Girlpower1 links us to this article about the budding ‘modesty movement’ in America, aimed at the same young girls who are being targeted and/or influenced by marketers and popular culture to participate in the ‘raunch culture’ instead of a more innocent, non-sexualized childhood. The author uses celebrities who are constantly in the media and in the tabloids, and the recent Paris Hilton-goes-to-jail debacle, as a starting-off point for her conversation–Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, etc. She points to their ‘vulgarity’ and asks, are these the role models we want for our young girls?

The author, Colleen Carroll Campbell, gets so much right:

Today’s pop culture tells women that sexual power is the kind that counts most and they can achieve it by showing skin. That message has trickled down to girls, forcing them to trade carefree childhood pleasures for sexual competition.

You can see them in the mall, tugging nervously at their skimpy shorts and halter tops, straining to see how men react to their little bellies flouncing out of low-slung jeans. They look more exploited than empowered as they fuss and cringe, adjust and squirm. How odd that in an age when girls have more athletic and academic opportunities than ever, girlhood has become a high-pressure dress-rehearsal for adult mating games.

This is no doubt, disturbing. As are the following conclusions:

The American Psychological Association recently issued an alarming report on this trend, concluding that girls who view themselves as sex objects are more prone to academic failure, depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and poor self-image…A 2005 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed a strong correlation between sexual activity and depression in teenage girls – a correlation far stronger than the one seen in boys, with girls’ depression rates rising as the number of sexual partners rose. The study suggests that sexual experimentation is not a symptom but a cause of depression in teenage girls.

No doubt it’s a problem that sexual activity and depression are so strongly correlated among teenage girls. But I think the author makes a big leap when she says that the study ’suggests’ that sexual experimentation is the cause of depression. It’s too patronizing and moralistic, and she doesn’t cite it to boot. It’s a justification for the ‘modesty movement’ she describes and supports:

Many parents feel powerless to resist the objectification of their daughters. But others are fighting back. A new modesty movement is sprouting in cities from Denver to Atlanta, with Pure Fashion shows drawing crowds of modesty-conscious mothers and daughters, new retailers like Shade Clothing reporting multi-million dollar sales figures for clothes that keep private parts private, and feisty online communities like ModestyZone.net encouraging rebels against raunchy culture.

The girls and women behind this movement say they are not looking to revive gunny-sack dresses or relive the 1950s. They simply want to be seen as more than the sum of their body parts.

Again, capitalism (note that this is becoming a multi-million dollar industry) is dressed up with a certain ideology, but in this case, it’s an ideology of the ’struggle for protection from sexual influences,’ not the ‘movement toward liberation through the use of my sexuality.’

Don’t get me wrong; of course children shouldn’t be sexualized. But there comes a time in life called puberty, and at that time, both boys and girls do realize their sexuality. While a teenage girl should entirely have the choice the dress herself modesty, what I see here is not a choice, but rather a reaction against the other ‘choice’ of participating in the raunch culture. Check out Campbell’s credentials–she is very much a part of the Christian Right, who also advocate abstinence-only sex education. Yes, teenage girls and young women are inappropriately sexualized in our society, but I also think they should be allowed the choice of discovering their sexuality, or sensuality, or pleasure in their bodies, or just a love for fashion or what have you. Ignoring the fact that sexuality exists among adolescents only leads to more problems itself.

Another troublesome aspect of both ‘choices’–the raunch culture, or the modesty movement–is that both are about changing how the girls represent themselves; neither are about changing how boys and men look at and treat girls. If we really want to give people more choices in our society, we need to come at it from many different angles, not just the Madonna/whore dichotomy that we still look at women through.

There’s a post over at the main blog about the Cheetah Girls as a symbol of the Girl Power movement.  As a Disney Channel creation–a made-for-TV-movie based on a book series spawned the real girl group and various merchandise–they’re definitely relevant to the tween market right now.  There’s a lot to positively acknowledge here–they’re closer in age to their market than a lot of other girl groups (such as the Pussycat Dolls) are, they present themselves more age-appropriately while still being ‘cool’ and fashionable, they have a ’sisterhood’ message as opposed to girls being pitted against each other for men’s attention (again, look to the Pussycat Dolls’ breakout single, ‘Don’t Cha (wish your girlfriend was hot like me)’, and most importantly I think (especially in light of my recent post about tweens and race), they’re diverse–racially, body shape, ‘image,’ etc.

Here is a song/movie clip from the first Cheetah Girls movie, “Cheetah Sisters”:

I think this song has a really great message for young girls who are at an age when they probably start feeling like they need to compete with their friends for boys and popularity.  It emphasizes unity, no matter how different girls are from each other: Cuz we are sisters we stand together / we make up one big family though we don’t look the same our spots are different / different colors we make stronger, that ain’t ever gonna change, and it even emphasizes global unity with We’re from everywhere all around the world.  Furthermore, I think the fact that the girls are fashionable and show off their dancing skills without being sexualized is really important–it’s letting girls have fun without introducing them to things that they’re not ready for yet.  And astonishingly enough, all of the girls seem to matter in the group, with their own personalities–everyone brings something to the table, and everyone has something that makes them special.  In this way, the song teaches girls to trust in themselves more: Got the brains got the power and we speak the truth.

