Young Girls and Self-Image

     Today in class we watched a movie that was about the media and how it affects the way young girls view themselves and how they are "supposed" to be. One thing that I really liked about the video was that it was primarily made up of interviews done with girls between the ages of 10-14. It was nice to see the differences in awareness of the media and its influences between the girls who were at the lower and higher ends of the age spectrum. The girls who were younger often regurgitated ideas that they acquired from the media but completely oblivious to where they were coming from. On the other hand, the girls who were older tended to be aware that the media was trying to influence them and were more likely to turn away from these ideas.
     What was surprising to me was the way some of the girls viewed sex. One girl actually stated that sex wasn't an issue for her now (when she was ten) but probably would be by the time she turned twelve or thirteen. TWELVE OR THIRTEEN! At twelve or thirteen these girls should be worried about learning how to manage their periods not whether or not they should be having sex.  At the time the movie was made I was nine years old, just one year behind the youngest girls interviewed, and the last thing I was thinking about at age nine was sex. I knew what it was, but it didn't interest me probably because I was NINE. By the time I was thirteen sex was a topic that was discussed at the lunch table but was still thought of as fairly taboo. When we heard about girls "giving it up" at that age we didn't look at them with respect. In fact we probably just called them sluts. They were vying for the attention of the older boys by acting more mature than they really were. Now looking back on it I feel bad for the girls we gossiped about at lunch. They gave into social pressures and became what they thought boys wanted, only to be ridiculed and probably end up feeling even worse about themselves.