Gendered Clothing and the Psychology of Sexualisation in Girlhood

Walk into almost any children’s clothing store, and the contrast is hard to miss. Boys’ sections are filled with loose T-shirts and cargo shorts built for climbing and running. Girls’ sections are filled with cropped tops and low-rise leggings, and in some documented cases, thong underwear sized for girls as young as seven to ten years old (American Psychological Association, 2007; Cook & Kaiser, 2004).

This is not simply a unique example, but rather just the beginning, as scholars have been observing the connection between this trend and the gradual rise in societal awareness of the problem over the past several decades. Clothes, among all other everyday items, teach every child what their body can achieve. It teaches boys to be comfortable and adventurous while making girls realise that their beauty matters a lot. The present article discusses gender-based clothes and sizes, offering a psychological perspective on the sexualization issue and presenting a possible solution.

Hence, this writing tackles the problem of the sexualisation of women and girls through the lens of gender-specific clothing and sizing. Initially, the argument will be presented from a psychological standpoint, demonstrating the rationale behind such assumptions and providing essential backing for the presented claims. Furthermore, the visual impact of sexualized clothing and its influence on the perception of female beauty will be explored. Finally, a possible alternative will be offered and discussed in detail as well.

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What Counts as “Sexualised” Clothing?

The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualisation of Girls (2007) defined sexualisation as occurring when a person’s value is primarily derived from their sexual appeal, when they are held to a strict standard of physical attractiveness which is equated to being sexy, when they are treated as an object for others to use rather than a complete person, or when sexuality is inappropriately imposed on them.

1. The Retail Evidence

Clothing plays a major role in several of these criteria at once, as an object of clothing can simultaneously reveal or emphasise a sexualised body part and be specifically marketed to children. Goodin, Van Denburg, Murnen, and Smolak (2011) conducted a content analysis of clothing sold for girls aged six to fourteen across fifteen popular US retailers to test this directly. They found that just over 4 per cent of the clothing analysed had sexualising characteristics alone, but a further 25 per cent combined sexualising features, such as animal print, cut-outs, or slogans referencing attractiveness, with childlike features such as polka dots or cartoon prints.

Stores which explicitly marketed towards the “tween” demographic, such as Abercrombie Kids, had the highest proportion of sexualising clothing of all the retailers studied, suggesting that the more a brand leans into marketing a particular pre-teen identity, the more likely that identity is to be centred on adult style sexiness rather than childhood itself.

2. Why “Childlike but Sexy” Doesn’t Cancel Out

This combination is important because, the researchers noted, adults in a related study rated this “childlike but sexy” clothing as equally sexualising to clothing which had no childlike elements, meaning that the childish styling does little to reduce the underlying message a piece of clothing delivers. A crop top with a cartoon print is still read as a crop top; the polka dots do not nullify what the cut of the garment communicates, just make the combination more socially acceptable to sell and, to an extent, to buy.

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From “Tween” to Grown: The Marketing of Age Ambiguity

Much of this pattern follows from one specific marketing invention; Cook and Kaiser (2004) documented how the children’s clothing industry created the “tween” category in the 1990s, an age bracket deliberately placed between childhood and the teenage years. Unlike earlier categories, such as “subteen”, which framed the age group as a temporary step towards being a teenager, the tween category was marketed as a desirable identity in its own right, and closely associated with trying on adult style femininity, including its sexualised elements, years before adolescence begins.

The researchers argue that clothing became one of the primary tools for constructing this age-ambiguous identity, since it allowed retailers to sell girls a version of adult sexiness scaled down to a child’s body rather than offering an alternative which was genuinely age-appropriate. Before the 1990s, children’s clothing was largely designed and marketed around practicality and modest variations on adult style; the twin category shifted this by treating preadolescent girls as a distinct consumer group whose “needs” were, not coincidentally, largely dictated by adults working in marketing departments.

This is not necessarily done entirely against the wishes of children; later scholarship has emphasised that girls actively navigate and enjoy these fashion choices rather than simply absorbing them, using clothing to express identity and to fit in with peers, and to feel grown up in ways that are developmentally normal. Still, the options a girl has to choose from, which are largely dictated by adult marketers, are heavily skewed towards viewing girlhood itself as something which is to be dressed up as sexually appealing, limiting the scope of “choice” when the available shelf space has already been filtered through a sexualised lens before a child walks into the store.

