Are there gender differences among communication students when they opine about sexualized children's fashion images?

The academic article has been published by the Revista Española de Sociología (RES), the official journal of the Federación Española de Sociología (FES), the scientific society of Spanish sociology that brings together more than 3,000 sociologists. The aim of the research was to measure the influence of the media in shaping perceptions: possible gender differences in measuring perceptions of stereotypes of girls in the fashion media and in the audience surveyed, students and young communication professionals.

For this purpose, an online survey was used, answered by 449 young people between 18 and 25 years old, Spanish university students of Advertising and PR and linked to the media. Four images from fashion magazines(Vogue, Relva and Hola) that publish children's clothing catalogs were analyzed, images chosen with a greater or lesser sexualizing charge, according to different academically validated scales.

The article is novel for dealing with some less addressed aspects of the appearance of fashion -wicks, stockings and adult fabrics- and for analyzing a format of creativity different from advertising, such as fashion magazine editorials. Publicity is not easily recognizable by the reader and editorial styling brings together the collection of several brands, but it is also capable of constructing cultural meanings around childhood. This study is part of the activities carried out by the Responsible Communication and Vulnerable Audiences research group at the Complutense University of Madrid. The group works closely with the observatory The Family Watch to introduce topics of interest on media exposure and online gambling, two of the topics under investigation.

The following conclusions have been drawn, leading to practical implications for the industry:

• The analysis of the survey results allowed us to determine that women have a more critical and detail-oriented attitude than men, who mainly pointed out the attributes related to body display: garments that accentuate the chest, erotically charged and very short garments.
• The study is also of great social relevance for communication students who will be professionally involved in the process of creating advertising images and fashion styling, as well as to raise public awareness about the effects of images focused on children's body image. Stylists, editors, advertisers, photographers, fashion designers, parents and educators are called upon to reflect on the use of images that harm children. Without being the target audience of the image, since parents buy the clothes for them, minors have access to it through its viralization by celebrities and imitate its aesthetics.
• Subsequent to the publication, a sustainable proposal for the aesthetics of the objectified girl present in social networks was presented at the II Congress on Pornography, Childhood and Women, held at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. With the Save the Children report , 2020: Sexual (Mis)information: pornography and adolescence and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No. 5. Gender Equality. Empowering women and girls, points to the need to promote through commercial communications a sustainable lifestyle for children, based on behaviors that promote the wellbeing of personal and real communication. Communication and creative professionals often speak of the fiction of images represented in fashion as a game of make-up. However, behaviors related to eroticization are currently detrimental to the developing child, since they present styles that, without pretending to educate, suggest empty ways of valuing oneself.
• The professional in the usual media environments to which the minor has access finds the tension between developing a commercial communication in line with the aesthetics of objectification and the social commitment to present the minor in his or her integrity, with values that go beyond his or her physical appearance.

As for future research, we wonder: if in commercial communications there is a greater display of female bodies as opposed to other qualities, is there also a greater awareness on the part of women towards sexualization or, on the contrary, do they tend to reproduce those archetypes in their self-representations, mainly in social networks and therefore they are more vulnerable? In this sense, it is necessary to raise awareness among girls in workshops on the use of the image by advertisers and by themselves in their social networks.

• María José Narros González is a professor in the Department of Business Organization and Marketing at the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism of the Complutense University of Madrid, where she received her doctorate in Economics and Business Administration and a master's degree in Marketing.
• Carmen Llovet Rodríguez is a professor at ESIC Business & Marketing School and ESIC Business & Marketing School and Antonio de Nebrija University, international doctorate in Communication from the University of Navarra and researcher at Southern Illinois University and Glasgow Caledonian University.
• Mónica Díaz-Bustamante Ventisca is Vice-Dean for Institutional Relations and Economic Management. She is a lecturer in the Department of Business Organization and Marketing at the Complutense University of Madrid and coordinator of the MBA program.