Children as Sexual Objects: Historical and Gender Trends in Magazines

Abstract

Trained observers blind to experimental hypotheses rated how often children were depicted sexually in five magazines. Results indicated that children were portrayed sexually in approximately 1.5% of the advertisements containing children. The occurrence of the sexualized depictions of children was systematic in three ways: (1) girls were depicted sexually more often than boys; (2) there was some evidence that this phenomenon has not decreased over the past four decades but, instead, might be increasing slightly; and (3) these depictions occurred more frequently in magazines targeted toward women than toward men or toward both genders. Research on the possible effects on both men and women of the sexualized depictions of children is needed.