Siri Lindholm

My PhD research centres around sexualisation of girls and their dress, so that's where my connection to the Kardashian clan has come from. I originally set out to write this paper covering conversations in KUWTK that have to do with all aspects of women's reproductive health, but it really ended up being about surrogate pregnancy. So what I want to do here is to start by investigating general discourses in KUWTK about periods, sex, contraception, vaginal health and childbirth and then use about half of this paper to examine in more detail the conversations that are had about surrogacy on KUWTK.

The aftermath of the #MeToo campaign saw a myriad interrogations of sexuality and the way women perceive sex and intimacy. But, especially 'bad sex' became a wide topic of conversation in the press. This paper charts changes in media conversation over what constitutes 'bad sex' and consent over the course of the #MeToo campaign by looking at humorous portrayals of young women's painful sexual experiences in popular TV shows. This paper will begin by a brief review of Judith Butler's theory of sex and intercourse as social constructs and will then move onto interrogate some populist and journalistic writings lashing back at #MeToo, citing biological differences and male needs. This will open a conversation over sexual education and views that bypass 'relative deprivation', a theory by which 'disenfranchised groups, having been trained to expect little, tend paradoxically to report the same levels of satisfaction as their better-treated, more privileged peers' (Loofbourow, 2018). In practice this means, that men's account of 'bad sex' often includes erectile problems or a lack of orgasm, while women's accounts of the same term: 'bad sex', include much worse; coercion and physical pain.
This discourse will be built on primary examples from popular TV shows. In these there is a recurring theme where young women engage in sexual intercourse, and while the settings are humorous and invite the viewer to laugh, it makes it equally clear that the woman engaging in sex is suffering physical pain as a result.
In this paper I would like to argue, that 'relative deprivation' has been backdrop upon which male pleasure has been constructed regardless of its contribution to women's physical pain, what will be interesting to see is how these will be negotiated in popular media now in the aftermath of the #MeToo campaign.

A distinct trend has arisen within popular culture where young female artists openly promote themselves as feminists. What is new about this feminism is that even though its ethos correlates with more traditional forms of feminisms, it is marked by neo-liberal consumption, self obsession and a hyper-sexualised display.
In this paper I will focus on three women who all present different types of hyper-sexualised feminisms. Beyonce is an interesting example of a self-proclaimed feminist, who is widely regarded by teenagers as a great role model and all round strong woman who effortlessly combines motherhood, christianity and empowering sexual display.
Miley Cyrus, an other self-proclaimed feminist, however is widely discussed as a bad influence in her hyper-sexualised display. She is positioned dichotomously, as, on one hand corrupted by the music industry to sexualise herself for the pleasure of the male gaze, but on the other being held responsible for negatively influencing her young fans.
I would like to question both view points and position Beyonce as a product of idealised, objectified femininity and Miley as using hyper-sexuality as a grotesque performance through which she empowers young women with resistance to traditional norms of seductive femininity.
Finally I would like to contrast both feminisms with the Kardashian sisterhood's 'feminism', which, however has never been defined as such. They combine their hyper-sexualised appearances with graphic and frank discussions of women's issues which, I would like to argue, should not be ignored by the feminist community.
I will end the paper by tying it in with my own research on the sexualisation of girl children. Here I will analyse the Kardashian sisters' children's clothing enterprise and how it has gotten under fire for being sexualising. I will conclude by analysing this within protectionist feminist and anti-sexualisation critical discourses.

In 2011 fashion magazine Vogue published an editorial featuring couture fashion modelled by a 10-year old girl. The pictures caused an international tidal wave of controversy opening a discussion over sexualisation of girl-children.
In the last 10 years sexualisation of girl-children has become an increasingly popular topic in the media. Articles often propose a direct causal link between specific dress and the sexual and social fate of a girl-child. Fashion is often defined as ontologically dangerous; as emblematic of girl-children’s commercial and sexual victimisation, potentially damaging them physically, emotionally and intellectually, and putting their future as healthy adults in danger. In a contradictory way, this suggested visual 'Lolita effect', however, implies a sense of agency from the girl-child in actively seducing her viewer and therefore being, at least in part, responsible for 'sexualisation' and the response her dress triggers. Due to the ambiguous but always loaded use of the word 'sexualising', I would like to argue that sexualisation is not a concrete force that exists, but a concept that is put into place the moment someone declares a garment or image as sexualising. When so-called sexualised clothing is under constant scrutiny and criticism, girls may start to doubt and limit their sartorial self-expression and ultimately police their freedoms in general. This finally leads to society being able to keep girls in check with the power of their own control.

