Young girls are increasingly rejecting the examples set by Hollywood role models of women like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, according to an author of a new book.
Wendy Shalit's new book 'Girls Gone Mild' is based on interviews and thousands of email exchanges with 100 girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 28 who contacted her Modesty Zone website. Shalit said that in a culture where 'the bad girl who is the pleaser' is the yardstick by which young women are measured, they are becoming more conservative.
"We're at this really interesting moment where the people rebelling against these sexualized messages are actually the young women themselves and I think that's very positive and in doing my research I was really amazed to see that studies have shown that young women are now preferring more wholesome role models," Shalit said.
Shalit said that this movement is occurring at a time when sexualized messages are being increasingly directed towards younger girls through imagery in items such as pre-teen magazines.
"These are directed towards girls who don't really have any sexual feelings at eight (years old)," Shalit said. "And already they're being taught to present themselves as objects and it's very disturbing. And I think people have a problem with the oversexualization and the string bikinis for toddlers but we don't really have an alternative because every time someone proposes an alternative -- what happens? She's called repressed."
Despite the risk of being ostracized, Shalit believes that young women and girls are taking action to ensure they are not sexualized. Among the examples in her book, Shalit details the successful campaign of teenage girls in 2005 to remove a T-shirt with the phrase "Who Needs Brains When You Have These?" from Abercrombie & Fitch stores.
She feels this branch of activism is becoming increasingly common among young girls and women in the 21st century.
"What they wanted is a really different kind of empowerment," Shalit said. "That's what I found. Whether they were Christian, whether they were feminists, whether they were in the States or in Canada. They're looking for a different way of being empowered beyond showing their body to strangers. And I think that's a really positive thing."
