Right: Toys, including the Barbie doll and its imitators, are seen by many as "role models" for their child owners.Further implications
Further implicationsIt is difficult not to agree with Senator Andrew Bartlett, that the recent Senate committee investigating the supposed sexualisation of children in the media did a comprehensive job and made a series of reasonable recommendations.
The committee has been criticised for not being more decisive. The fact remains, however, that any set of committee recommendations are no more than that. It remains to be seen whether the various branches of media will take any of them up with sufficient vigour to have them make an impact. What the committee did not do was make any recommendations that would have required the Government to pass new legislation in order to enact them.
In the short-term this is probably a good thing. The type of law that might have been enacted would include a scaling back of or substantial alteration to the system of self-regulation currently applied within the advertising industry and elsewhere. As the recent controversy surrounding the work of Bill Henson demonstrated, there is a fine balance to be struck between protecting vulnerable members of the community and not intruding on the rights of others.
The current set of recommendations give the various arms of the media industry encouragement to put their own house in order. Given the apparently growing sensitivity within the general public, and among a number of our most prominent political leaders, to the whole issue of how children are depicted, it would clearly be in the interests of the media industry to ensure it treats this matter appropriately. If it does not it seems likely that the next Senate committee to investigate the sexualisation of children will make some recommendations to change the law. It may well then find a Parliament ready to do so.