Porn and The Lolita Effect
The Lolita Effect
Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche My latest Blowfish column is essentially a review-commentary on M. Gigi Durham's new book The Lolita Effect. An excerpt:
University of Iowa Journalism professor M. Gigi Durham’s new book The Lolita Effect addresses the ways in which sexually provocative media, toys, and clothing for kids and teens affect girls’ self esteem and sexual behavior. The eponymous effect is caused by a youth culture that sexualizes girls too young and in all the wrong ways, without appropriate sexual health information.
So where does porn come into all this?
Durham does not really address porn directly, but it comes up numerous times and is a frequent subtext. The culprit in her view is mainstream entertainment for kids and teens - the type that is not sexually explicit, but profoundly sexually provocative. In addressing the forces that build “The Lolita Effect,” Durham is basically talking about the increasingly sexual clothes, toys, and entertainments offered not just for teens but for children. Durham has worked with teen and pre-teen girls for some years; she has at her disposal numerous examples as to how rampant sexualization of teen and pre-teen girls can erode their self-esteem. But where Durham is different than many other commentators on this subject is that she believes just as profoundly that those cultural influences damage girls’ chance for a healthy sex life - “healthy” meaning “pleasurable.” She’s a self-proclaimed sex-positive feminist.
I can’t say Dr. Durham doesn’t struggle a bit against sounding sex-negative; she does, and at time she slips into what sounds like moral panic, occasionally while claiming she’s not advocating moral panic. But her heart is in the right place; she doesn’t demonize sex and she doesn’t demonize sluts. On the contrary: Dr. Durham believes that age-appropriate sexual information for girls will help them build egalitarian and pleasure-focused philosophies that embrace sexual diversity and informed sexual choices. That makes her very different from the family-first forces that want to see all adults desexualized “for the sake of the children.”
But I read the book with another agenda: In a world where Bratz dolls wear micro-minis and fishnets and companies try to market stripper poles to preteen girls (complete with fake money!), where does one fit in adult hootchie-positive behavior and its influence on global culture? Does the fact that teen singers dress like porn stars mean that porn is somehow the culprit?
Sure thing, exactly as much as Julia Roberts represents streetwalkers in Pretty Woman.
Read the rest here.