Read More: How Clothing Affects Self Esteem And Body Image In Different Genders

Objectification Theory: How Clothing Shapes Self Image

Psychologists Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) developed objectification theory to explain what happens when a culture consistently treats female bodies as objects to be looked at and evaluated rather than as the physical foundation for a full person’s experience. Over time, they argued, girls and women can internalise this outside perspective, learning to view their own bodies from a third-person perspective, a phenomenon known as self-objectification.

1. Links to Body Shame and Mental Health

This habit of self-monitoring has been linked, in later research, to increased body shame, appearance anxiety, and in more serious cases, depression and disordered eating, as a body under constant self-surveillance rarely gets to simply exist without being evaluated. Importantly, the objectification theory is not suggesting that clothing is the key driver of these problems; it is simply one element that can be used to understand the cultural context of gender in which these issues arise.

While attitudes in general, and media representations in particular, are often difficult to quantify on a scale, clothing options are rather evidently defined. This is why the researchers were able to successfully associate particular clothing choices with both societal and internal perceptions. Clothing turns out to be one of the more direct, daily mechanisms to utilise.

2. Clothing Choices as a Measurable Signal

According to Tiggemann and Andrew (2012), women with high levels of self-objectification, that is, those who consistently evaluated themselves from the perspective of others, were substantially more likely to choose their clothing based on fashion and substantially less likely to select garments for the comfort they provided, compared to women with lower levels of self-objectification. In other words, the clothing a girl surrounds herself with, whether it is sexualized or not, affects her level of self-objectification. A frequent choice of clothes that prioritises looks over comfort leads to a preference for what makes one look good rather than what makes one feel good.

3. Evidence Beyond Western Contexts

This pattern is not confined to Western countries. Dwivedi, Sharma, Vajpeyi, and Zaidi (2023) studied 400 adolescent girls across schools in Uttar Pradesh, India, and found exceptionally high levels of body surveillance, or the habitual monitoring of one’s own appearance from an outside perspective, along with high rates of body shaming and rigid appearance-related control beliefs among the sample. Their findings suggest that self-objectification is not a phenomenon limited to the specific retail environments studied in the United States, but a pattern that shows up wherever appearance-focused cultural messaging, including clothing, reaches girls, India very much included.

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The Real-World Consequences: Perception and Judgment

1. How Clothing Shapes Others’ Perceptions

The effects of sexualised clothing are not limited to how girls view themselves; they extend to how others view them. Graff, Murnen, and Smolak (2012) conducted an experiment that asked adult participants to view an identical photograph of a young girl dressed either in childlike clothing or in sexualising clothing to rate her on traits such as intelligence, competence, and morality.

The girl depicted in sexualising clothing was consistently rated as less intelligent and less capable of moral judgment than the same girl dressed in childlike clothing, despite nothing else about her changing between conditions. Participants were essentially reading intelligence and character off a ten-year-old’s outfit. This judgment is far more reflective of cultural assumptions than anything which the child herself demonstrated.

2. A Worsening Trend Over Four Decades

This is not a static or improving trend. Graff, Murnen, and Krause (2013) analysed thousands of images from two popular girls’ magazines published between 1971 and 2011. They found that the number of sexualising characteristics present in depictions of girls significantly increased over those forty years. These included low-cut tops and tight-fitting clothing. Meanwhile, childlike characteristics in one of the two magazines actually decreased over the same stretch of time. In other words, the images girls are surrounded by have not only remained sexualised. They have steadily become more so, across four decades, as conversations about the issue have grown louder.

3. The Double Standard in School Dress Codes

More recently, Lim, Lennon, and Jones (2024) spoke with high school girls about their lives and feelings on school dress codes. They uncovered the double standard. Despite an equal number of male and female students, girls’ bodies were unfairly singled out as inappropriate and distracting. This used the same bodily features (the same shoulders, thighs, and midriffs). These are the features that sexualised clothing lines simultaneously advertise and seek to accentuate.

The girls in this study spoke of constant scrutiny and blame of themselves when other people reacted negatively to their bodies. This reinforced the objectifying viewpoint in a systemic and institutional setting. A girl’s body, regardless of her intent or desires, is something to be judged and regulated by others.

Read More: Exploring the Impact of Clothing Choices on Emotional Well-being

What Can Be Done?