So what problem do I have with “Cheetah Sisters”?  Well, I wonder if it doesn’t emphasize unity a little bit too much.  The girls don’t just benefit from having each other around, they depend on each other for the strength to follow their dreams: There’s a time when we all choose / To either quit, or follow through / To just loose faith, or trust your heart somehow to lead you through the dark / We’re not the only one who’s dreamin’ / Who needs help to carry on / We might geet lonely but we’re not alone.  Saying that the girls need help to carry on departs so shockingly from the other Girl Power narrative we’ve been looking at this semester: the one of the individual woman, underestimated by society, who fights her hardest and maintains her composure, in order to be accepted in a (traditionally male) position of power, e.g. G.I. Jane.

However, the individualistic narrative of ‘girl power’ can be troublesome too, because it so often involves a woman fighting for her own right to occupy a traditionally male role of power, almost always without regard for other women, and often even at their expense.  So the ’sisterhood’ message of “Cheetah Sisters” seems pretty great for what it is.  I actually wonder if the unity message isn’t so strong precisely because all the characters/singers/actresses are at least part Black and/or Latina (see character descriptions).  Oppressed by the double constraints of gender and race, there is more incentive for women of color to ’stick together.’  I have a hard time imagining a girl group marketed toward tweens consisting of only white girls or women emphasizing a ’sisterhood’ message in this day and age.  Another reason for why this might be is that it’s probably harder for nonwhite singers/actresses to break into certain markets if they go solo; we all know Raven (who did not join the Cheetah Girls group that was filmed after the first movie became a success) is still in the tween market, even though she’s slightly older than Hilary Duff, who has gained wider pop cultural fame.  But for now, it seems that Disney’s got the young girls and young-girls-of-color-market hooked.

Which brings me to my bigger problem with the Cheetah Girls.  I usually wikipedia things before I write about them, and when I looked up ‘Cheetah Girls,’ I was expecting to get to the page for the [first]  TV movie (I didn’t know about the sequels), which I had seen advertised incessantly on the Disney Channel.  However, I instead came to this page.  A book series, movies, CDs, DVDs, a video game, concert tours and the associated merchandise, a doll line, even a Cheetah Girls toothbrush–it becomes very clear that the Cheetah Girls, just like most things, are meant to get our money first and foremost.

I mean, I think it’s great that the Cheetah Girls are successful.  But I think it’s important to keep in mind that if they weren’t, Disney wouldn’t have kept them around.  Buying Disney merchandise for young girls isn’t only empowering them to be strong and confident, it’s also acculturating them to society.  By acculturation, I don’t only mean gender norms (the girls are all feminine and ‘acceptable’ on an aesthetic level), but also the consumerist society that we live in.  Tweens develop part of their sense of who they are through consuming, e.g. ‘I’m like Aquanetta so I’m gonna buy her doll!’

Considering the alternatives, though (once again, the Pussycat Dolls), the Cheetah Girls still stand as good role models of who/what young girls are looking up to, identifying with, and buying into.  Here’s a video of another one of their songs from the first movie to leave you with, appropriately titled “Girl Power”:

In class last week, we had a discussion about tweens and how young girls are being sexualized earlier and earlier, especially through marketing.  One of the points that someone brought up was how as the perennial Disney stars grew up, so did their fan base.  To qualify that: while the teen stars actually aged, their fan bases, while remaining the same age (not the same individual girls as before), have grown up with them.

From  to

One thing I am reminded of is the ever-creepy countdown to the Olsen twins’ 18th birthday (them being finally ‘legal’), and bets on who would pose for Playboy, Maxim, etc., first.  I found a website counting down to their 21st birthdays; it has a timer and everything, just like there was for their 18th birthdays.  I have to wonder, if websites like this are so widely profilerated all over the Internet, and the acceptance of ‘jailbait’ as something sexy and desired is so widespread, how is it not surprising that young girls are becoming sexual/sexualized earlier and earlier?

Right now, Mary-Kate and Ashley are in college, snorting coke and struggling with anorexia and being hounded by the tabloids–not exactly actions that we want preteen girls to emulate.  However, the constant media (tabloids, yes, but still media) attention paid to them and their problems only makes such news readily available to young girls, who have not yet fully developed their reasoning capabilities.  I don’t want to say that the media is to blame for everything, but I do think there must be some correlation between such ’scandal’ being so widely published and talked about, and young girls developing body image issues and eating disorders–and with that, a more ‘grown-up’ sense of sexuality–earlier on.