Is pop music sexualising our children?

Ed: The debate isn't new. What may be new is a 'yes' voice in the Guardian.

Switch on any music television channel and there's Rihanna writhing with your Weetabix, Shakira cage-dancing at teatime. Occasionally, desperate to stop my sanity being crushed by the wheels of the bus going round and round, I do still turn on the television to find jumping-about music for my small daughters – then turn it off immediately after being confronted by an oiled-up Britney in a bikini. The words are beyond them, but they can see how she moves, how she stares, how she dresses. It's the tedious, Nuts-and-Zoo stuff to which they will be exposed all their lives and it's disappointing to find youth culture – in theory and dreams, the vanguard of the fresh, the new, the liberated – peddling old men's fantasy. Read more