I am on the brink of a terrible crisis, one that could arrive any time in the next four to six years, and is likely to last at least that long. Yes, I am the mother of a six-year-old daughter.
Not only that, I’m the aunt of several more girls, whose ages range from four to twentysomething. It’s only a matter of time, or so I’m constantly being told, before I’m drowning in a sea of miniature push-up bras and junior pole-dancing kits, while fending off requests for labiaplasty procedures and Justin Bieber tickets.
For several years now, so-called experts have been warning about the “crisis facing our daughters”. Hardly a week goes by without an article about the growth in plastic surgery for teenagers, or the prospect of paedophiles stalking them on Facebook.
A scour of the headlines from the past few weeks turns up horror stories about the new practice of “slut shaming” among teenagers; warnings about sex toys being sold in Boots; and claims that “sexting” is turning our children into criminals. The British prime minister, David Cameron, has even appointed an adviser with the remit of “preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood”.
It is true that the messages being pumped out by advertisers may not always be in our children’s best interests. I’ve previously written on these pages about the way we are squeezing young children into restrictive gender roles by the toys we push at them. And, like many others, I worry about the ways porn is shaping popular culture.
But the debate about the sexualisation of children has begun to echo with more than a faint ring of hysteria – not least with the latest contribution from child-rearing guru Steve Biddulph.
A few years back, Biddulph wrote a sensible book called Raising Boys, which sold four million copies worldwide. He has now turned his attention to girls, who are, he says, “in trouble in a world that seems bent on poisoning their confidence and trashing their lives”.
The new book – which does also offer some solid advice – is published this week, and Biddulph has already been setting out his case in promotional talks and extracts. He says: “Girls used to be doing fine, but they’re now having much more problems with bullying, binge drinking, eating disorders and generally not liking who they are.” Everywhere a young girl goes, “she sees messages that make her feel that she is not good enough”, and “the media has become the third parent, sometime first parent, in terms of passing on ideas and values.”
Sustained assault
Thankfully, my daughter and her older cousins seem blissfully unaware that they are living in a state of what Biddulph calls “sustained assault”. But really, isn’t this huge, terrifying crisis they’re facing just what used to be called “growing up”? I’m not sure whether teenagers are the problem – or if the issue is the rest of us, who can’t seem to make up our minds what we want for them.
On the one hand, we’re panicking about whether Rihanna is a good role model. On the other, we’re in a tizzy about Taylor Swift and her Stepfordesque, buttoned-up look.
I’m no cheerleader for Rihanna’s raunchy, hand-on-crotch brand of pop, and I don’t much love Taylor Swift’s prim angst either. But shouldn’t we stop banging on about how they look, and focus on the fact that they’ve both made it into the top three of the Forbes list of the highest-earning women in music, doing what they love?
When I was a teenager, the media was in a near-constant state of apoplexy over Madonna, and yet I managed to grow up watching her cavort around in next-to-no clothes without feeling the need to do it myself. At school, I’d never heard the expression “size zero”, but I knew girls who starved themselves. There were no newspaper articles warning about “self-mutilation” or “slut shaming”, but I knew people who did both. I had friends who drank too much, and friends who slept with boys too young.
I’m not being glib about any of these things – they were all traumatic, and maybe even life-altering experiences for the people involved. The point is that if girls are in crisis now, then it’s a crisis that’s been happening for well over two decades.
What has changed is that women’s lives, choices and bodies have become a source of anxiety like never before. They are no longer private terrain. Instead, they have become a battleground, open to being debated over, discussed, dictated to – and ripped apart in Heat magazine or the Daily Mail’s “sidebar of shame”.
This is the real difference; if there is a pressure on girls, then it is a pressure we’re putting on them with this constant monitoring for signs that they might be too thin, too fat, too sexualised. The US actress and reality TV star Jessica Simpson recently found herself in controversy after she tweeted a photo of her four-month-old daughter wearing a primrose yellow crochet bikini over her nappy. Who could seriously get exercised about the so-called “sexualisation” of a tiny baby in a nappy? (The British charity Kidscape, that’s who.)
Maybe it’s time we laid off all this public agonising about girls, and turned our attention to how we’re raising boys.
Too often, we encourage them to shut off their nurturing and caring sides, we bombard them with messages that suggest women are principally there to give pleasure, and yet we expect them to mature into empathetic, emotionally-aware men who are capable of being hands-on fathers, supportive partners and financially-independent members of society.
Not that Biddulph is upbeat about boys either. Overall, he told an Australian journalist recently, we are raising “one of the most depressed, anxious and lonely generations of young people ever to inhabit the Earth”.
If girls are getting mixed signals about the kind of women we want them to be, then the signals we are sending out to boys about their masculinity are positively bewildering.
The one mystery in Jodie Foster’s speech
I have always admired Jodie Foster, but I might be a tiny bit in love with her after her acceptance speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globes, which has been called “goofy and meandering” by some critics and “manipulative” and “defensive” by others.
It was all of those things, but it was also elegant and heartfelt. Staying true to a decision she said she made long again that she would not be the celebrity who “[honours] the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a primetime reality show”, she nonetheless managed to deliver a speech in which she came out, reminded us why we should value privacy (“some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was”), and she thanked her mother and – fabulously, in the context of the revelation that she is indeed a lesbian – Mel Gibson. I’m still mystified by one thing, though. Who the hell is Honey Boo Boo?
Kids that put you right off lunch
Restaurateur Robbie Fox made headlines this week when it was revealed he doesn’t allow children into his restaurant, Bel Bellucci of Ballsbridge, between noon and 2pm on weekdays.
I have suffered the indignity of being turned away, in the rain, from an almost empty cafe in Dublin, simply because I turned up in the company of a sleeping, small child in a buggy.
Like the mother who went to the papers after she was turned away by Fox, I too stood on the street in tears of frustration after the waitress told me she couldn’t let me in “for health and safety reasons”. (The cafe in question has since changed its policy, so I won’t name it.)
Despite all this, I can see where Fox is coming from. Some restaurants simply aren’t designed to accommodate big buggies, or young children running around. And sadly, some parents appear unable to grasp this.
I recently watched in amazement as the parents at the table next to me in a packed pizza restaurant sat back and beamed at their baby daughter crawling around the floor, while their toddler son raced around the tables nearby, causing several near-collisions with the busy wait staff.
Maybe we should stop concentrating on making restaurants more child-friendly, and focus on making children – and their parents – more restaurant-friendly. Of course, the only way to accomplish that is by exposing them to restaurants. Are you listening, Robbie?