Crackdown on music videos demanded to protect children
Friday, 26 February 2010 12:00 AM
By politics.co.uk staff
Music videos with suggestive themes should be cracked down on to prevent the sexualisation of children, a Home Office report has suggested.
It also called for tougher regulation of sexual imagery, a ban on under-16s buying 'lads' mags' and for games consoles to be sold with parental controls already locked on.
"Unless sexualisation is accepted as harmful, we will miss an important opportunity. to broaden young people's beliefs about where their value lies," said Dr Linda Papadopoulos, the psychologist who authored the report.
With the increasing prevalence in advertising of pornographic imagery, children were learning that men were there to use women and women were there to be used, she argued.
The pressure on men was to be macho and dominant while the pressure on women was to be submissive and available.
Among the other proposals in the report, Dr Papadopoulos called for Jobcentre adverts for lap-dancing and massage parlours to be banned and pro-bulimia and pro-anorexia websites to be shut down by internet service providers.
Dr Papadopoulos said: "The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm.
"Both the images we consume and the way we consume them are lending credence to the idea that women are there to be used and that men are there to use them."
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