Sex peddled as power in pornified girl culture

Indeed, there was a time when dancing for the masses in barely there outfits was the realm of music video stars and strippers. Then the Internet and reality TV came along, providing new platforms for young women to flaunt it for a shot at fame.

In one hit prime-time series, for instance, eager young contestants perform soft-core porn dance routines in hopes of becoming the next member of The Pussycat Dolls singing group.

The fascination with being “hot” also has made its way into the workplace, where confidence is often conveyed in the way one looks and dresses.

“I would say that, in the world of Washington, D.C., power brokers, it’s important to be sexy, but in a more sophisticated, muted way,” says Charles Small, a 25-year-old young professional who works in the nation’s capital. That’s in contrast, he says, to cities such as Los Angeles and Miami, “where overt sexiness is more the status quo.”

Some employers — taken aback by the trend — have responded by setting tougher dress codes. Many school administrators have done the same.

“As a high school teacher, I see 14-year-old girls dressing in a way that makes me shake my head. Where do they get that?” asks Dennis Brown, an educator and parent in Huntley, Ill., outside Chicago.

Recently, he says his own 5-year-old daughter proclaimed, “Daddy, I look fat.”

“And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go,”’ he says. “Now I have to start deconstructing that mind-set.”

It’s a big topic of discussion among researchers. A 2007 report from the American Psychological Association compiled the findings of myriad studies, showing that the sexualization of young women and girls, in particular, can hurt them in many ways. Problems can include anything from low self-esteem and eating disorders to depression and anxiety.

Jeff Christensen / AP The Pussycat Dolls recently hosted a prime-time television show in which scantily clad young women performed sexually charged dance routines in a quest to be the next member of the group.

Simon, the California therapist, has seen those symptoms in several of his young female patients.

While boys tend to seek out porn for their own sexual pleasure, he sees a sexual disconnect with girls who exhibit provocative behavior they’re not ready for — from undressing online to performing oral sex on boys.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with their sexual pleasure,” says Simon. “It has to do with pleasing somebody else — the grasping for attention.

“As a parent, it makes me want to cry.”

And while they tell him they feel empowered, too often, he says they end up getting pegged as “sluts.”

Julie Albright, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, has noted that dynamic in her research. She’s working on a book about “players,” men who juggle more than one sex partner and earn a title of esteem for behavior that much of society still frowns upon for women.

“If you ‘act like a man,’ in that sense, you’re trying to grab hold of that same kind of power, that same kind of lifestyle — and claim male privilege,” Albright says.

“The problem is, you’re still female and it’s still a man’s world.”

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