PHOTO BY ISOSTOCKPHOTO.COM/CARMEN MARTINEZ

Glossy magazines wallpaper the front aisles at a local newsagency. “Practise the perfect pout” and avoid meat and dairy products monthly to ensure ‘smooth skin’, suggests one magazine helpfully. A free ‘bling ring’ entices potential purchasers of another, and advertises a perfumed ‘Bed Wand’ and The Body Shop blusher on its ‘Get back to girly glamour’ page.

In the one covered by a sultry kohl-eyed Avril Lavigne, a reader, ‘Confused’, asks the guest celebrity advisor: “How do boys act when they have the hots for you?”

‘Confused’ is asking about ‘boys’ because she is a ‘tween’. Each of these magazines, Bratz Magazine, Total Girl and Girl Power respectively, targets six-to-13-year olds, who form the ‘tween’ marketing demographic.

Girl Power editor, Amy Olson, defends the publishing of ‘Confused’s’ letter and the magazine’s ‘Celebrity Advice’ column. “Girl Power is made for our readers, who are primarily seven to 13, and we feel it’s important that the readers can turn to the magazine to voice their opinions and ask questions about confusing issues,” states Olson.

Independent think tank The Australia Institute’s 2006 Corporate Paedophilia report condemns this directly sexualising content in ‘tween’ magazines. “The extension of this genre of magazine to younger ages reflects … their earlier association into the popularised teenage world of fashion, sex and pop stars,” write report authors Dr Emma Rush and Andrea La Nauze. “Girls are also encouraged to view men and boys as sexual objects.”

In local 7-Elevens, Zoo Weekly and Australian Penthouse magazines, featuring digitally perfected and barely clad cover models, are shelved at children’s eye level. On the internet, next to the two High School Musical links on girl.com.au, you will find another to ‘Sexy, Hot, Single Women’. Semi-naked ‘bum clapping’ females draped over rappers spitting sexist lyrics appear after the weekend’s ‘C’-rated morning television programs.

The Australia Institute argues that these kinds of adult images and references sexualise children indirectly, and contribute to eating disorders, negative body image, depression, sexual violence towards women and children, objectification of the opposite sex and lowered academic performance.

Following The Australia Institute’s 2006 investigations, the Australian Democrats successfully lobbied the Senate’s Environment, Communications and Arts Committee to conduct an inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the media. “Sexualisation of children is very real and contact with sexual imagery from an early age has a devastating effect on mental and physical health,” says Democrats senator Lyn Allison in a statement. “We need to restore the concept of innocence.”

How are children prematurely sexualised in the Australian media? What are the impacts? What needs to be done about it? These are the primary questions of the Senate inquiry, due to report by 23 June.

Honorary chief executive of Young Media Australia (YMA) Barbara Biggins welcomes the Senate inquiry, but remains sceptical of the inquiry’s capacity to deal with the indirect sexualisation of children in the media. “The inquiry seems to be focused on the issues of sexualised representations of children in the media,” says Biggins. “While this is very important, there are problems with children’s exposure to overly sexualised adult images in areas where they have every right to be.”

Women’s Forum Australia (WFA) director Melinda Tankard Reist is especially critical of explicit billboards, and she calls for the Federal Government to ban them.

“At a time when it is illegal to put up naked … girlie pin-ups in the workplace, why is it OK to have hyper-sexualised images on billboards, seen by everyone, including children?” asks Tankard Reist. “This is a form of sexual harassment. It also contributes to giving boys distorted views of women by sexually objectifying them.”

Queensland University of Technology associate professor of film and television Alan McKee disagrees that there is a problem with the sexualisation of children in the media. “Indeed, I think a lot of the people who claim to speak on behalf of the children don’t care about kids at all,” remarks McKee. “When we speak to kids, we find that they are often not upset by the things that their self-appointed protectors think they should be upset by!”

McKee also argues that child pornography and sexual abuse are  being trivialised in this debate. “It is a worrying tendency that some commentators are attempting to distract us from fighting these problems by hijacking the label of child sexualisation and applying it to other issues in order to make those issues seem more pressing,” states McKee in his submission to the Senate inquiry.

Advertising Standards Board member Professor Catharine Lumby argues similarly. “If we look at the real problems, things like the sexual abuse of children … I don’t think the media has a lot to do with it,” Lumby told the ABC.

Despite Lumby’s stand, the self-regulating Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) incorporated a section on the sexualisation of children in its code just days before the inquiry’s commencement. “Among the major changes is a direct prohibition against the sexualisation of children or the use of sexual imagery in advertising/marketing communications to children,” states the AANA website.

However, it is the self-regulation of advertising and marketing industries that makes limiting children’s exposure to sexualising images so difficult. “The Senate inquiry is important because it has the power to look at the issues across all media,” says Biggins. “Australia’s media regulatory system is fragmented and some media such as advertising and marketing practices … are outside the main regulatory systems.”

The Australia Institute, the WFA and the YMA’s inquiry submissions demand that the Federal Government establish a body to oversee all media with a division dedicated to children’s interests. If the Senate approves these recommendations, perhaps the children’s division could ask why primary-aged girls need to practise pouting, omit healthy food groups, smell good in bed, buy adult makeup and seek sexually explicit relationship advice from celebrities.

Michelle McDonald is a Brisbane based writer interested in Majority World socio-politics and the representations of women and children in the global media. Michelle is a Caritas Australia volunteer and is currently enrolled in a Master of Journalism at the University of Wollongong.