.S. culture, particularly in mainstream media (APA, 2007a, p. 5). Further, the authors note that "women and girls are more likely than men and boys to be objectified and sexualized in a variety of media outlets" (APA, 2007b, p. 15). Because of the amount of media consumed by both boys and girls (with an estimate of "6 hours and 32 minutes per day" [APA, 2007a, p. 5]), this naturally increases the "potential for massive exposure to portrayals that sexualize women and girls and teach girls that women are sexual objects" (APA, 2007a, p. 5).
The report's primary focus and concern is with commercial media and advertising, but it also covers the importance of interpersonal interactions between girls and their parents, teachers, peers, and others. These interactions are said to often reinforce media messages constructing the idea that sexualization is a normal, natural, and unproblematic component of being a girl. At the same time, the task force claims that interpersonal interactions can act as a "protective factor" against sexualization and objectification, a claim that is elaborated on in recommendations to parents and mentors.
After defining sexualization and examining its prevalence, the task force offers a summary of the literature on the negative--and only the negative--consequences of the sexualization of girls. Drawing upon several psychological theories (5) to interpret a wide range of empirical evidence...
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