ORIGINAL ARTICLE Too Sexualized to be Taken Seriously? Perceptions of a Girl in Childlike vs. Sexualizing Clothing Kaitlin Graff & Sarah K. Murnen & Linda Smolak Published online: 13 March 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract Girls in the United States are increasingly con- fronted with a sexualized culture, including sexualized clothing made especially for pre-teen girls. Previous re- search has shown that when adult women are portrayed as sexualized they are seen as less competent. In the present study we depicted a pre-teen girl in sexualized clothing to determine if similar effects would occur as have been found with depictions of adult women. One hundred sixty two male and female students from a small liberal arts college in the Midwestern U.S. looked at one of three images of a fifth-grade girl (obtained from an internet advertisement and manipulated through computer software) who was presented in either childlike clothing, somewhat sexualized clothing, or definitely sexualized clothing. Level of accomplishment was also manipulated so that the girl was described as either average or above average in accomplishment. Participants then rated the girl on ten different traits. The clothing and accomplishment manipulations significantly affected ratings of the girl’ s masculine-stereotyped traits such that the girl who was portrayed as more sexualized and less accomplished was seen as the least intelligent, competent, determined, and capable. In addition, the sexualized girl was seen as perhaps “responsible” for her sexualized clothing in that she was rated relatively low in self-respect and morality. Possible implica- tions of the sexualization of girls are discussed. Keywords Sexual objectification . Sexy clothing . Gender stereotypes Introduction Women are increasingly being portrayed as “sex objects” in American culture (e.g., Reichert and Carpenter 2004; Stankiewicz and Rosselli 2008). Recent studies have shown that sexualizing women can lead to perceptions that they are not competent to succeed in masculine-stereotyped domains (Glick et al. 2005; Gurung and Chrouser 2007). The sexual- ization of women is an important issue as it is believed to reinforce the lower status of women and contribute to body preoccupation and dissatisfaction among women (Smolak and Murnen 2011). In recent years, this culture of sexualization present in the U.S. has trickled down to girls, according to the report of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (APA 2007). In the present study we extend the research conducted on images of sexual- ized women to determine the effects of sexualizing a pre-teen girl on perceptions of her, testing a sample of U.S. male and female undergraduate students from the Midwest. Similar to the research with perceptions of sexualized adult women, sexualized girls might be seen as less capable and competent than their non-sexualized peers. The possible effects of the sexualization of girls is of recent concern in Australia, the U.S. and Great Britain. The cultural encouragement of the sexual- ization of girls might affect girls’ development in negative ways. If sexualized girls are seen as less competent they might be treated that way, and learn to “accept” limited roles for themselves that are focused on appearance, encouraging body concerns and limited achievement in domains not related to appearance. Objectification and Sexualization The sexual objectification of women can involve basing women’ s primary value on their sexual appeal to men, and K. Graff : S. K. Murnen (*) : L. Smolak Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, USA e-mail: murnen@kenyon.edu Sex Roles (2012) 66:764–775 DOI 10.1007/s11199-012-0145-3