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Meenakshi Gigi Durham

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The Lolita Effect Hardcover – May 1 2008

by Gigi Durham (Author)

4.3 43 ratings

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Americans are bombarded with perplexing and alarming media images: brand name thong underwear for ten-year-olds with the slogans "Wink Wink" and "Eye Candy" written on them; oversexed and underdressed celebrities gone wild; Bratz dolls and their "sexy" clothing line for preteen girls. How do we raise sexually healthy young women in this kind of environment?

In The Lolita Effect, University of Iowa professor and journalist M. Gigi Durham offers new insight into media myths and spectacles of sexuality. Using examples from popular TV shows, fashion and beauty magazines, movies, and Web sites, Durham shows for the first time all the ways in which sexuality is rigidly and restrictively defined in media-often in ways detrimental to girls' healthy development. The Lolita Effect offers parents, teachers, counselors, and other concerned adults effective and progressive strategies for resisting the violations and repressions that render girls sexually subordinate. Durham provides us with the tools to navigate this media world effectively without censorship or moralizing, and then to help our girls to do so in strong and empowering ways.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Overlook Books
Publication date

May 1 2008
Dimensions

15.95 x 2.49 x 23.57 cm
ISBN-10

1590200632
ISBN-13

978-1590200636
See all details

Deborah L. Tolman
16
Paperback
23 offers from $24.89

Product description

From Publishers Weekly

We've all seen it—the tiny T-shirts with sexually suggestive slogans, the four-year-old gyrating to a Britney Spears song, the young boy shooting prostitutes in his video game—and University of Iowa journalism professor Durham has had enough. In her debut book, she argues that the media—from advertisements to Seventeen magazine—are circulating damaging myths that distort, undermine and restrict girls' sexual progress. Durham, who describes herself as pro-girl and pro-media, does more than criticize profit-driven media, recognizing as part of the problem Americans' contradictory willingness to view sexualized ad images but not to talk about sex. Chapters expose five media myths: that by flaunting her hotness a little girl is acting powerfully; that Barbie has the ideal body; that children—especially little girls—are sexy; that violence against women is sexy; and that girls must learn what boys want, but not vice versa. After debunking each myth, Durham offers practical suggestions for overcoming these falsehoods, including sample questions for parents and children. In a well-written and well-researched book, she exposes a troubling phenomenon and calls readers to action. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Overlook Books (May 1 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590200632
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590200636
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 499 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.95 x 2.49 x 23.57 cm

Customer Reviews:
4.3 43 ratings

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Meenakshi Gigi Durham

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diversitymatters

Great book - eye opening and well researched.

Reviewed in Canada on January 3, 2012

Durham provides a great body of work in the Lolita Effect. She has an excellent and accessible manner in writing. Her is well researched, offering an excellent source of materials to follow up with on similar topics. This book reads easily. Highly recommended!

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Courtney S.

So Important

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020

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My significant other and I read this together and I am SO glad we did. This enabled us to have some very important conversations about sex, sexuality, and expectations of women. It’s important for women to understand the motivations and methods of the media and advertising companies - and for men to understand as well! Every chapter ended with useful tips in how to deal with the issues women and girls face today and how to help children/teenagers become aware as well. Highly recommend.

One person found this helpful

Nallely Kradövnetté

Buen libro, algo tedioso para leer

Reviewed in Mexico on November 19, 2018

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Es una temática excelente vista desde una perspectiva sociológica. Ayudó mucho a complementar mi colección sobre el lolitismo, sin embargo está algo tedioso para leer, está sobresaturado de ejemplos en la actualidad en cuanto al estudio de género.

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GrrlAlex

An intelligent and highly readable text

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2010

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Suitable for parents, teachers, youth workers and those of us interested in gender studies, this is a well presented and thoughtfully written book that combines feminist philosophy and media studies, to present an intelligent discourse on the subtle but powerful effect of media images in the shaping of acceptable and thereby expected notions of sexuality and gender power relations within society.

This book will resonate powerfully for those of us interested in equality issues and concerned about the apparent loss of ground previously gained through the feminist movement of the latter part of the C20th. Indeed, if some of us had hoped to be moving toward gender equality and the potential to blur the distinction between genders then our vision of the future is being challenged by a counter-movement that seems determined to position women primarily (or perhaps exclusively) as objects of male visual desire, thereby reinforcing compulsory heterosexuality and subordinately positioning women in the process.

Durham discuses how the effect of a so called 'Barbie ideal' universally and subliminally promoted by visually based commercial media, endlessly sets girls and young women up for failure in their aspirations to achieve what are objectively, unachievable standards and ideals of physical presentation. The promise is of course that by adoption and purchase of the products and solutions provided advertisers who support the media women might come closer to this ideal. But, as she points out, the process devalues the personal qualities, skills and values of the person over physicality and reinforces gender disparity by suggesting that women are the passive recipients of approval by men and not sexual beings themselves. As increasing numbers of young girls develop eating disorders or engage in plastic surgery at earlier ages to achieve the 'ideal body' we are also now seeing a reciprocal pressure on young men to achieve a particular look based on hyper-muscularity - often involving the excessive use of the gym, and abuse of steroids and protein drinks in a disorder now being referred to as bigorexia.

In chapter 4, Durham explores the impact of computer games and a genre of film known as the slasher movie. Aimed primarily at teens the common motifs are adolescent and nubile scantily clad girls being murdered, attacked or assaulted by males. She makes the point that the imagos are essentially based around the idea of "female sexuality as a logical target for violence" and that subliminally the link between sex and violence particularly for the male viewers of the films would be hard to separate since the "premise is ...sexy female bodies, and male arousal, are connected to violence". Through recognition and understanding of the underlying drivers and messages comes the possibility of change and this book does offer a message of hope.

A real strength of the book is that each chapter presents a summary at the end, with a range of ideas and strategies to facilitate discussion with young people and help them develop greater awareness of the values, drivers and commercial influences of the messages being promoted to them via the media and to help them become more media-savvy and more empowered as individuals. The book also offers a list of resources and web-links for further information for people to investigate and work with the themes further. I certainly came to have much more respect for 'meeja-studies' through reading this book (think for a moment how the media has dissed its own analysis) and I thoroughly recommend it.

A very readable text, well worth five stars.

10 people found this helpful

Lori

Kathryn Smith

This Book Won't Help You Parent Your Little Girl(s)

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2009

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This book was written by a feminist, her writing is repetitive and contradicting, as if she can't make up her own mind what is the best way to shield little girls from exploitation by media, etc. The authoress strongly asserts parents should protect their little girl from exploitation, then she stresses little girls should be left alone to explore their own sexual freedom, not repressed.

The authoress blames all the problem of media, exploitation and sexualization on male patriarchs. So, are you saying that only males in our society are to blame? What about the women who run exploitation & sexualization vendus?

2 people found this helpful

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The Lolita Effect Hardcover – May 1 2008

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