Prominent Australian author and speaker Melinda Tankard Reist recently published a collection of essays on the topics of the sexualisation of girls in Australia. This important book features articles from author Steve Biddulph, Playschool presenter Noni Hazlehurst and Generation Next speaker Julie Gale. We strongly recommend this book and invite you to leave your comments and opinions.
Getting Real
Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls
Edited by Melinda Tankard Reist
PB / $34.95 / ISBN 9781876756758
Getting Real puts the spotlight on a critical issue of international concern: the sexualisation and objectification of girls and women in the media, popular culture and society more broadly. Girls and young women are growing up in an increasingly sexualised environment. Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a ‘thin, hot, sexy’ norm. Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Getting Real brings together for the first time some of the most vocal critics of the widespread pornification of culture. Academics, psychologists, authors and activists, they call corporations, the media and the sex industry to account for creating this toxic environment.
Contributors: Tania Andrusiak, Steve Biddulph, Abigail Bray, Selena Ewing, Melissa Farley, Julie Gale, Maggie Hamilton, Noni Hazlehurst, Clive Hamilton, Renate Klein, Betty McLellan, Louise Newman, Emma Rush, Melinda Tankard Reist and Lauren Rosewarne.
Released in September, it is now in its second print run!
Getting Real can be purchased online at Spinifex Press.
I think that most parents would think that a book and a public debate on this subject is long overdue. We need to counteract the forces that create the damaging obsession with body image which prevents young people from seeing the beauty in themselves. The sexualised images that are projected through advertising, porn and the media develop a mindset which undervalues qualities such as creativity, compassion, intelligence and good character and reduces women to mere body parts. This brainwashing grooms girls to become easy sexual pickings for males. It leads girls into early sexual relationships which they are unlikely to be able to cope with, cause emotional pain and which may have long term damaging consequences. It is time that we we taught girls that they are much more than their bodies and that they are not only worthwhile when they meet the ideals of male sexual fantasy. I look forward to reading the book and hope it starts a vigorous public debate. It’s time to say enough!