You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
R. Danielle Egan Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2013, 200pp., $22.95 ISBN: 978-0745650739 (paperback)
In her book Becoming Sexual: A Critical Appraisal of the Sexualization of Girls, R. Danielle Egan investigates the contemporary discourse regarding the sexualization of tween girls (ages eight to twelve). Throughout her analysis, she scrutinizes the underlying assumptions and rhetorical strategies embedded in this discourse in order to argue that it metonymically disguises more formidable social anxieties. Ostensibly, the concern over girls’ sexualization is a cultural anxiety for “innocent” girls who develop what are considered self-destructive, deviant and pathological sexual behaviors as a direct result of the images, ideas and products they consume via corporate capitalism, the media, and popular culture. As Egan illustrates, this concern over the sexualization of girls often unifies those from divergent political ideologies (from feminists to right-wing conservatives). It has infiltrated broader pedagogical and sociological discourses, and, as Egan argues, it has largely been legitimized by psychological reports like that of the Report of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2010) or the United Kingdom Home Office report The Sexualisation of Young People (Papadopoulos, 2010).
Egan begins her study with a survey of the empirical research from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, National Institute of Mental Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and others. With these statistics as evidence, she works to refute the supposition that girls now engage in more sexual activity than in prior years. However, the sexual activity studies she charts for the U.S., U.K. and Aust