In the past years the Anglophone press has paid increasing attention to sexualised clothing on the market for pre-teen girls. In 2012 the focus of the debate were padded bras and bikinis and after a media frenzy Primark, one of the UK culprits, apologised and pulled them off the shelves.
This paper begins with discussing the intimate relationship of woman, brassier and sexuality to give background to why we see it as an inappropriate expression of sexual maturity when little girls wear a bra, how something as simple as underwear raises questions about gender, sexualisation and how we see childhood. A discussion will be opened about how the criticism, rather than the act of display perpetuates sexualisation and inequality. I would like to argue that sexualisation is not a concrete force that exists, but that sexualisation is a concept that is put into place the moment someone declares a garment as sexualising. When so-called sexualised clothing is under constant scrutiny and criticism, girls will start to doubt and limit their sartorial self-expression and ultimately their freedom in general. This finally leads to society being able to keep girls in check with the power of their own control.

In the last 10 years there has been an exponential increase in media reports on girls being 'sexualised'. Padded bra's for tweens, child beauty pageants, girls' dress and behaviour in school and sexualised practices like 'twerking' have fallen under criticism. Now, an entire industry has formed around the fear of girls being sexualised.
This paper will focus on two media that act as educational tools in combat against sexualisation: Populist manuals for parents and their daughters and the American-born purity movement.
Over the last decade a wave of populist manuals advising parents how to protect their girls from sexualisation has emerged. These manuals harness the fear of sexualisation and turn it into a business where parents can buy peace of mind by educating themselves on how to keep their children safe.
An other example of how de-sexualisation has been exploited for commodification purposes is the purity movement that is taught in schools in the ineffective abstinence education. The ideology that promotes chastity has been adopted by some young hollywood and others alike. Not only does the movement commodify its ideology by selling merchandise for promotional purposes, but it gives the media a safe way to discuss young stars' sexuality, ironically by discussing their lack of it.
However, while the media shows its concern for children through criticising the commercialisation of goods that are sexually provocative, it is the media itself that is doing the selling. Reading about morally controversial issues entertains and sells. Whilst the tone in which provocative clothing, sexual behaviour, twerking and child beauty pageants are discussed in the press is very negative, the articles are always accompanied by plenty of pictures. The very paper that claims to disapprove, if not wanting to ban the them in the interest of children, makes an enormous financial profit from their existence and completes the self fulfilling prophecy in sexualising girls further.

In the new millennium a media discourse has arisen in the Anglophone press that discusses girls' dress as 'sexualising'. 'Protectionists' have come to build a causal link between 'harms' that may befall girls and the clothing that they wear. The tone and content of these discourses has in turn been criticised by 'liberal' academia. It condemns these as further placing girls at harm through a disproportionate focus on girls' activities and sartorial self-expression, creating an air of self-surveillance. This thesis argues that this can cause harm in two ways. Firstly, the fear and management of sexualisation may displace public discourses about the actual abuse of children that happens in and outside of the home. Secondly, this is particularly advantageous for boys and men, who are now excluded not only of responsibility, but from the discourse altogether. Non- protectionist feminist scholarship further recognises a contradiction within anti- sexualisation debates. Protectionist writers set themselves up as authorities on the cultural perspective of the care for girls and place girls simultaneously as impressionable, immature and untrustworthy, and hence in need of regulation, but also as alluring and corrupting and hence implicated in their own sexual victimisation.
This thesis adds to the existing liberal debates by undertaking a systematic study of select government reviews, newspapers and populist manuals. While sexualisation as a topic has enjoyed scholarly investigation, this thesis examines these protectionist contradictions in sexualisation discourses through a specific analysis of dress as a social communicator and point of contention through cultural and fashion theory. This thesis places itself within non-protectionist feminist research which critiques protectionist propensity for equating innocence with purity and sexual inactivity in a moralistic enterprise, which criticises and shames girls in their dress and considers them corrupting of others' innocence.