But amid calls for “equality” from #FreeTheNipple is a little thing called social responsibility.
Celebrities like Jenner, Miley Cyrus, Bella Hadid and every Kardashian you can think of are not simply dressing for themselves.
They are dressing for millions and millions of followers worldwide, including girls as young as eight, girls who do not have the emotional maturity to understand their sexuality or how to express it in an age-appropriate way.
Kendall Jenner has more than 82.5 million followers on the photo-sharing platform Instagram, while her half-sister Kim Kardashian has 102 million. Kylie Jenner has 96.3 million.
Think they don’t influence young minds? Google #kyliejennerlipchallengegonewrong and you’ll see what happens when children try to imitate her surgically enhanced pout by putting their lips in a shot glass and inhaling.
Bleeding, lopsided lips are only part of it. It’s skewed notions of self-worth that are the greatest concern.
Placing exaggerated emphasis on physical appearance diminishes the importance of emotional wellness. And it is a deeply unfulfilling exercise.
Catharine Lumby is a media professor at Macquarie University and led a three-year study into the social media lives of 13-17 year olds.
Lumby says Instagram and other platforms have irrevocably changed the way kids view sex, love and relationships and how they communicate. The exchange of explicit images is as common as “pashing at parties”.
Social media is here to stay and its users are getting young and younger.
In 2013, YouTube, Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin were the most common sites accessed by kids aged eight to 11. Now it’s Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.
Girls as young as 10 are being coerced by same-age boys into sending nude photos of themselves, says psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg.
So it’s no longer only high school students who are at risk of the negative spin offs of social media use, including bullying, exploitation, eating disorders, depression or worse.
The pressure to look perfect — as defined by Jenner and co — is intense.
Look at the effort kids put into posting selfies — these might look like casual snaps but they’re far from it — and note the obsessive counting of “likes” and the charged comments such as “ur hot”, “what a ho” and “so f…able”.
Look at the way some girls dress for school formals. The aim is to wear as little as possible, with a wardrobe malfunction a la Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl almost a goal in itself. Hollywood tape, who needs it?
Parents and educators can talk to kids about self-respect, equality and being comfortable in their own skin — and they must — but when the idols of young people are social media exhibitionists, we are unlikely to see a return anytime soon to the days of style icon Audrey Hepburn, who said, “elegance is the only beauty that never fades”.
Join the movement to #SaveOurGirls http://freethesexploited.com/connect-with-us/
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