Many times as I've dropped my kids off at school or waved to them as they walk with the neighborhood kids to the bus stop, I have been amazed at what other parents and the school administration let them wear. I can't help thinking about the environment their clothing choices create for other children, especially my own as I think, “I could not have sat next to you all day at your age and done anything except stare at you.” How are my sons supposed to ignore what is so prominently displayed for them? How hard will it be for my daughter to resist believing that her worth and value are measured by how successfully she competes in capturing other people's attention? I wish I could tell you that these are only high school or junior high students, but they're not. And I wonder as I continue driving to work, Doesn't anybody else see what I'm seeing? Doesn't anyone care?

The answer, is yes, they do. In So Sexy, So Soon, authors Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne raise the alarm for how American society is sexualizing our kids long before they hit their teen years, by which they mean that our children learn “their value comes primarily from their sex appeal” (p. 7). No one should be surprised to hear that American society continues to promote the twin errors that people have value only if they maintain a certain appearance and that relationships are mostly about what you get out of them instead of what you put in. What may surprise you is to hear how early those misconceptions are currently taking root.

The authors recount numerous anecdotes from parents and teachers demonstrating that children from preschool through their tween years (eight- to twelve-year olds) are wrestling with sexualized messages and not always wrestling well. Drs. Levin and Kilbourne lay most of the blame on our commercial culture that over the past few decades has increasingly used sexuality and violence to market toys, clothing, music, and entertainment to very young children. They argue that even at such young ages, associating sex more with “consuming than with connecting” (p. 9) undermines the ability of boys and girls to develop caring, nurturing, giving relationships. Instead, such messages socialize children into thinking that “it's normal to treat oneself and others as objects and to judge people by what they buy and how they look” (p. 70).

The authors are not coming from the perspective of an out-of-touch Victorian prudery that argues, “The less said about sex, the better.” Rather they assert, “[T]he problem today isn't that our kids are learning about sex. The problem is what they are learning, the age at which they're learning it, and who is teaching them” (p. 31). They believe that children are not picking up their primary lessons from their immediate adult relationships, but from the depersonalized media and marketing industries.

The book's stated audience is the parents and teachers of young children-although two very disturbing chapters focus on the teenage environment-and it aims not only to alert you to a current problem, but also to provide practical suggestions for how to help children navigate the cultural messages that bombard them. In that sense, it is more than a scare-'em-with-stats book (although the stories and statistics are arresting). It is also a book with numerous ideas, strategies and practical applications served up with a good deal of hope. It is well-written and easily accessible, though the authors do tend to repeat themselves a bit (and overly rely on the exclamation mark to signify their emphases and enthusiasm).

I especially appreciate two aspects of their solution. First, they are not looking for a quick, overnight fix to an entire milieu of complex, societally created problems. Instead, second, they opt for a much slower, relational approach. They urge you to spend large amounts of time with your children learning to know them and their world, asking them questions and dialoguing about their experiences in ways to give them confidence that you can help them process their world. It is in “build[ing] deeper connections with children” that they'll “develop the resources and skills they need in order to resist at least some of the impact of sexualized and violent media culture” (p. 132).

In other words, Levin and Kilbourne urge you to replace the impersonal, negative experience of relationships your children get from our consumer culture with a personal, positive one driven by your interest in them. Chapters 5, 8, and 9 are essentially extended lists of what you can do or say, fleshed out with examples that are especially helpful in suggesting how to engage both your child and the surrounding social settings in which he or she lives.

You may find yourself disagreeing with the authors' own morality as they express their anti-Abstinence Only bias, their openness to homosexuality, or their wish that condom commercials be shown on major TV networks. You may also sense a certain fear underlying assertions like, “Marketers . . . work very hard to create a strong childhood culture that divides children from adults” (p. 48). Or you may share my skepticism that the goal of an individual marketer is to turn children into consumers-for-life (p. 50) since that sounds far too altruistic. It's hard for me to imagine someone sitting in their office thinking, I'll spend my life working to turn four-year-olds into people who will compulsively purchase stuff thirty years from now that will benefit other marketers whom I've never met . I suspect that turning people into consumers-for-life is more an effect of marketing than a shared business goal.

More problematic, however, is that Levin and Kilbourne's solution subtly shifts the underlying problem rather than addresses it. A very engaging extended story in chapter 6 details the distress of 7-year-old Hannah. She tearfully tells her mother that she is fat, but wants “to be pretty like Isabelle . . . sexy like her!” (p. 117) so that the boys will like her. Her solution is to insist that she be allowed to go on a diet. Hannah's mother is very affirming and handles her daughter's fears and concerns in a way that creates a safe place for her daughter while helping Hannah consider that there might be a healthy weight, not just a pretty weight. Hannah agrees to discuss this idea with her pediatrician, whom she'll be seeing shortly.

This vignette sounds like it resolves well until you realize that Hannah's real issue is not sexiness, but her underlying longing to be liked. For Hannah, her appearance has become a malleable resource she can use to get what she wants. Her mom has appropriately communicated that she likes Hannah regardless of her appearance and is not put off by Hannah's struggle, but she has not addressed the I-will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-be-noticed-and-liked desire that controls her daughter. Hannah is now in danger of shifting her longing to be noticed by boys at school onto her mother and doctor, doing whatever she needs in order to keep their approval.

Clearly Hannah's mom did much better than some version of “Aw, honey. You don't need to be sexy. You look fine! The boys will notice soon enough.” But just as clearly her approach did not take seriously how entrenched Hannah's longing for attention is, how out-of-control it is or how desperately she needs Jesus to shrink it back to an appropriate size.

Even with my critique, there is much value in this book and with a little reframing it can go a long way toward helping all of us who regularly serve children and their families in a heavily sexualized culture.

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