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Sexual images and messages are all around us these days aren't they? It seems that no matter where you are or where you go, there's something sexual always within reach. I mean if you stop and think about it, in your average day, how long is it before you are exposed to some sort of sexualized message? Television, music, billboards, print media, Internet, telephone and communication devices, cable, movies--there are just so many mediums through which sex and sexuality can be depicted. Sex is inescapable!
I remember when I was fourteen, thinking I had literally died and gone to heaven when I found a Playboy magazine. But for some young people now, a Playboy magazine is a very mild form of stimulation, like National Geographic, with its depictions of naked people from tribal cultures, was for me when I was a boy: it'll get your attention but not for very long. Now kids can see actual sexual intercourse as often as they want just by turning on the computer. In homes where kids have unsupervised, unfiltered Internet access, a world of outrageous sex is only a few clicks away. In fact, they can see sexual intercourse in all its possible permutations, everything from your run-of-the-mill sexual intercourse to the weirdest, sickest, most deviant sex acts ever invented. Even in homes that have computer Internet filters, many kids can find ways around them or turn to other devices to access the Internet. And, if it's not the Internet, then perhaps it's cable television or pay per view. There's plenty of sex to be had there. Although perhaps not as outrageous as the Internet, cable does provide a wide array of explicit sexual messages. Then there's your child's mobile phone that can be used for sending and receiving naked pictures of him and his friends, and social networking sites that may be offering any number of provocative images and messages.
Even if your child is only four or five years of age, you need to ask yourself just how much she is being influenced by the television that she's watching. She may not understand the sexual content she sees, but, believe me, she is absorbing it. And once she starts school there is no doubt that she will be influenced by other children she encounters there.
As you can see, there are plenty of opportunities to pick up sexual content via any number of electronic and communicative devices. Besides these devices, there are many additional sources of sexualized messages that young kids can be exposed to today. Music offers an interesting array of sexualized possibilities as pop stars sing about sexual relationships and hookups, intermingled with hurtful and demeaning lyrics toward women. Combined with video, they offer an extremely compelling genre that can overwhelm the senses with stimulating messages about sex, sexuality, and gender. Print media, including magazines, books, newspapers, and advertisements of all kinds, certainly offer any number of possibilities for exposure to sexual matters. And of course interactions with peers offer even more.
Our children have countless opportunities for exposure to sexual messages every day of their lives. Think about that--exposure to sexualized messages, day in and day out, at lightning speed from nearly every direction, for their entire childhood. This exposure often occurs without the guidance and intervention from parents and caregivers that is necessary to help children sort through and make sense of it. These messages are not only explicit but are also frequently violent in nature, awash in male dominant and female submissive imagery--misogynistic, heterosexist, and sensational. Make no mistake about it; your child will be exposed to an enormous amount of sex-related content no matter how hard you try to shield him from it.
Our society is creating a supers-sexualized generation of kids. Children today are more likely to confront sexual stimuli on an earlier and more frequent basis than any prior generation of children has been. Consequently, they are more at risk for thinking and acting in a sexual manner before they are emotionally and developmentally ready.
So let's do the following: visualize your child sitting at a table. On the floor around her are thousands of one inch by one inch blocks and each block represents some sort of sexualized message. Perhaps it's something sexual that she hears from a friend; or some sexual image or content on TV, or in an advertisement. It could be any type of message that has some sexual reference, whether it is fairly innocent and benign or explicit and incomprehensible. But every block represents some sexual message your daughter or son could encounter on any given day.
The first time your child is exposed to one of these sexualized messages, a block is placed on the table in front of her. With her second exposure to a sexualized message, another block is placed on the table next to the first block. With a third exposure a block is placed next to the second, and so on until the row is, let's say, eighteen inches long. With the next exposure, a block is placed on top of the first block in the first row. This continues with each exposure to a sexualized message. With eighteen more blocks in place, a third row begins. A wall of blocks begins to form.
Got the picture? Now imagine how high the wall would be after just one day. How many sexualized messages--blocks--would be on the table in front of your child? Obviously, the older your child the higher the wall is likely to be, simply because we would expect an older child to have more varied experiences and hence more exposures to sexual messages. So how high would you expect the wall to be after a week? How about a month? Six months? A year? Ten years? If I were a betting man I'd bet that the wall of sexualized messages that your child has been exposed to has disappeared way up into the sky, well out of our sight. So think about this: by the time your child begins to enter puberty he or she has probably been exposed to thousands, if not tens of thousands of sexualized messages. And how many of these sexualized messages will be problematic, not representative of your values system? How many of them will portray women as sexual objects and men as hunters, lusting for sex? How many of them will be heterosexist and homophobic? How many of them will portray sexual intimacy and behavior without any sense of responsibility? How many of them will portray sex as something we can all engage in without having to be in love? How many of them are incomprehensible and just outright confusing to your young child? How many of them come from sources that you would have a problem with?
All this has got to send a little shiver down your spine right? And what will that wall of sexualized messages look like after your child has entered puberty and his or her sexual feelings and desires start being actualized, and peers begin to have more influence on your child than ever before? How high will it be then? And there your child sits, with a gigantic wall of sexualized messages staring her or him in the face.
Our job as parents is to help our children make sense of their sexualized wall of messages...and it wouldn't hurt to make sure that we add a whole bunch of own blocks to the wall as we do.
