The following is a guest blog post written by Sharon Lamb, co-author of the article Pride and Sexiness: Girls of Color Discuss Race, Body Image, and Sexualization, which appeared in Volume 8, Number 2 of the journal Girlhood Studies.
Way back when, my/our research group was interested in the issue of sexualization of girls and how girls conceived of it. We wanted to dive into the dilemma and critique of the APA Sexualization of Girls Task Force Report that suggested the co-authors, myself included, represented girls as dupes of the media, rather than shapers of it who make their own meaning from it. Typically, I have found, White middle class feminist students have been interested in the idea of sexualization although that may have been a result of my being a White middle class feminist (in their eyes, that is, — I wasn’t always middle class!). But that year, in the research group, a woman of color joined us and she was also doing a Practicum at a charter school (with 7th-12th grade students) that was quite diverse, more diverse that we at the time realized. She offered to make the connection for us and so we set about thinking through the questions we wanted to ask girls themselves about what is sexy and what is sexualization, and how race and ethnicity might intersect with their ideas.