Monografico_3_EN_Doxa_28

Karan, 2017; Trekels, Karsay, Eggermont and Vandenbosch, 2018). The European model of child protection emphasises education as the fundamental backbone of legislation and policies oriented toward the holistic development of online security based on the concept that cyberspace is “something radically ethical” (García-Gutiérrez, 2015: 134).

Portraying girls as sex objects is a common practice that can be influenced by different factors: the fashion industry (Ghigi and Sassatelli, 2018), the media (Graff, Murnen and Krause, 2013; Ward, Seabrook, Manago and Reed, 2016; Wright, Malamuth and Donnerstein, 2012), beauty contests (Cartwright, 2012; Barzoki, Mohtasham, Shashidi and Tavakol, 2017), the increasing practice of sexting (caused by children themselves or without their knowledge or consent), grooming (Catalina, López de Ayala and García Jiménez, 2014; Lorang, McNiel and Binder, 2016; Villacampa and Gómez Adillón, 2016), the normalisation of pornography among minors (Johnson and Berdahl, 2016; Olmos, 2016) and toward minors1 (Taylor, Holland and Quayle, 2001), the way children and adolescent idols dress and act (Llovet et al., 2017; Marôpo, Vitorino and de Miranda, 2017), and the fact that parents are misinformed or unconcerned about images of sexualized minors (Lo, 2017).

Child sexualisation negatively affects children, resulting in stereotyped gender roles (Barker and Duschinsky, 2012; Sanabria, 2014) as well as crimes of sexual assault and violence (Blake, Bastian and Denson, 2016). It is also associated with psychological problems and connected to social relationship problems such as low self-esteem, depression, the early onset of sexual activity, eating disorders, and anxiety problems (Vaes, Loughnan, and Puvia, 2014; Ramsey, Marotta, and Hoyt, 2016).

Thirty-four percent of children under the age of 12 have been abused, according to a report by the New Herald on American Children (Olmos, 2016). Faced with the phenomenon of child sexualisation (more widespread among girls) in the images of commercial communications with apparent impunity on the part of the brands and media that reproduce these images, we also find a positive response in citizen initiatives to combat this problem (Llovet, Díaz-Bustamante and Patiño, 2016), as issues concerning children and sexuality are priorities in the area of children’s rights (Moore and Reynolds, 2018). As a consequence, faced with sexualisation as a social phenomenon already rejected by women because of the connotations of self-objectification, the passive role, and tolerance of violence, especially sexual violence (Ramsey et al., 2016), the objectives of this research are to carry out a bibliographic review of the sexualisation of girls in the digital environment and to identify some proposals for media literacy.

2. Methodology

A review was carried out of the academic literature related to the phenomenon of female sexualisation that originates and is disseminated through communications made for commercial purposes, delving deeper into those communications linked to the child audience, and especially those developed in the digital media. In this context, we have addressed the critical analysis of the factors that sexualise children, the stereotypes that are generated, and the consequences to minors of both child sexualisation itself and the aforementioned stereotypes.

1 The authors have identified a type of image linked to paedophilia, distributed mainly on Internet, in which children appear dressed or partially-dressed, and in which sexual enticement is determined mainly by the child’s gesture or pose.