Page 3979 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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I will not table it because it is my only copy at the moment. I actually had to rifle it out of my daughter’s bookshelf last week in preparation for this debate. It is a spectacularly compelling publication that looks at many of the issues, not just in advertising but in the media in general and how much of the media in general today do women no good service and do young women no good service.
Selena Ewing, in her publication, in a magazine style which in many ways mimics the magazines that she is analysing, looks at the objectification of women and makes some fairly substantial and hard-hitting comments. I think some of them would, given the tenor of Ms Hunter’s comments, make her a little uncomfortable.
There are really strong comments about the corporate approach to demeaning young women and the impact that this is having—the corporate approach by corporations like Playboy and the impact and the penetration that the Playboy brand has had amongst young people. I notice it often and think why is it that young people—and not just young people; I actually saw a member of staff here not long ago with a Playboy logo pen—would go and advertise for Hugh Heffner who is nothing more than a very dirty and very old man.
What does it say? What it says is that the young girls think that the bunnies are cute. The bunnies are not cute. It is a symbol of objectification of women. It is a symbol of exploitation of women and it is something that we should be encouraging our girls to be aware of and to avoid at all possible opportunities where they can be objectified and told how they should think, how they should behave, how they should look, and, if they do not meet all of these criteria, they are in many ways worthless individuals.
I do congratulate Ms Hunter for bringing this matter forward but I foreshadow that I too will move an amendment, which has been circulated, which I believe will put some more power and more strength into this motion and may come up with something which we can take away and actually provide a service to the community.
There are many measures that have been proposed. Ms Hunter has already dwelt upon the recommendations of the Senate committee and the government response but we still have a long way to go. The government response has come up with a code of practice which, although many people have signed up to it, has been substantially ignored.
Most of the glossy magazines, the Girlfriend-type magazines and the Dolly magazines, tend to have token articles from time to time about body image, whilst surrounding those articles with photo-shopped images of improbable body forms which tell the average young girl looking at the magazine that they may as well give up and go home now because they will never obtain those body images. When we give people these bad images and bad information about their body image, the damage is substantial.
Ms Hunter referred to Amanda Gordon’s comments and the Australian Psychological Association. The American Psychological Association has done similar research and it does show that these images and this persistent sexualisation of young people,
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