My Oh Miley

Media, Sexuality and Your Tween

By Sarah Suatoni, President, The Tween Scene LLC

Miley Cyrus’s Vanity Fair photo shoot with Annie Lebowitz raised a media duststorm. The photo, if you haven’t seen it, shows Miley with a sheet clutched to her chest, her bare back exposed, her hair mussed and her lips pouty and red. The image is beautiful and artsy, but also sexual in a way that doesn’t jibe with the wholesome girl-next-door Miley who is aggressively marketed to tweens every day. 

How should we, as parents of tween-aged girls, respond to this image? How does our culture respond? The New York Times reporting of Miley’s photo tells us a lot. The headline reads, “Revealing Photo Threatens a Major Disney Franchise.”

Miley Cyrus is a media creation. And, like all media creations, her job is sell things to us. Or rather, to our children. And sex and the body are definitely part of the sales pitch.

Really? You might ask: That show about a goofy girl and her blundering father?  But the goofy girl and her father are also a rock star and an agent, and they are very cool. Hannah’s dad is probably a cooler than you, and Hannah is older if not cooler than your daughter.  That may not seem like a big deal, but the message our girls get is: If you want to be cool you need to be a sexy ultra-talented and very hip rock star innocently posing as a goofy girl with normal problems. 

The media and the marketplace know that tween girls are a vulnerable and hungry audience, anxious to discover how to fit in and feel accepted.  It is very lucrative to define cool and tell them they need it. The media tells them need certain clothes, body type, music, attitude, tone and behavior to fit in. They can get it by watching Hannah and a host of other afterschool shows and by buying a whole lot of stuff.

So…what’s a mom to do? Here are tips.

1. The Media Message Isn’t Helping
It is important to know that the media messages about sex and girls are often harmful. The Media Awareness Network tells us that marketers have learned that “By treating pre-adolescents as independent, mature consumers, marketers have been very successful in removing the gatekeepers (parents) from the picture—leaving tweens vulnerable to potentially unhealthy messages about body image, sexuality, relationships and violence.  Corporations capitalize on the age-old insecurities and self-doubts of teens by making them believe that to be truly cool, you need their product.”

Gigi Durham of the University of Iowa has just published a new book called The Lolita Effect. She has spent 13 year researching what messages girls ages 8-13 receive from the media. She argues that the media feeds a steady stream of highly sexualized myths to girls. “The body ideals presented in the media are virtually impossible to attain,” she writes, “but girls don't always realize that, and they'll buy an awful lot of products to try to achieve those bodies. There's endless consumerism built around that."

2. Be in on the Conversation
Parents need to be in on the conversation about sex, the body and the media.

"There's this hesitance to talk about these issues, especially before kids reach adolescence," Durham writes in her book. "But often, when parents finally do bring it up, it's too late. Kids have already had their sexual understanding shaped by media."

Studies show that even teens still rate their parents as the most important resource for information about sex. They may act like they’re not interested or listening, but they are.

If your daughter is watching tween TV shows, watch with her. Pay attention to the messages about what it takes to be cool, fit in, and look good. Ask your daughter what she thinks. Ask her if she tries to dress a certain way. Does she wish she were different? Would she like to be famous? Does she think that would make her more popular? Happier?

3. Open Doesn’t Need to Equal Permissive
Understand the difference between being open about sexuality and the body and being permissive. A positive body-image, meaning feeling good about the body you’ve got, helps children feel empowered to make their own decisions about sex. Shame around the body and sexuality may leave your child feeling like she has to “buy in” to the media’s version of cool in order to feel good about herself.

For instance, in Europe, where nude-sunbathing and unshaved armpits are the norm, “A U.S. fact-finding mission to explore international policies and practices on adolescent sexual behavior and health found that the European approach to teen sex, characterized by openness and the availability of contraceptive services and information, results in European teens initiating sexual intercourse later than U.S. teenagers,” according to Advocates for Youth. Teen pregnancy rates are three times higher in the U.S. than in France, according to a UNICEF study reported by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

As a culture we would do well to talk more about the body and sexuality while clearly defining and explaining rules and boundaries in accord with beliefs and lifestyle. 

4. The Conversation Doesn’t Have to be About Sex
You may feel your daughter is not ready for a talk about sex, but you could get the conversation going. Ask her how she feels about the way she looks and dresses and how she feels about the way others look and dress. You can ask her how she feels about boys, how she feels when other girls express an interest in boys, and what she would do if someone was pressuring her to act or dress in a way she did not like. You can ask your daughter how she feels about the media message that she needs to be cool, hip, and thin. You can tell her about the reality of the message the media delivers to girls and women. You can do all this while still establishing whatever boundaries your family feels good about around the body and sexuality. 

5. It All Comes Down to Social Problem Solving
What we’re really talking bout here is social problem solving.  Kids with good social problem solving skills know they can control their own destiny, as opposed to having it controlled by others. Social problem solving skills will empower your daughter to make good choices for herself throughout her life. Help her learn not to cave in and dress or act in a certain way in order to gain acceptance.  Whether she is being coaxed to ridicule a friend, disrespect a teacher, or flirt with a boy before she is ready, you can teach her how to know her own wishes and stand up for herself. 

The US Girl Scouts published a report in 2000 called “Girls Speak Out: Teens Before Their Time,” which identifies three key areas of child development which they claim are out of sync for girls today. “Cognitive and physical development has accelerated, while emotional development often has not. The imbalance has lead to stress and tension in 8 to 12 year old girls that was not formally present. While girls may know about the facts about sex and even be physically mature they may not fully understand what it means to be in an intimate relationship.”

We can bridge that gap for our girls by asking them about their need to be accepted and cool, about their bodies, and about the sexual messages they see around them.  As the Girl Scout report says, “we need to teach our girls there is more to being a woman than being sexy. How do we do this? Start talking to your child! Don’t wait until they ask you questions, because more than likely they won’t – you start the discussion. It might feel uncomfortable and you might not know what to say but if concerned adults don’t provide them with this information they will get it all from the media.”

The last thing to consider is why your daughter is so easily seduced by the rock star fantasy. In a way, we all wish we were rock stars. But the media seems to provide vicarious fantasies rather than supporting real dreams. I think our girls need a different set of role models and real dreams to inspire them rather than fluffy fantasies that lack meaning and depth. 

Who are your heroes?  Mine are Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Trisha Brown, Isabel Alllande, Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams, Jennifer Holiday, Willa Cather, Rosa Parks, Queen Elizabeth. And when I think about it, I have told my daughter precious little about those women. She knows way more about Hannah Montana. It’s time to start a new conversation.