The Lolita Effect - M. Gigi Durham, Ph.D.

The turn of the new millennium has spawned an intriguing phenomenon: the sexy little girl. She’s an all-too-familiar figure in today’s media landscape, this baby-faced nymphet with the preternaturally voluptuous curves, the one whose scantily clad body gyrates in music videos, poses provocatively on teen-magazine covers, and populates cinema and television screens around the globe. She’s become a fixture in Western pop culture: we all know her various incarnations—from TV surfer-girl Gidget to pop icon Miley Cyrus, from Brooke Shields’ child prostitute in Pretty Baby to beauty-pageant darling (and tragic murder victim) Jon Benét Ramsey. The sexy girl has been ardently celebrated and stridently censured, and she serves as a symbolic flashpoint for raging debates about gender, sexuality, the definition of childhood, and the criteria for social standards of acceptability.

The sexy little girl is part of a culture where major chain stores sell junior panties emblazoned with slogans like “Eye candy” and “Who needs credit cards?”; where toddlers play with dolls wearing fishnets and miniskirts; and where a toy pole-dancing kit is sold complete with a tiny garter and fake money. Pop culture —and the advertising that surrounds it — teaches young girls and boys about sexuality, but in ways that foreclose healthy, progressive and accurate understandings of sex in favor of market-driven, and ultimately harmful, myths.

The Lolita Effect: Why the Media Sexualize Young Girls and What We Can Do About It identifies five core myths of sexuality propagated by the mainstream media aimed at children and adolescents. These myths include the myth of the “perfect” body (slender yet curvy, and preferably Caucasian); the myth that flaunting such a body is the only way to express sexuality or, indeed, femininity; the myth that girls need to please and attract boys, but that their own pleasure is inconsequential; the myth that the younger the girl is, the sexier she is; and the myth that violence is sexy. The implications of these myths are widespread and destructive.

The Lolita Effect argues that the sexualization of young girls in contemporary society is an effect of cultural factors that eroticize childhood for profit. This phenomenon—the “Lolita Effect”—is in large part a creation of the corporate media. In this book, various myths of sexuality circulated via the mass media are examined to demonstrate how children, and young girls in particular, are positioned in terms of an exploitative version of eroticism and sexuality. It also offers clear guidelines for adults to help them work with children to recognize, understand, and ultimately resist the damaging consequences of these trends, in favor of a fully realized and positive concept of female sexuality.

The book is not anti-sex. It argues, rather, that sexuality is a normal and healthy aspect of human experience, and that undogmatic, factual sexual information is important to a child’s development. But through the examination of a variety of media examples, the book contrasts the toxic myths of sexuality in popular culture with the realities and diversity of sex in the real world. It argues that the media construct a narrowly defined and ultimately damaging version of female sexuality that impedes children’s healthy sexual development and agency. The book is geared to empowering girls to analyze and cope with this media environment in ways that are beneficial to their growth and well-being. The Lolita Effect is essential reading for parents, counselors, teachers, and anyone else interested in nurturing girls’ advancement and life success.

The Lolita Effect is published by Overlook Press, New York. You can buy the book at:

You can purchase The Lolita Effect in paperback at:

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