M. Gigi Durham Talks to Dr.Phil About THE LOLITA EFFECT

M. Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect, will be appear on the Dr. Phil show today! In a show called "Growing Up Too Fast," Dr. Phil talks with parents who say it’s difficult to raise their teen daughter in an oversexed, celebrity-obsessed, cosmetic surgery-seeking society. Check your local listings for the time and channel, or go online to find about more about today's provocative show and The Lolita Effect.

M. Gigi Durham's THE LOLITA EFFECT in Time Magazine

This week's Time Magazine includes a feature article on "The Truth About Teens," noting that "girlhood sexiness seems to be everywhere: on TV shows and in movies, in advertising, in teen magazines and all over the Internet." The article includes comments from M. Gigi Durham, University of Iowa professor and author of The Lolita Effect: How the Media Sexualizes Young Girls and What We Can Do About it."

The End of Innocence? THE LOLITA EFFECT in People Magazine

In this week's People magazine, University of Iowa Professor and author of The Lolita Effect, M.Gigi Durham discusses our culture's sexualization of younger and younger girls-and what we can do to protect our daughters. In a Q & A with Nina Burleigh, Durham has this advice for what parents can do to curb the The Lolita Effect: "Talk about how clothing sends signals. Convey that girls are multidimensional: athletic, artistic, intelligent. Sexuality is only one part."

M. Gigi Durham's THE LOLITA EFFECT in The Washington Post Book World

In yesterday's Washington Post Book World, Jennifer Ruark reviews The Lolita Effect in a round-up of new parenting books: " I accept Durham's premise that no one is immune from the media's influence, and her book offers dozens of helpful, specific ideas for rendering it less potent. Durham calls for media-literacy education in the K-12 curriculum. She writes wisely that there's no point in trying to force girls to reject the Lolita effect outright. But we can raise questions and present different interpretations of the images that surround us. Elementary schoolgirls, for example, might be asked, Why do you think the girl in this picture is wearing hardly any clothing? Older girls might consider how words and images work together to convey messages. If Cosmopolitan were named Sleazy or Trashy, would we read its cover image differently? We can help children see that the fashion, beauty and fitness industries -- along with the mass media that need their ads -- depend on purveying titillating, unrealistic pictures of what it means to be "hot." As my daughter hurtles toward adolescence, I am grateful for such strategies. It's good to know I can do something more useful than shout "You'll wear that out of the house over my dead body!"