WHERE THE GIRLS ARE

ARE THE SEX-OBSESSED IMAGES OF POPULAR CULTURE A DANGER TO ADOLESCENT WOMEN?

Author: By Kathleen Malley-Morrison

Date: SUNDAY, September 28, 1997

Page: F1

Section: Books

Brumberg's feminist philosophy and message are that girls need greater protection from the dangers of a mercenary and sex-obsessed society. Drawing on historical documents, including adolescent diaries and letters, as well as her own observations, Brumberg describes the preoccupations of middle-class American girls from Victorian times to the present. Girls and women have gained considerable freedom. Comfortable, convenient commercial products replaced bulky home-made ones for dealing with menstruation. The idea that acne was a sign of physical weakness, ``sexual derangement,'' or inferior social status vanished and products were developed to help adolescents have perfect skin. Corsets and long heavy dresses gave way to jeans and T-shirts. Reticence toward sexuality and reproduction was replaced by open discussion and sex education. Extreme sexual repression was replaced by greater sexual freedom, and an insistence on chastity was replaced by demands for equality.

While middle-class women have generally lauded this progress, Brumberg warns that the 20th century has also seen a shift to earlier physical maturity in girls (not accompanied by greater psychological maturity), a shift in the preoccupations of adolescent girls from character to physical beauty and sexual attractiveness (the ``body project''), an increase in the dangers of premarital sexual intercourse, and the evolution of a culture that ``exacerbates normal adolescent self-consciousness and encourages precocious sexuality.'' Although she focuses almost exclusively on middle-class girls, Brumberg writes that the risks inherent in a society where sex is used extensively to sell, entertain, and exert power are ``clearly greater and more devastating for girls who are already economically marginalized.'' Brumberg suggests that ``we may want to borrow at least one operating principle from our Victorian ancestors and consider the idea that young women deserve to be eased into womanhood more slowly.''

Brumberg's story is clear, readable, and engaging -- although I wish someone would consider the consequences of today's cultural obsessions for boys. Somewhat disconcerting is Brumberg's frequent harking back to the advantages of the Victorian investment in female purity and chastity, which often seems frustratingly inconsistent with the disagreeable details she provides of life for Victorian girls.

Brumberg's goal is to persuade others of the need to protect and guide girls, who grow up in a culture of ``unrelenting objectification where women's bodies are used to sell everything,'' a society that is ``sexually brutal and commercially rapacious.'' Valerie Walkerdine, by contrast, writes from a social constructionist perspective; that is, she not only makes an argument about female experience and the needs of girls, but also challenges certain social science perspectives, to which she attributes a strong class bias. Her goal is ``to construct a different kind of story about what media fantasies mean in the lives of oppressed peoples.''

In contrast with Brumberg's call to protect middle-class girls, Walkerdine's concern is with ``the ordinary working people of Britain and of other advanced industrial societies'' who, she argues, ``have been sold down the river -- not just by an exploitative capitalism but by an intellectual left.''

Walkerdine's gripe with the left is that it has insisted on portraying the working class as vulnerable to and easily duped by postwar consumerism. In her view, ``child protection, and the idea of a childhood separate from adulthood, a protected space, has always been an idea that has come from the bourgeoisie. Certainly it was projected on to working-class children, both to save them from exploitation but also to stop them from rebelling.''

Walkerdine's book is less linear, less flowing, and less accessible than Brumberg's, which is unfortunate because her challenge to certain feminist conceptions of today's problems is both refreshingly iconoclastic and worth considering. She provides a provocative historical analysis of the portrayal of girls in ``Annie,'' ``Lolita,'' the Shirley Temple movies, ``My Fair Lady,'' and ``Gigi.'' She also offers her view of the cultural implications of British television programs like ``Minipops,'' where young girls, primarily working-class girls, dress up like adult woman rock stars and gyrate provocatively while they sing pop songs full of sexual innuendoes.

Walkerdine questions Brumberg's premise about the culture's danger to girls. Acknowledging that the girls in these shows and movies are eroticized in a way that appeals to male fantasies, she argues that such portrayals, to working-class girls, represent the possibility of a better life. In her view, feminists misinterpret the media representations when they characterize them as merely exploitative. Working-class girls need, Walkerdine believes, images of a more exciting and glamorous world -- and historically, ``marrying up'' or becoming a star have been ways of achieving this.

For readers who are swept along by Brumberg's compelling story of the dangers inherent in the media exploitation of feminine sexual attractiveness, Walkerdine provides a cautionary note. We need to remember, she believes, that social scientists and social critics are human beings with their own personal histories, needs, and world views. This subjectivity may unconsciously influence what they study and how they interpret the ``facts'' they observe and record.

Brumberg calls attention to a culture and media that can be viewed as exploitative and rapacious, but Walkerdine provides an insightful reminder that we need to evaluate not only our social institutions but also our own social assumptions.