The Sexualization Of Girls Is Popular Culture Summary
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If Americans do not take action to stop and prevent future sexualization of girls and women, we could potentially push the envelope further resulting in more psychological damage to females, as well as sexual abuse. In the article “The Sexualization of Girls: Is Popular Culture Harming Our Kids?” by Gwen Dewar PhD explains something called “spreading activation”—the concept that seeing something automatically causes individuals to think of something associated with it. For example, “if you see a table, some part of your mind is ready to think about chairs, too” (Dewar). She also questions what the effects will be on people continuously exposed to “barely legal” images of sexualized women, and how that will affect people viewing underage children (Dewar). However,…show more content… The study featured adults dressed down to look like young teenagers. The researchers conducting this study ended with inconclusive results because they feared that they would unintentionally solicit child pornography from the Web resulting in them exposing their subjects to it (Paul 3-38). There are steps that people can take to stop the sexualization of girls, thus preventing the psychological damage that is associated with it. For example, in Breslin’s article she said that parents in Minnesota have come up with a “corporate code of conduct” that would hold corporations responsible for the sexualization of girls (Breslin 15). Breslin also mentions an all-girl group called Project Girl co-founded by Kelly Sparks Snider in Wisconsin. The focus of the group is to educate girls and help them decode media’s messages. The girls get together regularly to discuss such topics and to create collages depicting sexualized ads used in activism efforts (Breslin 16). According to the APA, schools can help make a positive impact on girls through formal education that provides media decoding training to help students decipher ads (APA 35). Another way schools can also help by