Coming to Terms With Sexualization.

This article historicizes and politicizes contemporary sexualization research by situating and interrogating it as part of an older feminist agenda. It reviews sexualization research and demonstrates how this informs public debate and policy measures. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork with 31 girls aged 11-12, it analyzes how girls observe the sexualized world around them, and whether and how their everyday practices of appearance and media consumption are articulated within contemporary sexualized culture and contribute to self-sexualization. Presenting girls' responses to sexualized media content, as well as in-depth biographies of diverse engagements with sexualization, it speaks against simple sexualization theses because of the complex articulation of social and family background, everyday life and reactions to media content. Furthermore, it shows how girls deny, accommodate, and resist sexualization. It argues that current societal concerns are too easily articulated with a limited feminist agenda that frames girls as inevitable victims and denies their agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]