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Culture affects how teen girls perceive sexism and harassment

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:19:00 -0400

While sexism and sexual harassment is experienced by teenage girls of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds till date, how they perceive it depends on their culture, says a new study.

The research conducted by Christia Brown, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, and Campbell Leaper, professor, Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Cruz, indicated that cultural factors might control whether teenage girls perceive sexism as an environmental problem or as evidence of their own shortcomings.

The study was conducted on 600 girls belonging to different ethnic populations from California and Georgia and who were aged between 12 to 18 years. All these girls were asked about experiences with sexual harassment and any discouraging comments they received in traditionally male-dominated areas such as math, science, computers and sports.

It was discovered that 90 percent of girls reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once. Specifically, 67 percent of girls reported receiving unwanted romantic attention, 62 percent were exposed to demeaning gender-related comments, 58 percent were teased because of their appearance, 52 percent received unwanted physical contact and 25 percent were bullied or threatened with harm by a male.

In addition, 52 percent of girls also reported receiving discouraging gender-based comments on the math, science and computer abilities, usually from male peers, and 76 percent of girls reported sexist comments on their athletic abilities, also predominantly from male peers.

These results led the researchers to believe that girls have different levels of understanding of sexism and sexual harassment, which may influence them to report data.

They saw that older girls and those from a lower socioeconomic background reported more sexism than did their peers. Latin and Asian American girls reported less sexual harassment than did girls of other ethnic groups.

Girls who had been exposed to feminist ideas, either through the media or an adult such as a mother or teacher, were more likely to identify and report sexist behaviour than were girls who had no information about feminism.

In addition, Girls who reported feeling pressure from their parents to conform to gender stereotypes were also more likely to perceive sexism. And those who felt atypical for their gender and/or were unhappy with stereotypical gender roles were most likely to report sexism and harassment.

The researchers suggested that it is important for girls to be able to identify sexism and sexual harassment as environmental factors, or else they attribute negative experiences to their own faults and suffer erosion of self-esteem. Also frequent sexual harassment may lead girls to expect and accept demeaning behaviours in heterosexual romantic relationships, and sexist remarks. (ANI)

Majority of ethnic minority teens don’t hang out with ethnic school crowds

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:19:00 -0400

In a study on peer-relationships of teens in school, researchers found that ethnic minority teens were less keen to hang out with crowds made up of their ethnic peers.

It was also found that for most Asian students, being part of an ethnically oriented crowd at school was linked with mostly positive characteristics (such as pride in one’s ethnic background). And in case of Latino students it was associated with a mixed group of characteristics (some pride, but also some feelings of discrimination and stereotyping).

In the study, the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dartmouth College, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, polled 2,465 African American, Asian American, and Latino teenagers ages 14 to 19 attending seven public high schools in the midwestern and western United States.

They provided the students with a list of the crowds most commonly mentioned by other teens at their school and asked them to mention the one they identified with most closely. Also, a group of students placed all their classmates (including those initially polled) into crowds; the researchers then looked for characteristics that distinguished adolescents who were part of ethnically oriented crowds from adolescents who were part of non-ethnic crowds.

It was discovered that ethnic crowd affiliation was not widespread, particularly among biracial youth. Only about 30 percent of the teenagers were placed by peers in ethnically oriented crowds, and only half of them linked with such crowds. Teens in the ethnic categories studied tended to be placed by peers, and to place themselves, in crowds that were not defined ethnically.

The results indicated that in all three ethnic groups studied, teenagers were more likely to be part of an ethnically oriented crowd if most of their friends came from the same ethnic background and if the students were doing poorly in school.

In addition, Latino and Asian American teens having positive feelings about their ethnic background were more likely to associate themselves with a crowd made up of other teens from their ethnic group.

Besides this, Latino students were more likely to be part of an ethnically oriented crowd if they belonged to lower-income homes and were at the receiving end of a lot of ethnic discrimination, perhaps because associating with a Latino crowd served as a defence against negative experiences with other peers at school.

