For a long time now I have been worried about the sexualisation of children that seems to be happening increasingly in our society. Now when I refer the the ’sexualisation of children’ I am not talking about their own development of sexuality and sensuality. What I am refering to is the commodification of children’s sexuality. I object to marketing which uses sexualised images of children, I object to inappropriate things of a sexual nature being marketed at children and stuff that reinforces the message implicit in our culture that your value as a person in bound up in how sexy you are perceived to be.

In the week that the Senate report on the sexualisation of children has come out I found this awesome post on the same topic by bluemilk (every now and then you find a post that you wish that you had written, well this is one of those posts for me, well worth reading and pondering). Bluemilk discusses the reasons why parents feel powerless in the rising tide of sexualised stuff being marketed at tots and why parental blame is not the most helpful approach.

The full report of the Senate’s inquiry into The Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media can be found here.

The shorter version, that is the Senate inquiry’s recommendations can be found here.