1. Clothing Isn’t the Villain

None of this research is saying that clothing is the villain. Girls wanting to wear fashionable or form-fitting clothes are not doing anything wrong. Self-expression is a perfectly healthy part of growing up. Many girls would choose to wear stylish or trendy clothes simply for fun, rather than being manipulated into it. The issue researchers are concerned with pertains to the vastness of choice and the subtlety of implications in the default options. This is especially true among younger children who haven’t yet developed their critical mindset. They have not yet had the capability to see what a clothing rack is trying to imply about their own worth.

2. Practical Suggestions

Some suggestions in this regard may include:

• Having open conversations with children about the difference between dressing for comfort and play or for self-expression, versus dressing in order to adopt an adult, sexualized image, without shaming either choice or focusing on clothing as the centre of a potentially volatile discussion.
• Seeking out clothing retailers that focus on items which enable a child to engage in active play, rather than shopping at retailers which seek to appeal to an adult sense of style.
• Providing a general example of one’s own relationship to clothing as something which balances comfort/activity with style, which can help to broaden a child’s understanding beyond what is presented in media.
• Encourage schools to adopt dress code policies that focus on genuinely practical concerns rather than policing girls’ bodies specifically, which helps avoid reinforcing the same objectifying lesson that clothing racks are already teaching.
• Support continued research and public conversation, of the kind the APA Task Force (2007) started, which puts pressure on retailers to reconsider design choices they have normalised gradually enough that many adults no longer notice them.

3. A Slow but Meaningful Shift

Change in this area tends to be slow and incremental. It is driven by parents asking different questions at checkout. It is also driven by journalists and researchers continuing to document the pattern. There is also occasional public pushback against particularly egregious products. Still, the fact that this conversation exists is a meaningful shift. It continues to grow from a marketplace which, until relatively recently, faced almost no scrutiny at all.

Conclusion

Gendered clothing sizing not only determines what fits. Research repeatedly shows it also teaches children something more, and it does so before they can even articulate the lesson. It teaches them whose bodies are built for movement and whose bodies are built to be looked at. Objectification theory helps explain what this means psychologically. Girls who grow up surrounded by appearance-focused clothing options are likely to internalise that same appearance-focused lens. This lens is towards their own bodies. This habit is linked to body shame and lower wellbeing later in life.

The consequences are not only internal. Sexualised clothing measurably changes how others judge a girl’s intelligence and character. This manifests in everyday spaces such as school dress codes. The most useful takeaway is not to panic about every single piece of clothing. Instead, it is to be aware of the pattern. Notice when “choice” in children’s fashion is really just a narrow set of options dictated by decades of marketing. And make space, both at home and in the wider market. Make space for clothing which allows girls to be simply comfortable, playful, and unremarkable. Like boys have long been allowed to be.

References +

• American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report-full.pdf
• Cook, D. T., & Kaiser, S. B. (2004). Betwixt and between: Age ambiguity and the sexualization of the female consuming subject. Journal of Consumer Culture, 4(2), 203–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540504043682
• Dwivedi, M., Sharma, S., Vajpeyi, L., & Zaidi, S. Z. H. (2023). Level of self-objectification among adolescent girls from co-educational schools and all-girls schools: A comparative study. Annals of Neurosciences. https://doi.org/10.1177/09727531231185929
• Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x
• Goodin, S. M., Van Denburg, A., Murnen, S. K., & Smolak, L. (2011). Putting on sexiness: A content analysis of the presence of sexualizing characteristics in girls’ clothing. Sex Roles, 65(1–2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9966-8
• Graff, K. A., Murnen, S. K., & Krause, A. K. (2013). Low-cut shirts and high-heeled shoes: Increased sexualization across time in magazine depictions of girls. Sex Roles, 69(11–12), 571–582. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-013-0321-0
• Graff, K., Murnen, S. K., & Smolak, L. (2012). Too sexualized to be taken seriously? Perceptions of a girl in childlike vs. sexualizing clothing. Sex Roles, 66(11–12), 764–775. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0145-3
• Lim, H., Lennon, S. J., & Jones, D. (2024). Objectification found in high school girls’ experience with dress code enforcement. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X211058434
• Tiggemann, M., & Andrew, R. (2012). Clothing choices, weight, and trait self-objectification. Body Image, 9(3), 409–412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2012.02.003