“Adolescent crowds are often disparaged as instruments of peer pressure and stereotyping that interfere with healthy identity development. Our findings suggest that this might be true for ethnically oriented crowds in multi-ethnic American high schools, at least among Latino youth. In other respects, however our findings suggest that ethnically oriented crowd affiliations can reflect and contribute to healthy identity and social development, particularly among adolescents of Asian backgrounds,” noted Bradford Brown, professor of human development and educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the study’s lead author.

The study is published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development. (ANI)

Now, a ‘bum bra’ for your sagging buttocks

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:00 -0400

A leading US psychologist has patented a bra for the bum, which according to her, restores pertness to sagging buttocks.

Creator Karin Hart claims that the garment, featuring straps worn around the waist and under the buttocks, instantly shapes and adds tone to the rear.

Hart said that she came up with the buttock-clenching idea after realising that her own bottom wasn't as pert as it used to be.

"The Biniki buttocks support idea came to me at a moment of personal need. One look in the mirror after some rapid weight loss showed me the unhappy truth, my bottom was sagging,” the Daily Telegraph quoted her, as saying.

Dr Hart started developing designs for a wearable item that would do the same job as a surgical bottom lift.

"Trying to find a design led me to buy some self-adhesive tape. Then working with a mirror and adjusting the tape into several configurations I found one that resulted in just the right support in the right places,” she said.

She patented her invention and now sells what she has dubbed the "butt bra" through her US-based company for about 15 pounds. (ANI)

2 out of 3 Brit men fancy Victoria Beckham

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:00 -0400

Victoria Beckham sure is the ‘dream’ girl for a majority of Britons, at least that’s what a new poll suggests.

According to a new poll, conducted by The Sun, two out of three straight men fancy Posh Spice.

Only 35 per cent of those who took part in the online poll said they didn’t fancy her, reports The Sun.

Some of her posted their comments, for instance - Diskox posted: “I think Posh always looks amazing. Any bloke that doesn’t fancy her must be mad!”

BigGunBrazil added: “Don’t believe it Posh! I’m certainly not gay and I fancy you. I think you’re great. Send me your number when you’re tired of Becksy. We can get it on. You can pay for dinner though!”

But Aitchf disagreed. He said: “She looks like a drag queen.” (ANI)

Instant Messaging represents ‘linguistic renaissance’

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:00 -0400

As a concerned parent you might feel like shouting OMG! (Oh, My God!) when you see your teenage kid submerged in the newest lingo in town, Instant Messaging (IM), but here’s something that certainly will cheer many more like you – a new study suggests that the online shorthand actually represents “an expansive new linguistic renaissance”.

Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis at the University of Toronto, Canada, say teenagers risk the disapproval of their elders if they use slang, and the scorn of their friends if they sound too buttoned-up.

But instant messaging allows them to deploy a “robust mix” of colloquial and formal language. In a paper to be published in the spring 2008 issue of American Speech, the researchers argue that far from ruining teenagers’ ability to communicate, IM lets teenagers show off what they can do with language.

“IM is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language, but at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech,” says Denis.

He and Tagliamonte analyzed more than a million words of IM communications and a quarter of a million spoken words produced by 72 people aged between 15 and 20.

They found that although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative.

For example, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase “He was like, ‘What’s up?’” than “He said, ‘What’s up?’” when speaking - but the opposite is true when they are instant messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.

Nor do teens use abbreviations as much as the stereotype suggests: LOL (laugh out loud), OMG (oh my god), and TTYL (talk to you later) made up just 2.4 per cent of the vocabulary of IM conversations - an “infinitesimally small” proportion, say the researchers.

And rumours of the demise of you would appear to have been greatly exaggerated: it was preferred to u a whopping 9 times out of 10.

