Children, Young People, Sexuality and the Media

No 135, May 2010
Theme Editors: Kath Albury and Catharine Lumby


Introduction: Children, young people, sexuality and the media
Kath Albury and Catharine Lumby
Since the 2008 Australian Senate Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Environment, both the British and Scottish governments have conducted their own inquiries into the role that mediated representations of sex and/or sexuality play in the lives of children and young people. At the same time, scholars, commentators, activists and educators have continued to debate the boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘pornography’ in representations of children and young people; and the boundaries between ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ content in popular and educational material for children and young people. This article introduces the multidisciplinary approach taken in this special issue of Media International Australia , which the editors hope will promote positive strategic approaches to promoting safety, agency and well-being for children and young people.


Raunch culture goes to school? Young women, normative femininities and elite education
Claire Charles
Public concern about popular culture’s sexualisation of women and girls is regularly voiced in the Australian media. Young women grow up against a backdrop of ‘raunch culture’ (Levy, 2005), which for some scholars represents a ‘new’ femininity (Gill, 2007), in which ‘hyper-sexual’ forms of (hetero)sexual expression are now expected of young women and girls, despite ostensibly being about choice and personal empowerment. In this article, I explore the constructions of girlhood and femininity amongst young women attending an elite, single-sex, private school in Melbourne, Australia. Elite schooling for girls is often associated with highly classed notions of (hetero)sexual modesty and propriety, epitomised in the reality television program Ladette to Lady . Here I consider how hyper-sexualities are configured within students’ constructions of themselves and others, and I explore their relationship to classed expectations of identity for privileged girls. I examine the role that classed norms of identity play in mediating these girls’ negotiations of hyper-sexualities.


Hot for teacher: The cultural erotics and anxieties of adolescent sexuality
Steven Angelides
This article takes popular media scandals surrounding cases of female secondary school teachers charged with sexual offences against male students as its point of inquiry. Using the infamous story of former American schoolteacher Debra Lafave as a case study, it examines the over-determined dynamics of fascination, eroticisation and anxiety structuring the representation and reception of this case and others like it. The article argues that the ‘sex panic’ over female teacher sex offenders is often less about the women than it is about male adolescent sexuality.


When subject becomes object: Nakedness, art and the public sphere
Kate MacNeill
In May 2008, a photograph of a naked twelve-year-old girl by the Australian artist Bill Henson came to the attention of the Australian public when it was featured on an invitation to the opening of an exhibition at a commercial art gallery in Sydney. Within hours, a debate had commenced about the appropriateness of the image and the intentions of the artist. It rapidly descended into the familiar argument of art versus pornography, with protagonists lining up on one side or the other. There seemed no shared space in which to discuss this particular image and instance. Drawing on contributions to this very public debate, I demonstrate the way in which the closed nature of the art system leaves many of its practitioners unable to engage in the wider conversations that occur when artworks travel beyond the credentialling context of the art gallery and enter the public space.


Feminism, sexualisation and social status
Robbie Duschinsky
New formulations and responses to classic questions have emerged in recent feminist thinking on the relationship between gender and consumption. One instance of this is the work of Abigail Bray on the damage caused by the media sexualisation of girls. She offers important insights into some problems with the discourse of media and sexual empowerment, and also critically considers the social distinction that such an discourse tends to confer. This article offers a sympathetic account of her argument, but also moves beyond Bray to express concerns regarding the class and race codings of the discourse of childhood innocence.

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The innocence fetish: The commodification and sexualisation of children in the media and popular culture
Joanne Faulkner
Over the past century, a great deal of cultural energy has been invested in the ideal of childhood innocence, to the extent that innocence is frequently cited as our society’s most valuable asset. More recently, however, the dominant sentiment — frequently represented in news and current affairs media — has been that childhood innocence is imperilled, and that the ‘less responsible’ aspects of our popular media are putting it at risk. This article argues that the reasoning that engenders innocence with cultural value invites, and even demands, its violation. Specifically, the very same influences through which the child has come to be valorised also lead to the desire for and consumption of innocence. Innocence has become a ‘fetish’, positioned as a lost freedom and plenitude inciting desire. This article draws upon psychoanalytic theory to place into its correct context the anxiety about childhood innocence. It argues that these ‘responsible’ lamentations about the sexualisation of children and the loss of childhood innocence contribute to (rather than avert) a fetishisation of innocence that both prepares the ground for childhood to become the ultimate commodity, and ignores the concrete circumstances, desires and capacities of children.


Revisiting moral panics in sexuality education
Mary Lou Rasmussen
There is a common impulse within academic research on sexuality education to draw on the notion of moral panic in order to better understand ‘unreasonable’ and emotional opposition to the implementation of sexuality education programs. The aim of this article is to interrogate this tendency to classify religious opposition to the sexuality education curriculum as suggestive of a ‘moral panic’. I begin with a brief discussion of how the notion of ‘moral panic’ is commonly used in academic and popular discourse, and proceed to a discussion of ‘moral panic’ in the field of sexuality education, specifically focusing on the work of US researcher Janice Irvine. I also consider some research on recent South Australian controversies related to sexuality education in schools. Finally, I consider the attribution of ‘moral panic’ in accounting for religious opposition to sexuality education as a secular formation.



Everything is child abuse
Alan McKee
In 2008, the Australian federal Senate held an Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Environment. I made a submission to this Inquiry, noting that in public debate about this topic a number of quite distinct issues, with distinct aetiologies, were collapsed together. These included: child pornography; children being targeted by any form of marketing; young people becoming sexually active; sexual abuse of children; raunch culture; protecting children from any sexualised material in the media; and body image disorders. I suggested that commentators had collapsed these issues together because the image of the helpless child is a powerful one for critics to challenge undesirable aspects of contemporary culture. The result of many different ideological viewpoints all using the same argument — that the forms of culture they didn’t like were damaging children — gives the impression that there is no element of culture today that isn’t (somebody claims) causing harm to children: everything is child abuse. The danger of such discourses is that they draw attention away from the real harm that is being caused to children by sexual and other forms of maltreatment — which overwhelmingly occur within families, and for reasons ignored in these debates.


Too much? Too young? The sexualisation of children debate in Australia
Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury
This article considers the origins and focus of current Australian debates around the alleged ‘sexualisation’ of children and young people. It explores the popular discourses around youth and sexuality and unpacks the assumptions and contradictions that underwrite them, by addressing the terms of reference of the Australian Senate’s 2008 Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Inquiry . The article concludes by outlining some proposed public policy solutions to addressing current community concerns that children and teenagers are being inappropriately sexualised.