How to Help Girls Navigate Sexualization in the Media

It needs to start in the home. Our daughters' best defense against the skewed sexual saturation of our culture is for us to support them in the healthy development of their own sexuality.

As I wrote in "What Huff Post Women Had to Say" women still experience discomfort in educating their daughters about menstruation. If our own discomfort gets in the way of that, imagine the unspoken, often unconscious, fear of teaching them about their sexuality -- which would by extension also be teaching them about ours. How can we expect our daughters to hold their own against unrealistic images of sexuality in the media when they sense our own impairments to being sexually comfortable in our mother/daughter relationships?

Maybe we're so afraid of having to go into the "naughtiness" of sexual detail that we're missing the simplicity of what our daughters most need from us: our blessing of their sexuality as normal and healthy.

Esther Perel, sex therapist and author of Mating in Captivity, a book exploring the sexual complications within marriage, wrote in her Huffington Post blog that it isn't usually the mechanics of sex that bring couples to her for help, but rather their desire for "the poetics of sex." I think as Americans, our fixation with the taboo of sexuality causes us to overlook its poetry and its greater meaning in our lives, and then we pass this limited view of sex onto our children.

It's difficult for women to teach their girls how to celebrate being alive within their desire; but it's commonplace for women to teach girls how to devalue their bodies in the quest for physical perfection. A mother, over the years, even in the most seemingly innocuous statements like "I was good today; I skipped lunch." or "I was bad today; I had cake" erodes herself in front of her daughter, and in so doing, systematically erodes her daughter right along with her. This is the crisis. Why do we readily and consistently, consciously and unconsciously, dispense messages of self loathing that will harm them in every way by undermining their confidence, even as we shy away from teaching them how to protect, delight in, and express love with their bodies?

It will be harder for our girls if we only engage in seeing them as sexual once they're adults. We need to be there with them from the beginning of the journey.

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves to help us consider the possible impact of our reluctance to speak openly with our daughters.

We want our girls to grow into women who can be happy and experience love, but how do we imagine them arriving there? We want them to be in relationships, but do we really see our daughters as sexual? When we think of them being in love, do we stop at a love that's more to do with friendship and reliable companionship? How do we hope our daughters learn and measure what they find sexually arousing? Do we indirectly hope our daughters have unfulfilling sex? Do we feel too embarrassed to somehow give them, and ourselves, the support needed to lead full, open lives?

If the sexual lessons don't come from us girls will search elsewhere. This week it might be Vanity Fair's tutorial on Miley Cyrus. While it's healthy for girls to individuate from their mothers, does our fear of discussing sexuality push them even farther away than we intend? Do we inadvertently influence them to find other role models who unrealistically represent girls and women?

What of our sexuality do we allow them to know? Girls might come to learn through observation that "real" women can express their sexuality only through the smaller victories of erotic pleasure, such as finding it quite normal that women in restaurants or at the Thanksgiving table will openly tilt their heads back, close their eyes and moan unabashedly...over a piece of chocolate...with the full support and understanding of all onlookers.

It's hard to feel genuine and alive when we're taught to hide half of who we are. Being more open in revealing ourselves,mother to daughter, might offer our daughters a greater chance to feel more complete in an authentic sense of sexuality, as opposed to only donning the facade the media holds out to us.

Women of all ages in my study repeatedly reported wanting to know more about their sexuality, they just didn't know how to go about it because guilt, shame, discomfort and propriety precluded their taking the risk. There were important things about sexuality that they hadn't been taught by their mothers, and this gap in learning resulted in both a reluctance to confide in other women the sexual content of their lives, and an ambivalence about providing their daughters with a sexual contextualization of life.

What are we teaching our daughters about being female? And what are we withholding from them that might be useful for them to know?

If we choose not to ground their sexuality in a sense of home, they're more at risk of grounding it wherever the media directs them.

Comments

[Bobrobert]

Are there woman out there that really have a problem with the facts of life when it comes to talking to daughters? This is a joke right. How can anyone believe this article is not just a spoof.

Girls are told on TV, in MOVIES, and at home sex is natural and should be enjoyed without regard to consequences.

Girls are having more sex now than when I was a wee tote. Look at the rise in STD and tell me that woman aren't teaching their kids to go out and have fun with sex.

If I am not mistaken most parents are both working and have little to do with their children anyway. Why worry about teaching kids about sex??? The statistics prove that they learn all about it anyway.

Parents are too busy making money. Kids will decide for themselves what is important in life. Leave them alone at home and you can bet sex will be very important for them to prove they are adults no matter what their parents say.

[OnTheCusp]

As I mentioned on Cindy Handler's blog re: Miley Cyrus' "embarrassing" photo, we still pretend that girls aren't sexual creatures. I recall my mom being gleeful when she saw my infant brother grabbing himself. She said: "Look! He knows what he's got! How cute!" Years later, when I was nine, she entered my room without knocking to discover me masturbating. She was clearly horrified and exclaimed "Oh my God! You're not supposed to TOUCH yourself!!" It was clear to me at nine that my brother, although five years younger than me, was allowed "ownership" of his male body; but my female body was "owned" by someone else. Until women can process through the shame and guilt they were hit with for being sexual/sensual in their own adolescence, they will forever project their own shame onto their daughters. I personally think women should talk to their daughters about masturbation, not necessarily "show" them, but talk about it and maybe even give them a book on the subject. If a girl is given "ownership" of her body, she will know how to pleasure herself and not "expect" her pleasure to come from a guy. I can only imagine how many teen pregnancies we could prevent if girls were allowed ownership of their own bodies. Yes, folks, GIRLS GET HORNY! And if they know how to satisfy themselves when they do, they'll be a lot less inclined to get into trouble with that boy down the street that you can't stand.

[susieq1001]

You are exactly right. Great post.

[hippynanainblingland]

Though I must add that not all girls appreciate their mother's candor!!!! I DID go out of my way to tell my daughter (now 31) about masturbation and about her blossoming sexuality, but was my daughter grateful? NOT! I was obliquely accused of sexual abuse instead, and/or of being weird for even proposing that masturbation was preferrable to furtive and exploitative sexual relations with peer boys. I'm almost certain that if I had done as my parents did, denying me knowledge of my own sexuality, I would have instead been accused of negligence... but maybe I'm being paranoid.

A clear case of damned if I do and damned if I don't. (Sigh)

[OnTheCusp]

I'm sighing and shakin' my head right along with you. You are not being paranoid...at least you tried to deliver your daughter her freedom. Sounds like your daughter came "of age" during the Regan/All-freaked-out-over-AIDS/lets-all-be-scared-of-our-bodies era. Unfortunately, that bred GenY, whose female members are more than happy to "stay in their place" and just let the spawn of Limbaugh tell them what to do. I'm not sure what or who could've combatted the tide of conservativism let loose in the 80's. Luckily, the kids who are around ten right now are gonna tell us all (including parents, teachers, clergymen, and government, too!) where to go when they come of age. They're going to look around and size it up and be the first truly free thinking Americans since the abolitionists. They'll be throwing wet blankets off themselves right and left, no pun intended. We have a lot to look forward to....if we can get there reasonably intact.

[nov47]

Once again, helpful and thought provoking.