Tagliamonte and Denis suggest that the use of such short forms is confined mostly to the youngest users of IM. (ANI)

Most female child molesters are victims of abuse themselves

Thu, 15 May 2008 04:01:00 -0400

Most female child abusers have themselves been victims of sexual abuse, says a new study.

The finding, published in the April issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, has the potential to help break the cycle of abuse by improving treatment for offenders and their young victims.

“This study informs us about the pathway to becoming sexually deviant for females,” said study author Susan Strickland, assistant professor in the UGA School of Social Work.

“With that knowledge, we can improve treatment and reduce the likelihood of future sexual assaults on children,” Susan said.

Strickland said the sexual abuse of minors by women has been largely ignored by the general public, the legal system and by academic researchers.

Many people believe that women are not capable of committing such acts, she said, and the abuse of boys by women is often dismissed as the boys sowing their oats or even being lucky.

The truth is that both boys and girls are molested by female perpetrators and these victims often suffer a myriad of consequences affecting their sexuality, relationships and beliefs about themselves and others.

Childhood sexual abuse also has been linked to a host of emotional and behavioral problems, such as substance abuse and eating disorders.

The true prevalence of female sexual abuse on children is unknown, but a commonly accepted figure is that five to seven percent of sex crimes are committed by females.

Strickland’s study, the largest of its kind, surveyed 130 incarcerated females - 60 of which were sex offenders and 70 of which were nonsexual offenders - and examined factors such as childhood trauma, substance abuse, emotional neediness and personality disorders.

While the majority of both groups reported being the victims of childhood maltreatment, the sex offenders were significantly more likely to experience pervasive, serious and more frequent emotional abuse, physical abuse and neglect.

“We’ve pretty much known that the majority of women in prison have had bad childhoods and that many suffered childhood sexual abuse,” Strickland said.

“But the subgroup of female sex offenders has suffered significantly more abuse, particularly sexual abuse,” Strickland said.

Because victims are at increased risk of becoming abusers later in life, Strickland said their treatment should include offender prevention therapy, which addresses issues of power and control, appropriate sexual expression and boundaries, and cycles and triggers that may lead to offending behaviors. (ANI)

Can Facebook, MySpace help new students settle into university?

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:18:00 -0400

Facebook and MySpace might have become the hottest communities in existence, but now an initiative is being made to find out if such online networking sites can become a way of helping new students to settle into their university’s social and academic life, as well as minimise the chance of them withdrawing from their courses.

A team of researchers at the University of Leicester are looking for first-year students who use Facebook to help their pioneering research into this issue.

The use of online networking site Facebook by students is running at a phenomenal level, with almost 10,000 present and past students and staff participating.

Presently, 95 per cent of 16-18 year olds intending to go to university are using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

“Yet we know little about how this phenomenon impacts on the student experience and, in particular, if and how it helps them integrate into university life,” said Jane Wellens, Education Developer in the University of Leicester’s Staff Development Centre.

“The expectations and online experience of the latest and next generations of students requires universities to think carefully about how, and whether, to use these new technologies and meeting spaces to enhance the social aspects of student integration into university life,” she added.

Academic and social integration into university life are key factors influencing individual students’ experiences and the likelihood of their withdrawing from their student courses.

Until now, most research in the field has focused on academic support rather than integration into the wider social world of the university.

One aspect of the research is to explore whether there are differences in the longevity and nature of university friendships that students establish face-to-face as compared to those they make online through social networking sites.

The research builds on internationally acclaimed work the University of Leicester has already started on teaching and learning online.

“We recently used Facebook as a means of encouraging students on an online module to get to know one another. This raised many issues such as where the boundary between public and private space is, and how comfortable students (and staff) of different ages feel regarding the use of such technology,” Jane Wellens said.

The Leicester project also draws on internationally recognised expertise by this specific team of researchers in online research methodologies.

Clare Madge of the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester stated: “This project will be using both an online questionnaire and virtual interviews, and will innovate in the use of Facebook itself as a site to conduct virtual interviews”.

