Is there really a phenomenon of hypersexualization in France? What does it translate to?
Catherine Monnot : “The hypersexualization of the body of girls exists in France as in other industrialized countries, in particular through the media and the cosmetics and clothing industry. In France, the drifts seem less numerous and less excessive than in the United States or Japan for example. From the age of 8-9 years, girls are encouraged to stand out from the age of childhood by donning the uniform of the “pre-adolescent”. This one must accept the criteria in force on what is supposed to be “femininity” and which passes above all by the relation to the body. The process is further reinforced by group practices: dressing, putting on make-up, moving around, communicating like a grown-up becomes a schoolyard and bedroom game before gradually becoming an individual and collective standard. »
What is the responsibility of the parents? Medias ? Actors in fashion, advertising, textiles?
CM : « Girls represent an economic target, with ever-increasing purchasing power: the media and manufacturers are therefore seeking to capture this market like any other, with ultimately a rather fluctuating ethics.. As for the parents, they have an ambivalent role: sometimes censors and prescribers, sometimes accompanying or encouraging their daughter to follow the movement for fear of seeing her marginalized. But above all, it is rewarding for a parent to have a daughter who meets all the criteria of femininity in force. Having a pretty and fashionable daughter is a sign of success as a parent, and especially as a mother. Just as much, if not more, than having a daughter who succeeds in school. Things should be qualified depending on the social background since in the working class, traditional and rather extroverted femininity is more appreciated than in a privileged environment: the higher the mother’s level of education, the more she will have an educational policy distanced from the media, for example. But the underlying trend remains this, and in any case children are socialized through many other means than the family: at school or in front of the internet or TV, in front of a fashion magazine, girls learn a lot about what society requires of them in this area. “
Is learning about femininity today so different from what it was yesterday?
CM : Just like yesterday, the girls feel the need to live individually and collectively, the passage of physical but also social puberty. Through clothing and make-up, they do a necessary apprenticeship. This is all the more true today because the official rites of passage organized by the adult world have disappeared. Because there is no longer a celebration around the first period, the first ball, because communion no longer marks the passage into the age of “youth”, girls, like boys, must fall back on each other, on more informal practices. The risk lies in the fact that close adults, parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, no longer play their supervisory role. The place is left to other forms of organization, more mercantile and which no longer allow dialogue between children and adults. The questions and anxieties inherent in this delicate period of life can then remain unanswered ”.
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