Getting Real (Melinda Tankard Reist)

  Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls Edited by Melinda Tankard Reist Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 2009, 208pp. A few years ago, at my school swimming carnival,¹ I went to put on my swim-suit. I don't know about you, but when I think ‘swimming carnival change room’, I think getting changed into swim­wear … but apparently I'm old-fashioned. To my surprise, amusement and dismay, I found a fourteen-or-so-year-old girl standing at the mirror, curling her eyelashes. When did this become normal? Why is it that I see girls so young constantly trying to look sexy? Why is it that someone could look at their Facebook page and think I've befriended prostitutes? Why is it that my fifteen-year-old friend is mocked for her virginity? Getting Real argues that the media is contributing to the horrific and damaging sexualization of younger and younger girls. It is not just that we're being fed the idea that sex is fun—have it with whoever, whenever—but that girls and boys alike are being groomed by a pornified culture into an understanding of sexuality that is all about girls being ‘service stations’ to boys. Getting Real puts forward that the media objectifies women in a way that teaches boys that they can get what they want, and girls that their significance and womanhood rests almost exclusively on their sex appeal. The argument is a strong one, but, as a secular book, Getting Real is definitely not pushing a Christian agenda. In fact, although all its contributors write under the same banner, they all speak from different secular perspectives—from psychology to parenthood, advocacy to research, sexual ethics to feminist theory. With fourteen individual essays, there is a wide range of content covered, and some chapters are definitely more useful than others. I shall briefly overview the most helpful chapters of Getting Real, explain the major limitations of the book, and then outline what is nevertheless helpful in raising and dealing with the sexualization happening within our families and churches. The editor of Getting Real, Melinda Tankard Reist, is well-known in Christian circles for her confronting and countercultural work in areas such as abortion and medical eugenics. In Getting Real, her Christian faith is not articulated, but she writes a confronting introduction to the issue of the sexualization of girls—revealing the problem, and helping the reader to see the corrupt and pornified trajectory our culture is following. Also worth reading is the chapter by Maggie Hamilton, who makes the political personal, and shows what a sex-saturated culture does to the health and development of girls. Though less engaged with the sexualization of girlhood, Clive Hamilton's chapter is a fascinating reassessment of contemporary sexual ‘freedom’, arguing that our current society is one of the least sexy and least autonomous to have existed. Melissa Farley, writing on the media glamorizing prostitution, helped me to see that porn isn’t just a ‘guy issue’; it actually influences the way girls present themselves, regardless of whether or not they view it firsthand. Finally, the chapter by Steve Biddulph provides an insightful father's perspective, and gives some helpful advice to parents. All the essays within Getting Real raise pressing questions and reveal disturbing problems, those five particularly so. However, while Getting Real is excellent at asking questions and getting you thinking, it falls seriously short in providing answers. Many of the authors attempt to offer bandaid solutions, but they fail to acknowledge the diagnosis and cure of the gospel. For example, Tania Andrusiak writes emotively and inspirationally from her personal experience, and I found myself being easily entranced by her vision of a world where women didn't play the comparison game, but with courage took on society and met in groups to raise their voices against media manipulation. But when I take a step back, her vision slips like water through my fingers, because she has completely overestimated—spiritually photoshopped, airbrushed, nip-tucked and Botoxed—just how naturally perfect women are. She thinks the problem with society is that “we reject the truth that women are perfect without the constant dieting, waxing, buying and dyeing” (p. 175). This optimism is echoed throughout the book. When solutions such as advocacy, consumer boycotts, media literacy, political lobbying, nourishing resilience, rebuilding moral codes, and parental action are put forward, the premise is that humanity is generally pretty good, and if we all just tried a little harder, and put our heads together, we could fix the problem. My favourite suggestion was Renate Klein's argument for education: “if girls—and boys—have such an informed start in life, they might be able to better deal with the challenging world around them” (p. 144). However, my generation was educated about the dangers of binge drinking for six years in high school, and when faced with the ‘challenging world’ around us we drank more heavily than any before us. I cannot help but laugh at the idea that if we taught an ethic of sexual respect in schools, we would see great and significant change. Getting Real is spiritually flawed, because self-esteem based on physical appearance (however unmarred by the beauty industry), or on intellectual or sporting ability, will always be faulty. Teenage girls will never be fulfilled so long as they are taught to look within themselves. A healthy, biblical self-esteem comes from an understanding of oneself in light of the created and redeemed order, in light of being created “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27), and in light of being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor 3:18). It is the knowledge that though sinful, fallen wretches, girls are valuable because they have been valued by God, and it liberates them from the desperate struggle to prove themselves worthy. It is only a gospel framework of thinking that will enable real, deep and lasting change. Without regenerate souls to work with, efforts to educate the mind and enforce moral codes upon society have little prospect of success. However, when the gospel is our framework for thinking, this book is a must-read, especially for anyone in ministry to teenage girls. I think too often in Christian culture we see the sexualization of our society—the billboards, the porn, the advertisements—and we think, “How are we going to help our boys to stay pure?” What we tell our girls is often informed by our agenda for boys. While this is incredibly important, I think this book gets us thinking about girls themselves. How are we going to help them to stay pure, to not sell out to a prostituted version of themselves? How are we going to help them to see that Christian modesty is not just about a few basic clothing rules, but about choosing to go against an entire society and seek godliness over sexiness? How are we going to help them see that they are complete in Christ even when everyone else is telling them they need a boyfriend and a perfect body? Getting Real could be a wonderful book for getting these issues on the agendas of parents, ministers and youth group leaders. In thinking through them, there are some basic suggestions the book provides that Christians could take to heart. Making specific complaints to the Advertising Standards Board; giving girls and women magazines that are not full of unrealistic images; parents monitoring a child's use of television or the internet; older women spending more time with younger girls, to give them healthy role models² … All seemed to me like good suggestions, once the gospel is our foundation. But perhaps the most important point of the book, particularly from a Christian perspective, is the argument made for media literacy. While boundaries are helpful, Christian girls (and indeed boys) need to be told more than what they can and cannot watch, read or listen to. They need to be taught how to interpret the messages they are receiving, so that, in Melissa Farley's words, “they learn to counteract toxic messages about their sexuality” (p. 125). A few weeks ago I gave a Christian article analyzing Twilight to a fifteen-year-old girl I mentor (who is slightly obsessed with that series of books and movies). She lapped it up, and realized for the first time all these things about what the movie was saying—some of which I had assumed were obvious. Her youth and newness to the Christian faith had left her so vulnerable to false messages. In my view, the biggest take-home idea of Getting Real is teaching girls discernment. Girls need to have the gospel preached to them, and to be taught to distinguish between truth and error, between godly living and worldly culture. Though facing their own unique set of problems, teenage girls need what everyone else in our congregations needs: to have faithful men and women proclaiming Christ, “warning everyone and teaching every­one”,³ that they too may be presented mature.

Endnotes

¹ Swimming gala in the UK, swim meet in the US. ² While he doesn't specifically suggest this, Steve Biddulph laments that “Girls today spend perhaps one tenth of the time in conversation and company of older women than they would have even fifty years ago”. ³ Col 1:28-29.