From the new research, Wellens and her colleagues hope to establish how Leicester students are using Facebook as part of their social and learning experience and whether joining the University’s Facebook network before they come to Leicester helps students to settle down more easily to university life.

As part of the project, researchers will also be looking to see if there is any way that university support services and academic departments can use the online social networking sites to help students integrate into university life, and how the sites might be re-shaping everyday lives in terms of the importance of place-based versus virtual networking.

The results of the research are expected to influence university policies at Leicester and beyond.

“It may affect the way the University uses its Facebook network. One outcome might be that the University would use these sites to bring new students together before their arrival, or to bring together current and new students to provide peer support. It will also ascertain students’ views about the ways in which the University and its staff should, or shouldn’t, use Facebook for academic purposes,” Dr Wellens said. (ANI)

Media’s glamorization of ultra-thin image ‘deeply affecting women’

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:18:00 -0400

The media has shaped people’s ideology extensively and a classic example of this is the way it has etched the “ultra-thin” image in the minds of today’s women.

As media images glamorizing the extremely thin continue to rule newspaper and magazine covers, an increased number of women are becoming worried over their bodies and are therefore, engaging in unhealthy eating behaviors, such as excessive dieting.

Now, in a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison postdoctoral researcher Shelly Grabe and psychology professor Janet Hyde, the experts have reported some of the most definitive findings yet on how these images affect women.

In the May issue of Psychological Bulletin, the scientists describe a sweeping analysis of 77 previous studies involving more than 15,000 subjects.

In it, they found that exposure to media depicting ultra-thin actresses and models significantly increased women’s concerns about their bodies.

Although on one level the results seem obvious, Grabe believes many people still resist the idea that a societal influence, like the media, can have a real impact on how women view themselves.

When individual experiments have found this relationship in the past, she explains, critics have often dismissed them for focusing on groups of particularly body-conscious women, such as college students, or exposing test subjects to unusually racy photos.

Grabe and Hyde, in contrast, analyzed data from every well-designed study on the topic they could find, thus avoiding much of this criticism.

“We’ve demonstrated that it doesn’t matter what the exposure is, whether it’s general TV watching in the evening, or magazines, or ads showing on a computer,” says Grabe.

“If the image is appearance-focused and sends a clear message about a woman’s body as an object, then it’s going to affect women,” she adds.

The effect also appears to be growing. The researchers’ analysis reveals that, on average, studies conducted in the 2000s show a larger influence of the media on women’s body image than do those from the 1990s, says Grabe.

“This suggests that despite all our efforts to teach women and girls to be savvy about the media and have healthy body practices, the media’s effect on how much they internalize the thin ideal is getting stronger,” she says.

The results are troubling because recent research has established body dissatisfaction as a major risk factor for low self-esteem, depression, obesity, and eating disorders, such as bulimia.

At the same time, women’s displeasure with their bodies has become so common that it’s now considered normal, says Grabe. She hopes that wider recognition of the media’s role will encourage people to see the issue as a societal one, rather than as a problem of individual women as it’s viewed now.

“I think we need to consider how we’re using media images as a culture to share the values we think are important, and the effect that has on our well-being, ” she says.

The approach Grabe and Hyde took in their study, called meta-analysis, offers a way to quantitatively examine an entire body of research at once.

In their case, this meant 77 carefully selected studies of the effects of appearance-focused media images on women’s body dissatisfaction, investment in their looks, adoption of the thin ideal, and eating behaviors and beliefs.

The analysis also included controlled, experimental studies, in which these effects were tested directly, and investigations that correlated body concerns with women’s self-reported consumption of media.

In simple terms, the meta-analysis placed test subjects from every study into two groups: those who were exposed to media images portraying women’s bodies and the thin ideal, and those who weren’t. It then asked whether differences existed between the two and the magnitude of the differences.

In the end, the researchers did find a significant difference, with women who were exposed to media reporting less satisfaction with their bodies. Notably, this difference was also seen across all four measures of body image concerns. (ANI)