From Bracelets to Blowjobs: The Ideological Representation of Childhood Sexuality in the Media

Abstract

As the theme of sexuality becomes increasingly present in all forms of modern media, aspects of social life become inexorably affected by its incidence. There are a number of issues involving this trend, yet few are more widely debated than those surrounding sexuality and children. The relationship will be examined between childhood sexuality, the media and public opinion, particularly in light of the recent sex bracelet phenomenon that swept through North American elementary schools last year. The strong and foreboding reaction from a variety of media sources and the consequent moral panic within both school systems and households serve to exemplify the potentially misleading relationship between representation and interpretation.

Regarding the subject of childhood sexuality and its media depiction, it will be argued that the often flawed representation of the delicate and complex matter of sexuality by the mass media is often more dangerous than the phenomenon that it serves to represent. By examining the social aspects of childhood sexuality, it will be postulated that over- sensationalized and mediated reactions to adolescents’ sexual innuendo games severely detract from far more potent social problems, as the fundamental causes of abnormal childhood sexuality are largely ignored.