Media exposure is also an important source of sexualization in early adolescence. Research suggests that 60% of middle school girls read “teen” magazines at least two to five times per month (Field et al., 1999). The majority of print advertisements in these magazines portray women as sexual objects (Stankiewicz & Rosselli, 2008). Levin and Kilbourne (2008) described a variety of these ads, including one for Converse “Chuck Taylor” sneakers portraying a young couple with the boy grabbing the girls’ buttocks. Indeed, only men’s magazines are more likely to objectify women in advertisements (Stankiewics & Rosselli, 2008), a phenomenon that might affect boys’ ideas about how girls ought to behave, look, and be treated. Adolescent boys believe that thinness influences a girl’s attractiveness, a preference that reflects media images of women (Paxton, Norris, Wertheim, Durkin, & Anderson, 2005). That such ads are successful in convincing girls that they need to be beautiful is evident in the over $8 billion they spend annually on beauty products (Levin & Kilbourne, 2008).

— Self-Objectification in Women: Causes, Consequences and Counteractions