Gambier, OH, USA. Are clothing manufacturers helping to turn young girls into sex objects? Up to 30 percent of young girls' clothing available online in the US is sexy or sexualizing, according to a study.

This has serious implications for how girls evaluate themselves according to a sexualized model of feminine physical attractiveness. It makes them confront the issue of sexual identity at a very young age.


According to objectification theory, women from Western cultures are widely portrayed and treated as objects of the male gaze. This leads to the development of self-objectification, in which girls and women internalize these messages and view their own bodies as objects to be evaluated according to narrow standards — often sexualized — of attractiveness.

Source and Caveats

A study like this tries to apply objective criteria for assessing such otherwise subjective judgements, such as "highly decorated pants' pockets that called attention to the buttocks", as sexualizing young girls.

Controlling for the variables requires fixing the degree to which standard fashion embellishments have been adapted. How much decoration — and what kind — may have a role to play in understanding the degree of sexualization involved?

Pockets, as one example, tend to be reinforced and better able to sustain wear than other areas of a garment. And the social context can matter: the wearer may find the design competitive with other girls, or just something especially pretty to wear.Dr. Sarah Murnen, a Kenyon College psychologist, led a research team that included Samantha Goodin, a former Kenyon student. Their findings appear in the journal Sex Roles.

Bearing in mind the negative effects of self-objectification such as body dissatisfaction, depression, low confidence and low self-esteem, Goodin and team looked at the role of girls' clothing as a possible social influence that may contribute to self-objectification in preteen girls.

They examined the frequency and nature of sexualizing clothing available for young girls (children not adolescents) on the websites of 15 popular stores in the US. Sexualizing clothing reveals or emphasizes a sexualized body part, has characteristics associated with sexiness, and/or carries sexually suggestive writing. They also looked at whether clothing items had childlike characteristics e.g. polka dot patterns and ribbons.

Across all the stores, of the 5,666 clothing items studied, 69 percent had only childlike characteristics. Of the remaining 31 percent, 4 percent had only sexualized characteristics, 25 percent had both sexualizing and childlike features, and 4 percent had neither sexualized nor childlike elements.

Sexualization occurred most frequently on items that emphasized a sexualized body part, such as shirts and dresses that were cut in such a way as to create the look of breasts, or highly decorated pants' pockets that called attention to the buttocks. The type of store was linked to the degree of sexualization, with 'tween' (or pre-teen) stores more likely to have sexualized clothing compared to children's stores.

The authors conclude that their study "presents the 'ambiguously sexualizing' category of girls' clothing. The co-occurrence of sexualizing and childlike characteristics makes the sexualization present in girl's clothing covert. Confused parents might be pursuaded to buy the leopard-print miniskirt if it’s bright pink."

"Clearly, sexiness is still visible beneath the bows or tie-dye colors. We propose that dressing girls in this way could contribute to socializing them into the narrow role of the sexually objectified woman."

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