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NZ Marketing - September 2008
I have not yet had the fortune of the leap into motherhood but I have eight nieces ranging in age from six to 23. While they are all different personalities, they have one thing in common - they all have, at some level, an increasing awareness of body image that belies their age. In fact my six-year-old niece is more self-conscious about her body and appearance than her 23-year-old cousin.
In just a few decades, almost every aspect of young girls’ lives has been transformed. Their unprecedented exposure to the internet, television and other emerging and traditional media has provided access to information, concepts, fashion, music lyrics and marketing messages that would raise many adult eyebrows. They are walking, talking and, more worryingly, behaving like young women before they are even teenagers. The life of a seven-year-old today is very different to seven years ago, and even a year ago. Aside from their increased awareness of adult themes, sexual or otherwise, they are modelling their behaviour and attitudes on role models such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and the Veronicas. Seven year olds dressing in mini-skirts and wearing makeup may not seem any different to the dress-up games my sisters and I played when we were seven, but it is. These clothes and lipsticks are no longer in the dress up box – they are hanging in the wardrobes of Kiwi girls next to size seven school uniforms. The line between fantasy dress-ups and the norm has been eroded.
Fuelling tween consumer demand is an array of media being tailored for this new brand conscious, pliable consumer segment. Pick up a current issue of Creme, Dolly or Girlfriend magazine and fasten your seatbelt. Articles about dating have worrying messages that give tweens and teenagers suggestions on how to get around strict parents. There is a competition to win a trip to London Fashion Week and an entire section dedicated to makeovers. Call me old-fashioned, but why are we encouraging young girls to consider makeovers? Flip to the back of some of these magazines and you’ll find a few pages that will make any parent of a young girl shudder. For example, ads for ‘text to flirt’ services. Yes, that’s right - girls are being encouraged to send a (costly) text message to a service in order to flirt with strangers.
The societal impact of the sexualisation of young girls has not yet been identified but what is clear is that it is not positive. It’s not uncommon today for girls as young as eight to be pubescent, with the average age falling every year. And you only need to watch a ten-year-old girl innocently emulating a dance from the soft porn that is today’s music videos to see why.
For years the theories explaining premature development of girls have been focused on our supposed steady diet of artificially enhanced, hormone-injected food. But it is the impact of the steady diet of information, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week that is of greater concern.
The human brain, the epicentre of hormone release, can often not distinguish between conscious and subconscious thoughts and actions. So when a 10-year-old brain is stimulated with images, actions and behaviours that are adult and sexual in nature, it is triggered into adult hormone release and eventually the process of puberty begins.
Early sexualisation is already having an impact on body image and self-esteem. In one recent US study of girls, 81 percent of ten-year-olds were worried about being fat. Just over half the girls said they felt better about themselves when they were on a diet. Based on these results, it should come as no surprise that eating disorders are at catastrophic levels and sexual activity amongst girls as young as 10 is not unheard of.
In Maggie Hamilton’s book What’s happening to our girls, she refers to some worrying trends linking marketing to girls - marketing that starts well before they have formed opinions on products, brands or consumerism. According to Hamilton at six months a baby is able to retain brand logos, and that the trademarked characters on babies’ clothing and their environment will translate to sales from the age of two upwards.
So what role does marketing play in all of this? Is our industry to blame for the early sexualisation of young girls?
This was the very question we posed to 400 New Zealand women in a nationwide survey earlier this month. While not pointing the finger exclusively, over 90 percent agreed that the way that women are portrayed in advertising and marketing contributes to the early sexualisation of girls. This is nothing short of a wake-up call for marketers that absolve themselves of all responsibility, defending the role of marketing as simply ‘a reflection of existing societal attitudes’.
This raises a much broader chicken-and-egg question. According to some industry heavyweights, the advertising industry as a whole can sleep soundly at night, knowing that their role in devising, creating and communicating marketing messages is completely innocent and doesn’t have the power to create attitudes.
In an era where we are seeing the line between entertainment and marketing continuing to blur, this absolution of responsibility from marketers for having any role to play is a worrying trend.
Of course as marketers we create change, stimulate thinking and influence behaviour, attitudes and motivations. After all, isn’t that ultimately our job?
It’s time we all got real. It’s hypocritical of us to strive for the ultimate in industry recognition - to walk up on to a stage in front of our peers and collect an award for advertising effectiveness (ie: stimulating a behaviour, thought or action) – but sidestep any suggestion that we have a responsibility for the fact that we have a growing tween segment who are overstimulated, oversold and oversexed.
To the industry heavyweights who persist with this assertion, I invite them to take a walk through some of this country’s department stores. Particularly the stores stocking g-strings and padded bras in children’s size eight. And let’s not forget the size ten knickers with ‘HOT 4 U’ printed on the backside. Are the marketers of those products merely reflecting an attitude? Do eight and ten year old girls wake up one morning and decide they would like to stop wearing children’s underwear and start wearing lingerie and provocative underwear? Or are they victims of the thousands of subconscious and conscious messages they digest every day and the subtle encouragement to grow up too fast and too soon.
On the release of our research, one commentator provided a simple solution to the whole problem – ‘if mothers don’t want their daughters watching music videos, turn the TV off … if they don’t agree with padded bras for eight year olds, don’t buy it.’
Spend just a day with a modern mum and you would know how simplistic and unrealistic this is.
Don’t get me wrong – mothers know they are ultimately responsible for their children but they are busy, time poor and sleep deprived and simply don’t have the time or resources to shield their children from the bombardment of messages they are exposed to every day.
One mother summed it up in a recent qualitative research group we conducted on this very issue. “I can’t protect her from everything … sometimes I just close my eyes and hope for the best.”
Mothers want to feel like marketers are working with them, not against them. They want to feel like marketers empathise with their challenges in raising children and are on their side.
We can argue the point but it doesn’t change the results of the survey. So basically, we can choose to disagree with 91 percent of New Zealand women or we can take it on board and see it as a positive.
The result of the survey doesn’t label our industry as an evil child predator; it presents an incredible opportunity for marketers to work with mothers not against them and in doing so, build brand advocates.
It’s time we let kids be kids and remember that the ability to create communication that inspires, motivates and opens wallets comes with a responsibility. The wrong message to the wrong audience can have much broader consequences than ineffectiveness. It can be highly effective but with disastrous long term results for brands and ultimately, our community. NZ Marketing – September 2008 |
