Is this all a bunch of moral panic?
Some critics believe that the focus of attention on girl's bodies usually comes from "big societal and cultural change," and that the concern over "child sexualization is a contemporary moral panic," (Renold 2013).
"The ‘sexualisation of girls’ discourse:
codifies almost any sexual expression (e.g. sexual desire) and related concerns (e.g. body image, sexual violence, etc.) as an effect of and thus evidence for ‘sexualisation’;
focuses exclusively on the harmful effects of media exposure with little analysis of how girls themselves make meaning of, and negotiate the media in their everyday lives;
produces a ‘scary futurology’ (Smith, 2010), with an overemphasis on protec- tionism, victimisation and objectification;
neglects girls’ sexual agency, rights and pleasure (including how the eroticisation of innocence features in girls’ own sexual subjectification practices);
renews enduring binaries of active, predatory male sexuality versus passive, non- agentic female sexuality (where girls’ sexuality is always risky/at risk);
encourages either/or position-taking among stakeholders between sexual empowerment and pleasure versus sexual danger and protectionism;
legitimises a heteronormative and linear developmental trajectory of ‘healthy’ female heterosexuality;
operates as a white middle class panic over the desire for and loss of a raced and classed sexual innocence, and thus reproduces the othering of working class/ racialised cultures as evidence of hyper-sexuality;
and refuses psychoanalytic understandings of how girls live under the burden of adult desires, projections and fantasies," (Renold 2013).
codifies almost any sexual expression (e.g. sexual desire) and related concerns (e.g. body image, sexual violence, etc.) as an effect of and thus evidence for ‘sexualisation’;
focuses exclusively on the harmful effects of media exposure with little analysis of how girls themselves make meaning of, and negotiate the media in their everyday lives;
produces a ‘scary futurology’ (Smith, 2010), with an overemphasis on protec- tionism, victimisation and objectification;
neglects girls’ sexual agency, rights and pleasure (including how the eroticisation of innocence features in girls’ own sexual subjectification practices);
renews enduring binaries of active, predatory male sexuality versus passive, non- agentic female sexuality (where girls’ sexuality is always risky/at risk);
encourages either/or position-taking among stakeholders between sexual empowerment and pleasure versus sexual danger and protectionism;
legitimises a heteronormative and linear developmental trajectory of ‘healthy’ female heterosexuality;
operates as a white middle class panic over the desire for and loss of a raced and classed sexual innocence, and thus reproduces the othering of working class/ racialised cultures as evidence of hyper-sexuality;
and refuses psychoanalytic understandings of how girls live under the burden of adult desires, projections and fantasies," (Renold 2013).