P G :Parental Guidance

By: Charlotte Makala

Play make-up, sexy Barbie dolls, and sexy women on video games and on TV. Whether we appreciate the fact or not products are being made that are sexualizing our children perhaps much earlier than what is good for them. It’s called corporate pedophilia, where a child, particularly girls are targeted by businesses to purchase ‘sexy’ products.

In 2006 a peekaboo pole-dancing kit for young girls was removed from toy stands sold in Tesco in Britain. The fact that the ‘toy’ was even authorized or put on stands to be sold to young girls is shocking to me, worrying really.

I am not a parent but I hope to be someday, but I fear that I will have to fight those ‘big bad corporations’ to stay away and keep their products at bay. We are society that is highly sexualized and in many ways desensitized, products are sold to us through sex and its apparent. Children are exposed to billboards with ‘sexy’ women on them practically naked selling a brand that has nothing to do with sex or being naked.

Is our obsession with sex really worth it? Should it be imposed on our children? Or perhaps am I taking my concern too far? It is good for children to be exposed to sexuality, isn’t it?

Well I feel that it’s parents who make the call on this one. Will it really affect your child to buy her that padded bra or that nail polish set she wanted for her upcoming seventh birthday?

The fact that many children now have the word ‘sexy’ in their vocabulary says a lot about where we are at in terms of sexualizing our children. Does corporate pedophilia have the upper hand?

Many corporations aim is to seek profit and for many if it affects the child of the future in a harmful but hard-to-prove way, that’s too bad. Hyper sexualized children face the possibility of finding themselves facing the social pressures to demonstrate sexualized conduct and may result in children become sexually active at a younger age without truly having the tools of maturity to understand and cope with the mechanisms of sex and the responsibility that comes with it.

The corporate world plays on our desires and sometimes chooses to extend its targets towards those with the most disposable income, which does happen to be children, since they have the freest time and have pocket money to spend on luxuries without worrying about necessities to pay for, which their parents do. So your twelve year old daughter does have the freedom to buy that lace thong targeted toward her.

However, she also deserves the freedom to have a childhood, and some things, such as childhood it seems needs such preservation. It’s up to the parent’s and the adults in charge of the children to be responsible today for our children of tomorrow.

Perhaps children’s toys should be labeled and approved by a board of parents. Of course parent’s can’t control every aspect of their children’s lives but saying no and being responsible over what is exposed in the home can make a difference for the generation of tomorrow.