Assuming that young girls are not at risk from exposure to pornography leaves them vulnerable to its dangers, says Kristen Jenson, author of “Good Pictures Bad Pictures” and founder of Defend Young Minds (DYM).
“If we leave [girls] out of the conversation [about porn], we’re not protecting them,” said Jenson in an interview with ChurchLeaders about her newest book, “Good Pictures Bad Pictures Guide for Girls: How I Stay Safe, Smart & Confident.”
“We cannot protect girls by leaving them out of the conversation,” she reiterated. “And in some ways they become more vulnerable because we leave them out and we hand them a phone, we hand them social media, [and] we’re like, ‘They won’t be interested in pornography.’”
Parents want to believe “my girl’s a good girl, my daughter’s a good girl,” said Jenson. “Well, they’re all good girls. It’s not that they’re not good girls; it’s they’re biological girls. And if we have robot kids, then we don’t have a problem. We can just kind of, you know, reprogram them. But biological children are innately curious.”
‘Good Pictures Bad Pictures’ Author Kristen Jenson: Don’t Leave Girls Vulnerable
Kristen Jenson is a mother, grandmother, and the No. 1 bestselling author of “Good Pictures Bad Pictures” and “Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr.” Her books are designed to help parents and guardians introduce the concept of “bad pictures” to children in a safe and age-appropriate way.
Kids are equipped to identify pornographic imagery, understand why porn is harmful, and take practical steps to reject it. The books also offer tools to help kids “forget” a “bad picture” they have seen.
It is crucial that parents have repeated, age-appropriate conversations with children that provide kids with a vocabulary for identifying porn if they see it and an internal disposition to reject it, said Jenson. External filters and parental controls have an important role, but they are not fail-safe. Kids can always encounter pornography via other environments or people, such as friends who have been exposed.
Jenson’s newest book, for girls ages 7-12, focuses on challenges girls specifically tend to face.
Jenson said she used to believe the myth that pornography was primarily a problem for boys. Even though she no longer buys into that idea, she said the myth is still out there. “You know, we want girls to be pure,” she said. “We think that if they’re just biologically normal that something is wrong with them. Well, it’s not wrong with them. Kids are curious. Boys are curious, girls are curious.”
Jenson cited data from Barna that says 44% of women in America consume porn in some format. Books are “often how girls begin because they love stories,” Jenson said. “They love these stories of romance when they get to a certain age. And so we are leaving our girls vulnerable if we don’t include them in this conversation.”
Assuming that young girls are not at risk from exposure to p*rnography leaves them vulnerable to its dangers, says Kristen Jenson, author of Good Pictures Bad Pictures and founder of Defend Young Minds.
While it can be challenging for parents to consider that their daughters are in danger from porn, Jenson warned against being naive. “We can’t just, you know, put our head in the sand and say, ‘It’ll never happen. My kids are good kids. I take my kids to church…and they would never,’” she said. “Let me tell you, some of the best people I know are recovered from porn addiction. And you would be surprised at how well kids can hide this.”
For example, Jenson told the story of a mom who was picking up her daughters from a friend’s house and noticed the friend showing the girls something on a phone. When the mom asked her daughters what the friend was showing them, they told her that it was a My Little Pony video.
“This was before this mom had any concern,” said Jenson. “And so she just believed them.”
When, a few months later, the mother read the girls “Good Pictures Bad Pictures,” they told her that what they had really seen on the phone was porn. The mom would never have known that her daughters were exposed to porn had she not started the conversation about it with them.
“And these were little girls. These were like 7, 8, 9-year old girls,” said Jenson. “And so the minute they walk out the door, even at grandma’s house, some kids can get exposed to things.”
The mother told Jenson, “They lied because they didn’t have the vocabulary to even talk about what they had seen and they didn’t know if they would get into trouble.”
Kids need to know they won’t get into trouble because they “worry,” said Jenson. “They feel it’s wrong. No one’s ever told them about this problem, and they don’t know what to do with it. So they just don’t do anything. Or they lie.”
Social scientists, said Jenson, “are finding that girls bear the brunt of the bad consequences of looking at pornography. Girls who look at pornography are sexualized earlier. They see themselves as sexual objects.”
“They accept sexual violence more readily. They engage in riskier sexual acts earlier,” she said. Porn consumption is “much more harmful to girls physically and emotionally.”
Jenson’s book for girls brings up the idea of objectifying other people. While boys do experience objectification, girls tend to experience it more, Jenson said, “because pornography teaches that a woman’s body is just parts, objects.”
In “Good Pictures Bad Pictures Guide for Girls,” kids learn that the way we treat objects, such as a soccer ball, is different from how we treat people. Kicking a soccer ball is not going to hurt the ball. But when “you kick a person, there’s a much different set of consequences,” Jenson said. “That’s why, when you objectify people, it’s easier to hurt them, right? It’s easier to be violent to them.”
“And that is what we find in today’s pornography, is such degrading violence towards women,” she said. “And so what happens when you have a girl watching this? What does she think? What are her expectations about sex when she gets older?”
Watch the whole interview with Kristen Jenson below for more resources and to learn how pastors can support parents in the fight against pornography.
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