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A catwalk instead of a playground, lipstick instead of a favorite doll, the look of an experienced woman… Little girls with flashy make-up take “adult” poses on the pages of fashion magazines. We spoke with our experts about the implications of the child sexualization trend.
This fall, a scandal erupted around photographs of 8-year-old Kristina Pimenova, already quite a professional model. The public was outraged by the girl’s frank poses and outfits inappropriate for her age. “She’s too small for these pictures!” – commentators write on her pages in social networks. Nevertheless, Christina has already been called “the most beautiful girl in the world”, invited to shoot for the most famous fashion magazines and advertise for major brands of children’s clothing. The daughter of a former model and soccer player, she has been “working in the fashion industry” since she was 3 years old. As often happens in this kind of stories, the main driver of Christina’s career is her mother Glykeria.
Perhaps this story would not have received such a serious public outcry if it had not been preceded by several more similar scandals. In 2011, French Vogue published a photo shoot of girls aged 6-10 with easily readable sexual overtones – flashy makeup, defiant clothes. This launched a campaign that led to a complete ban on children’s beauty pageants in France in 2013. The French government decided that such events contribute to the unnatural sexualization of children, the spread of pedophilia, and also give rise to false ideas about life values in children. We asked our experts to give their analysis of this problem.
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- What dictates (not) children’s fashion?
Natalya Fomicheva, psychotherapist:
“We are now seeing two very interesting trends: on the one hand, the age of psychological maturity is increasingly being pushed back, and today’s generation of 30-year-olds is in many ways much more infantile than 20 years ago. On the other hand, children’s sexual development is faster. And the media act here like a magnifying glass for a sunbeam, multiplying and even distorting this trend.
Recently, my colleagues and I vigorously discussed the story of a 9-year-old girl who demanded money from her mother for laser hair removal, and when her mother refused her, she attempted suicide. In my opinion, we are confronted here with the colossal expectations of society from children. The girl reads the ideal from gloss, sees children’s cosmetics and children’s lace underwear in stores, and if she tries to live up to this ideal, she often meets with condemnation and rejection. In fact, at an unconscious level, such a child carries a paradoxical scenario: “Be beautiful – It’s disgusting.” In adulthood, trying to somehow ease this unconscious tension, such a person runs the risk of joining the ranks of addicts (including sexaholics), earning a psychosomatic illness or neurotic disorder.
Why do we now see such an attitude towards children? We live in the “age of narcissism”. Western culture encourages manifestations of narcissism, reinforcing this personality structure from generation to generation. And for a narcissist, it is necessary that his relatives emphasize his grandiosity, strengthen it. The fashion model child fits into this role perfectly, fueling parental narcissism. And infantile adults bring sexuality into his image. After all, if a child and an adult are approximately at the same level, averaged for both, then the first will be more adult, sexy, and the second – more capricious, playful, irresponsible. But at the same time it gives rise to a powerful protest of the unconscious. After all, by sexualizing a child, we break the taboo of incest by symbolically putting the child into the parental bed. It causes a lot of feelings: fear, anger, resentment, helplessness, which is why the appearance of children on the podium causes such a strong public protest.”
Galiya Nigmetzhanova, child psychologist:
“In modern society, there is a clear idea of the age when a person can be called an adult. But in this same society there is a tendency to unnecessarily excite the sexuality that exists in children of any age in various provocative ways. Involving a child in this kind of story traumatizes his immature “I”, leads to serious distortions in his personality. The most important thing we as adults can do is give children the opportunity to live their growing up at their natural pace.
Being sexy is not part of life’s tasks at 8 or 9 years old. This does not give any advantages for personal development, and the child gets an imaginary idea that he has power over people. And in this case, this power is his appearance, something given to him by nature, and not by internal work. What impression will be made of how this world works, with Christina, who at the age of 8 is named the most beautiful girl? “If I profitably sell the beautiful features of my face, everything will lie at my feet!” This is a dangerous and deceptive impression that can close the way for her to build close relationships and everything for which a person walks his life path.
“Building a career” for your child should be done with great care. Often it is the parents who are behind the fact that their children become famous. Perhaps these are people who themselves have not realized their dreams. They see the prerequisites for talent in their children and are afraid to miss their chance a second time. Through children, they receive rays of glory that they themselves could not receive. And as if all their efforts are in the interests of the child. However, the very idea of high achievements becomes the goal, and the child becomes a means, an instrument, while losing its own significance.
The drama of such stories is that the child as a person ceases to be valuable in itself. Remember, for example, Britney Spears, who, having experienced deafening fame as a teenager, then found herself in a difficult psychological state, used drugs and so on. In such children, the most important thing that should develop in childhood is destroyed: the feeling of one’s existence as an absolute value. And, as a result, the ability to enter into value relationships with other people, to feel the difference between good and evil, to have moral guidelines.
Another important aspect of the problem is the impact of such sexualized childhood images on society. The fact is that in an absolutely normal person there are different facets of his sexuality. And we must acknowledge that we have it. Some sexual intentions permeate our lives very strongly, and we are not always aware of this. But if you specifically warm it up (from the outside) in a person, provoke the hidden, it will definitely come out. Social taboos are the result of the development of our civilization. The condemnation of pedophilia and the early involvement of children in the spheres of adult sexuality is an important, necessary social norm, a moral imperative. And it seems to me that behind provocations in this spirit lies a great danger of erosion in society of the moral norms on which human civilization is based.”
Irina Panyukova, sexologist:
“This trend – to use teenagers and young children in images that are not appropriate for their age, in particular, and with erotic overtones – appeared several years ago. Together with her, the cult of youth developed. People in their thirties now appear only in advertisements for ointment for rheumatism, and everything related to beauty is given to young models, whose age is constantly decreasing. It is known that sexuality has long been used as an engine of trade. And at some point, the usual sexually colored symbols were so exhausted that advertisers turned their attention to children. Having discarded the moral aspects of the problem, they decided to attract the attention of the consumer by combining childhood and eroticism.
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- How to talk to children about sexuality?
In general, advertising is addressed to our children’s component – uncritical, suggestible. But even those who are outraged by this situation, one way or another paid attention to these pictures, which means that the goal has been achieved. We see in society an incredible expansion of the boundaries of tolerance, often to the detriment of common sense. The main thing is not that there is propaganda of non-traditional forms of behavior, but that a system of healthy life values is not opposed to it. There is a cult of youth and infantilism, but there is no cult of maturity and wisdom.
In addition, you need to understand that children of prepubertal age do not have sexually colored interests. At 5–6 years old, they want to find out how their own and the opposite sex works, where children come from, but as soon as this interest is satisfied, the topic is closed. Moreover, at the age of 8–10 years, on the contrary, natural modesty appears. This is a natural defense mechanism that protects the child from sexually colored impressions. Therefore, when we see a girl in a gloss, taking too frank poses, this is an artificial instillation in her of qualities that are unusual for her age. A child with a mobile psyche, feeling flawed, ugly, seeing such pictures, will either acquire even more complexes, or begin to copy an idol. Which, in turn, can lead to the most terrible consequences, because the erotic behavior of a child is attractive to both pedophiles and older teenagers. But the children themselves, the participants in the shooting, most often do not feel sexual overtones – for them it is a game, attracting the attention of adults. So this is an area of parental responsibility.