ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Aug. 27 2009

The Britney Spears Syndrome
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Call it the Britney Spears Syndrome: A fresh-faced ingénue with a modicum of
talent amasses a passionate following of pre-teen female fans. Parents,
relieved that their daughters idolize this tame teen queen instead of her
older, raunchier show-biz sisters, buy up the budding star's CDs, movies and
themed merchandise. Then, just as they have given their daughters the green
light to mimic her every move, the star morphs into a sultry vixen infamous for
onstage exhibitionism, striptease photos and misadventures with booze and bad
boys.

Given how often this syndrome afflicts young stars who get their start with
Disney, it should have come as no surprise when 16-year-old Miley Cyrus, of
Disney's "Hannah Montana" fame, appeared this month at FOX's Teen Choice Awards
pole-dancing atop an ice-cream cart in micro-shorts and black leather boots.

The stunt was the latest in a series that have eaten away at Cyrus'
squeaky-clean image, from her topless photo last year in Vanity Fair to risqué
pictures posted on her MySpace page. Some parents have expressed astonishment
at Cyrus' transformation from schoolgirl to sexpot, but it is a simple matter
of economics. Sex sells. And the sexualization of girls — from cherubic-faced
teen idols like Cyrus to their legions of even younger fans — is big business
in America today.

The same marketing ploys that entice grown women to spend millions on
anti-wrinkle creams, baby-doll dresses and fashion magazines touting boyish,
pre-pubescent figures as a female beauty ideal are used to sell their
preschool-aged daughters thong underwear, padded bras and pole-dancing kits.
Grown women feel compelled to look like schoolgirls even as schoolgirls feel
pressured to look like grown women. This phenomenon, known in marketing circles
as "age compression," has been profitable for the fashion and entertainment
industries. But it has had devastating effects on young girls.

In her 2008 book, "The Lolita Effect," University of Iowa journalism professor
M. Gigi Durham noted that America's ideal media image of female sexuality "has
been getting progressively younger over the years," as the adult curvaceousness
of a Marilyn Monroe or Sophia Loren has given way to the barely-pubescent look
of a Miley or young Britney. While our hyper-sexualized society tends to regard
any breaking of sexual taboos as a form of progress, Durham sees something more
ominous at work in our fetishizing of girlhood: a return to primitive attitudes
that endanger children's innocence.

"Sex as an adult activity is a feature of advanced civilizations," she writes.
" … In most ancient cultures, both Eastern and Western, incest, adult-child sex
and pedophilia were commonplace." Durham worries that today we are "reverting
to a time when childhood was indistinct from adulthood, when the concept of
'child abuse' was unknown."

That reversion has helped fuel the growth of the multi-billion dollar child
porn and child sex-trafficking industries, as well as alarming rates of eating
disorders and sexually transmitted diseases among girls and the rise of such
trends as "sexting," in which girls send out nude photos of themselves via cell
phone or Internet to attract the male sexual attention they have learned to
seek at all costs.

So how do we combat such trends? One obvious answer is to teach our children,
especially our daughters, to be discerning media consumers and shield them from
fashions and entertainment that teach them to view themselves as sex objects.
Another answer is to adopt that same discerning attitude in our own media
consumption and fashion choices. And, last but not least, we can promise
ourselves that the next time a teen queen comes along to claim the role-model
mantle abandoned by Britney and Miley, we will think twice before allowing our
daughters to buy her wares or her hype.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.