Sexualising schoolgirls is not OK, why are retailers not catching on?
H&M is in hot water again after complaints that one of its advertisements sexualised children.
Released in Australia as part of a regional back-to-school campaign, the image features two schoolgirls posing against a pink background. The pair are wearing grey pinafore dresses, frilled socks and Mary Jane shoes, and are looking back at the camera over their shoulders. So far, so good.
However, concerns were raised over the caption: “Make those heads turn in H&M’s Back to School fashion.”
With its allusion to catcalling and dressing for attention, “make heads turn” is an odd choice of phrase to pair with childhood. Shifting the onus on to the child for seeking out the adult gaze, it smacks of the insidious creepiness of Vladimir Nabokov’s book Lolita.
Following the backlash, H&M pulled the image, saying: “We are deeply sorry for the offence this has caused and we are looking into how we present campaigns going forward.”
All this points back to bigger issues of how, even in the year 2024, companies are still making such howlers. The journey from first idea to finished advert is long and complicated, passing through dozens of people en route.
So how – once again – an image with inappropriate overtones like these has made it through this protracted process is anyone’s guess.
Too often it seems those at the top are stuck in a dated “sex sells” mindset, and anything is acceptable in the endless quest to increase sales. To counter this, many organisations have made very public hirings of equality and diversity teams, yet the clangers continue ad nauseam.
As brands struggle to remain relevant to the TikTok generation, social boundaries are increasingly being challenged to try to hit that sweet spot: going viral. When clumsily handled, however, these botched stabs at appearing cool alienate the very audience they hoped to attract by going viral for all the wrong reasons.
Many from the younger generations of digital natives are more clued up and aware of the pervasive sexism and racism surrounding them – rejecting how older people have had to simply “suck it up” to be able to function. As this new guard forges a language for themselves and their lives, they are turning their backs on the established order of things in favour of an online universe that has been built, largely, by their peers.
The sexual barrage that women face is very real. For most, the sanctity of childhood is all the more precious given what girls will have to deal with in later years.
H&M is originally from Sweden, a land that defines itself on its equal social standing of women and a culture of gender respect and empowerment, a fact that only makes this error more depressing.
Yet, sadly, the idea of sexualising a schoolgirl is nothing new. Nabakov wrote his disturbing piece almost 70 years ago. Britney Spears was dressed in a school uniform and pigtails in 1998 for her song Baby One More Time.
In December 2022, Gucci drew flak for images of Harry Styles wearing a T-shirt with a teddy bear while standing next to a child-sized mattress. The images were pulled after it was pointed out that linking a grown man to a child’s bed was not OK.
Late last year, Benetton withdrew an image of two young girls posing in their underwear, at the same time that
Chinese retail platform Temu ran into trouble for a photo of a girl posing in a bikini. The list goes on.
The line between childhood and adulthood is important for many reasons.
No doubt some will cry “wokery” for this latest image to fall foul of shifting social codes, and say that “harmless banter” is being driven to extinction. But woke vigilance needs to continue if we are to protect our children from the worst of the world. Anyone up in arms may wish to remember the adage of walking a mile in another’s moccasins.
Live a day as a teenage girl being leered at by men old enough to be her father. Spend some time running the gauntlet of catcalling. Think how it must feel being stared at and talked about, and made so aware of your own physicality that getting into crowded lifts is an uncomfortable experience. Or perhaps imagine it is your young daughter in the H&M ad, seemingly inviting adult men to turn their heads to stare at her.
Whether we like to think about it or not, images that try to normalise the sexualisation of children have wide-reaching repercussions, not least on the young trying to navigate the very adult world of sexual attention. They need and deserve our protection from the murky underbelly of society, where some actively look to exploit childish naivety.
It’s not just harmless banter now, is it?
It seems those at the top are stuck in a dated mindset and anything is acceptable