In 2012 Witchery launched a clothing brand for girls aged between 8 and 14 called 8fourteen.
“Meet Bethany, surfer girl, vegetarian, style obsessed”
Their advertising campaign involved “meeting the personalities” which was two 45 second videos of 2 girls giving a few details about themselves. Innocent enough right?
The overall tone of the videos was flirty and romantic, shot in black and white accompanied with acoustic music in the background. The girls are supposed to be modelling and promoting the new clothing range yet they are only wearing one outfit for the video and the camera is mainly focused on the face and body language more than the fashion.
The sexualization of children, mostly girls is a growing epidemic throughout the media. The Australian Physiological Society (APS) says “Research has shown that the exploitation of children, particularly girls, as sexual objects has a detrimental effect on adolescent development, increasing the risk of depression, eating disorders and low self-esteem. The unrealistic depiction of children in a sexualized manner is not only harmful to girls and women but has wider consequences in the community.”
Children’s attitudes, desires and in return their behaviour can be shaped by the media through advertising. Children have trouble distinguishing television advertising from other program content, in recognising the persuasive intent of advertising, and in understanding the language of advertising.
Is this the right way for our youth to be depicted? Do we really need to sexualize children at all, is this the only way to sell the products?
Elise Manning 
Solid blog! Fashion magazines are really a big source of ‘corporate paedophilia’, fortunately not as much recently, but props for identifying a key point! I don’t think it’s the right way for youths to be depicted, and I doubt many people would disagree there, but I think a lot of it is the magazine’s fault. I mean, if this was just the pictures of the girl standalone, EVEN dressed as she is, no one would really give a second glance, right? So good work on highlighting a big issue, keep it up!
As Sue said, it is hard to look at an image/video when we already have a preconceived idea of what the content might hold. But for me, the video that you have used does produce this young girl in a sexually provocative manner. Maybe I only feel this way because the way I have been shaped by society, but I can’t help it, it makes me cringe!
An interesting blog. I really liked your example of the Witchery ad. I am trying to imagine how I would have viewed it without the “paedophile’s perspective” that I couldn’t help but adopt. Was the ad just meant to be ‘artistic’? I can’t tell because now that it has been suggested, I cannot objectively this image without the phantom paedophile looking over my shoulder. I was left wondering what it was actually about because as you said, she is only wearing one outfit and there seems to be little emphasis on that. Even in the still shots with Bethany’s partially opened mouth and messed up hair, all looking very sexy and oh so wrong for a 14 year old. Yuck! What were they thinking?