Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Caitlin McDonnell
English 101
With all the sexual advertisements in todays society, it is very easy for the precocious
unnoticed. These two topics often lead to many conflicts. The articles Little Girls or Little
Women? The Disney Princess Effect by Stephanie Hanes and Toddlers in Tiaras by Skip
Hollandsworth give two insightful views on this idea of sexualization of young girls.
Everyday you drive down the highway, walk through the mall or turn on the television
and radio, you see or hear an advertisement. Millions of Americans watch these advertisements
and are not effected by them. Hanes article focuses on the issues and influences that come along
with these advertisements. In Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Effect, Hanes explains the
different types of sexualization and objectification that these young girls witness. She writes
about the effects these ads have on the girls saying they can lead to self-objectification to
cyberbullying to unhealthy body images (Hanes 483). It is clear these are negative effects on
any young person trying to grow, develop and find themselves. For girls who do not have many
adult or teenage figures in their lives, they think this is how they are supposed to look. In stead of
teaching them teaching them values such as kinds, reading, love of animals and perseverance
(483), society is teaching these girls to worry about their body image, looking like what Disney
Many parents are first hand witnesses to these changes as they watch their young girls
grow up. They realize this is not how their daughters should be developing but they fear they
cannot do anything about it. They say that things they used to do arent working; they say
theyre losing control of what happens to their girls at younger and younger ages ( 483). These
girls are seeing the same appropriate, pure movies and princess stories that have been around for
years but once they turn on the television they are introduced to a total different world, seeing
ads and television shows that focus on finding the right man. These ads and shows present these
couples as perfect.
The perfect girl is seldom portrayed as an athletic built girl with many sports
achievements. Girls start to drop out of sports at the middle school level when they start to
believe that sports are unfeminie and unsexy(484). After seeing dancing princesses, models
strutting up the run way, watching actress in movies, and seeing cheerleaders at football games
on the television, they begin to think that is what guys find attractive. Some girls want to do
physical actives but are too worried the guys will find them unattractive so, they decide to join
the cheerleading team where they can be found doing sexual routines. Marketers are motivated
use the sexualization of women to attract little girls, or violence to attract little boys, because
developmentally children are drawn to things they dont understand, or find unnerving(Levin
487). These girls are objectifying themselves to become more sexual and are falling into the
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dark hole of sexualization too look like these sexy babes and perfect princesses. The children
are missing the true meaning of these princess stories and are blind to the lessons that could be
learned. They do not believe they can be independent and do what they love all while staying
true to themselves and being their own version of the perfect girl.
Pageants are becoming more and more popular in todays American society. In pageants,
females often apply layers of makeup and pounds of hairspray often making them
unrecognizable. Skip Hollandsworths Toddlers in Tiaras explains how girls are redoing
themselves to win money and fame all for the wrong reasons. Parents are often the biggest
offenders of encouraging their daughters to be something they are not and forgetting to teach
their daughters how to love themselves and to do these pageants to better themselves.
Hollandsworth wrote about one mother shouting Your job is to make them love you (490).
This shows how parents are teaching their children to make people love them for what they look
like on the outside, rather than for who they are on the inside. Eventually, they begin to believe
Advertisements often alter the appearance of woman and girls in their advertisements
changing their natural beauty by using the popular Photoshop software. These advertisements are
hiding the natural beauty which makes females so unique. Girls often grow up thinking their
bodies are not good enough and they have too many
Vogue Photoshop process
imperfections. The ads are not only selling products but they (nbasfinest.blogspot.com) are
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also sexualizing females, causing many psychological problems such as anorexia, low self-
Although we are the ones in the ads, we are also the ones creating these types of media
displays. Many people who watch the Toddlers in Tiaras television show say do not see little
girls enjoying themselves. What they do see are terribly exploited little [girls](491) and the
pageants have been compared to kiddie porn (491). This company by Vogue ad resembles how
are not.
French Vogue
advertisement of littler girl
models
(nbasfinest.blogspot.com)
In an interview between Hollandsworth and Nancy Irwin, Psy. D., Irwin talks about how
the girls in these ads and pageants are being trained to look and act like sexual bait and are
becoming tools of their mothers(493). The girls do whatever they can to grab the judges
attention and It is difficult to ignore the link between flirtatious behavior exhibited by the pint-
size contestants in heavy makeup and the naive sexuality that is becoming increasingly blatant
among elementary school girls (493). While they are becoming objects of others, being pushed
to be perfect and missing out on being a regular girl, they are not worrying about how these
While these companies such as Disney and Vogue are putting out these ads, they are not
thinking about the negative effects they might have. These companies are solely worried about
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making money. They are just doing their jobs and are blind to what they are doing and showing
the young people who view their ads. The companies may not be the only ones at fault for this.
Parents also play a large role in limiting what their children view or using these ads as a teaching
moment to show them that is not how they have to look and they can be their own person.
Both Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect and Toddlers in Tiaras
demonstrate how ads objectify and sexualize women. They talk about two subjects that most
females can relate to. These two conflicts could easily be changed. We, as a society complain
about these problems even though we are the ones guilty of creating them. We need to teach the
younger generations to not be effected by what they see around them, whether they be in movies
or in ads. They need to be reminded to stay true the themselves and to stand up to something if
they do not agree with it. It is our job to inspire, pave the way and give hope to these younger
females.