Strangely, I disagree with the entirety of this article.

My belief is that as bands such as Black Eyed Peas, who are aimed at 10-16 year olds start singing about shagging and as Rihanna strips another layer off to her adoring tween market we ARE over-sexualising the young and exploiting the immature.

This process is speeding up and childhood is becoming forever shorter.

I'm fed up of hearing about girl bands and boy bands being "edgy", or having an "edgy video". Edgy in todays culture just means simulating sex acts, or taking more clothes off.

The issue that most people overlook here is that 10 year olds want to be 16. By sexualising music aimed at 16 year olds such as the two examples i have mentioned here you are really sexualising 10 year olds.

Guess what, it works a treat.............. and guess what else........... the marketing teams and record companies and PR teams and the performers all make money from it.

Forgive me, as i know i sound like a Tory here but this isn't about pushing boundaries, it is about ripping cash from our kid's hands and telling them that if they do something similar you too will be like them.

The music industry is not alone, but probably the worst culprit for it.

Totally agree with you Marcus. My 10 year old GD wants a Twitter account and wants to follow Rihanna. Rihanna's current profile pic. says "well behaved bitches seldom make history". I think I know what she means (although she herself is very immature) but what my 10 year old GD would feel, well, who knows ! I'm sure she'd think it was cool though.

Sigh.

Laurie. You're right on much of what you say. But don't tar mothers with the assumption that we all want our babies to remain babies, and hate the thought of our daughters becoming sexually active. I have no problems with the idea of my little girl growing up and getting boyfriends. I do object to 'musicians' like Rihanna being aggressively targetted towards young girls and then releasing songs about S&M and rape. I don't want music sanitised, but performers who want the parents dollar should be a little bit responsible towards their fans; if you want artistic freedom then tell your management to market your pap to adults.

I have no issue with my daughter, once she hits adolescence, finding her sexual self. I don't think it's wrong for a woman to want to be attractive or to be admired for her appearance. I do object to adult standards of dress being made for children, T-shirts with 'future WAG' or Playboy bunny clothes, or as someone has already mentioned, padded bras for pre-pubescent children. It's weird. Parents don't have to buy them but who on earth signed these products off, and in what society are they appropriate? If retailers were selling padded briefs for boys then parents may be equally concerned, but boys get toy guitars, skateboards, they get told to be into sports and music and cars. Girls get told not to be fat and to make sure they look pretty. The fact that this message is still being hammered into kids by our consumer culture in the 21st century is disgraceful and is a big part of the whole problem. The issue is not teenagers having sex but a damaging perception of femininity and gender being pushed onto young, female children. That is why the debate focuses on girls, because they are being told that their value is in how they look from a very young age. Boys don't get that until they are much older, and then nowhere near to the same extent. It is down to the parent to instill values. But we don't raise our kids in a vacuum and disregarding quite legitimate parental concerns about things being marketed towards very young girls that are wholly age inappropriate for them is unfair and naive.

@Rackham - You are, quite simply, wrong. Their is no debate about this. All the stats back up my correct correlation between childhood behavior and sexualisation.

You should look at the records, and recoil in shame.

Also I would like to invite you to join me for a week in my job as a Social Worker.

It seems to me that you are one of those left wingers who has never actually seen poverty and social problems. You say most 17 year olds are fantastic (which is true) - but a characteristic of the middle class left is to pretend that there are no problems in society and anyone who says there are, is weird and religious (in itself this is bigotry against religious people in your article) like Ian Duncan Smith.

Also in the paragraph where you tell us the internet allows "learning about modern philosophy on Wikipedia, applying for university, or posting video blogs from Tahrir Square" - what is your point and logic? That people who are concerned about sexualisation would also like to get rid of the positive parts of the internet? No, really what are you saying in that paragraph?? Is the world really such a simple set of dichotomies for you.

I doubt this kind of logic applies to Smurfs, Mr D! They are higher beings than that!

I'll give you a odd poke Laurie Penny. Where do you want it?

