Pre-teen sexuality
Is pre-teen sexuality up for grabs?
The outfits of the young girls (read teens and pre-teens) in the Indian metropolitan cities are nothing but a projection of tawdry sexuality and teachers in the school are pretty disgusted at the trend that is fast capturing the school girls in small towns too. A hottie is present everywhere and is expected to uplift the party mood in the pubs. But the trouble is not with the outfits as much as the gaze of the naughty school guys and perverted adults.
The Western and Japanese print medium has used lot of columns condemning the contemporary sexy fashions of the teens and pre-teens as more and more girls are being seen as participants, both active and passive, of the new culture that is now engulfing Indian pre-teens too.
Advertisements and serials featuring women dressed as little girls sucking lollipops, or lying in a suggestive position of surrender is polluting the formative minds of the teens. Walking on a very thin line, most teens have been infused with the notion that a finely sculpted figure is to be exhibited more aggressively than be just being proud of it.The yesteryear icons of feminine sexuality were Marlyn Monroe, Ursula Andress, Sophia Loren, from the Hollywood and Madhu Bala, Mumtaz, Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi of Indian cinema, but now it is the teens who live up to the image. It has been rightly pointed out that ‘sexual curiosity and even some experimentation are ordinary features of childhood. Realistic, strong, and non-exploitative representations of girls’ sexuality would be a progressive social step, but images of girls posed and styled as objects of the erotic adult gaze can’t be. They often employ the conventions of sex work, legitimising the use of young girls for prostitution and pornography.’
According to a lady advocate of Supreme Court, Sheetal, the trend has ignited the young teens and will stay put for some time. “It is the parents who have to start the campaign against the pre-teen urge for exhibiting sexuality through dresses,” she suggested. But another advocate from Bhopal, Nagendra Singh viewed it as a passing phase that will die down the moment the teen generation realizes that it will do them no good.
Psychologists have another angle thrown to the arguments. Most of them opine that the voluminous humdrum for change in one’s life has twisted the mindset to this aspect. Grown up physical bodies that were displayed in films were enough for admiration and the Indians got titillated and thrilled. But chasing the change, those bodies stand no chance in front of today’s expectation when people are going in for thin and supple curves with lean butts.