Girls more likely to be swayed by media images

Jordan Smith

Thursday, Sept. 21, 2000 | 9:55 a.m.

LOS ANGELES -- Bolstering criticism that sexual content in movies, television and music has aged children before their time, a new study has found an alarming number of girls as young as 8 years old worry unduly about looks and popularity.

The study, a first by the Girl Scout Research Institute, found that sexual images in the media have "compressed" the mental, physical and emotional development of preteen girls, causing them to emulate and act like teenagers.

"It's sad when you hear that 7- and 8-year-olds are worried about dieting," said Ellen Christie Ach, a spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts. "It's not that these girls look up to these women -- these actresses and models -- it's that they are really worried that they don't look like them.

"It's not about bashing the media, but adults do need to help girls get realistic expectations," she said.

Twelve-year-old Jackie Munoz said she doesn't feel much pressure from the media, but does feel some from her peers. Her solution: Ignore it.

"Some of the older people reject you because you're younger," said Jackie, a student at Francis Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills, Calif. "If you don't act or dress older, they won't talk to you. But I don't care."

Ach said that attitudes like that among preteens are the exception. While girls may be developing more rapidly physically, she said, their emotional development has not kept pace. Ach said the resulting stress has not before been seen in girls in this age group.

"The key here is for them to find people to help them through these things."

For the study -- "Girls Speak Out: Teens Before Their Time" -- researchers used focus groups and surveys, interviewing 214 girls 8 to 12 across the country. As well, an additional 1,082 online surveys were collected.

Bombarded by sexually laced media images, preteen girls are trying more and more to emulate those images in an effort to be popular with both boys and girls, researchers found.

"Being Britney Spears would be nice because you could wear a bikini without a big fat tummy sticking out all over the place," a third-grader told researchers.

At Francis Parkman Middle School, results of the Girl Scouts' study did not surprise students, parents and teachers.

"There is a lot of peer pressure to wear makeup, to look older and be more mature," said Karen Miller, who has been teaching middle school for 11 years. "These kids are growing up very fast."

Outside the school, while waiting to pick up her 11-year-old daughter Jessica, Vickie Strelioff said she tries to limit her daughters exposure to mature images and themes.

"I don't let her watch things like MTV," she said. "I'm not overprotective, but I don't think those outside influences are good. They're encouraged to be sexual."

While Jessica said she feels some pressure from friends and movies to look and act older, she said she is more focused on school: She wants to go to college and become a teacher.

Teachers at the school, however, said they see daily the effects of myriad images on their students.

"The media makes adolescence more manic now," said Michael Gross, a seventh-grade teacher. "There are pressures from the Internet, TV, the content of lyrics."

Seventeen-year teaching veteran Colleen Schwab agreed.

"They're dealing with very mature issues without the maturity," she said. "They're so worried about having an image that I see it getting in the way of focusing on their education. It's a problem classroom teachers have to battle every day."