You have a point about the hypocrisy of fears about 'sexualisation' being only about girls. This is sexist. Also, I think you're right to say people shouldn't worry so much about the influence of the internet. However I think Christians (and Muslims, and every other religion) are perfectly entitled to offer the views on society...as a significantly large proportion of this country are still religious. I think, rather then just saying these people are religious and then implying that is somehow bad (that somehow their arguments are not valid as soon as you know they believe in God), you should focus on the main point: these fears about child sexualisation are exaggerated.
Furthermore I think it is slightly unfair to blame the fear-mongering solely on middle aged men, especially since one of the main movers behind these proposals are concerned mothers, who are mostly made fearful by the frightening, overblown news stories about teenagers.
But I do essentially agree with you, we should focus less on what the teenagers are doing and more on stopping the people trying to take advantage of the vulnerability of a minority of teenagers that are trumpeted as the norm by scare-mongering newspapers like the Daily Mail.

'Most of the teenage girls I know do not spend their Saturday afternoons vomiting their A-levels into drains with their knickers around their knees and catching chlamydia from Facebook. Most of them are fantastic human beings, who astonish me with their resilience and courage.'

My god, this could be a speech from the Tory party conference. Tell us, will you Laurie, about the teenage girls who are not 'fantastic human beings'. I can guess what class they come from.

Dear James who posted on 03 July 2011 at 15:33.

You sir are an idiot.
Islam is in no way any more backwards than Christianity, Judaism, Scientology or Rastapharianism. All have views that want to control the appearence of young women, and if you truly believe that Christianity is more forward thinking than Islam, tell that to people who are routinely told that birth control causes the transmission of HIV.
Go on, do it.

"All have views that want to control the appearence of young women"

Yes

"Islam is in no way any more backwards than Christianity, Judaism"

Yes it is

Why are you getting upset?

"There isn't a mother or father who will not, at some point, become frantic with worry at the notion that their son or daughter will one day grow up, move out and start being penetrated in club toilets by runny-nosed young men called Nigel whom they met on the internet."

Any evidence to support this ludicrous assertion ? No ?

That reminds me of Spring Awakening's "The Song of Purple Summer"!

Oh, and are people named Nigel not to be trusted??

PhilM:
seriously you think Cameron objects to girls "being commoditised (sic) by consumer capitalism" ?? What?
You mean cameron is anti-capitalism? How naive can you be?
Could it be that Cameron is a conservative in his views on female sexuality as well as conservative politically and that he thinks that taking advice from a Christian group will look good with the electorate who will see him as a morally right character?
Hmmm...
And is it being narrow minded to be suspicious of the motives behind advice given by a religious/any religious group?
PhilM , my friend, you sound like a very trustful person if you don't mind me saying.

★good★
look love—[[ w w w - (wholesalecheapclothes )- c o m ]]

Padded bras for 5 year old girls? That OK Laurie? Why don't you put your focus there instead of bashing religion. I'm a grandmother and I'm very concerned about my 9 and 10 year old granddaughters. My daughter does her utmost to protect them but also knows they must find their own way. This is difficult when all they see, in terms of music on TV, are very young women writhing around half naked. They emulate it. They want bras and high heels. These wants haven't grown in their brains, they've been planted there by the general media - controlled mainly by men. I wonder who came up with the idea of bras for 5 year olds? A man? A woman? What was going through their mind when they envisaged this product being worn?

I have a physical need to protect my granddaughters. That comes from me having been a mother and from my maturity.

I agree with everything Laurie wrote but I think that there's another argument that various forces on t'internet, TV, magazines, films, etc are engaged in grooming young women and girls to become sex objects. Can we look at that because I think that's possibly the problem that Laurie is avoiding here.

"Let's all smurf together
it's smurfing kind of weather
and it's very easy if you try..."

Man, I miss the smurfs too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MY4V2XAEDA

It actually just occurred to me, there is only one red smurf and the rest are blue!

This could explain a lot.

good article spoilt by the word, censoriousness,
lol rofl, lmao, diligaf ,lob