How hyper-sexualised messages harm kids and what you can do about it.

Young people are bombarded with hyper-sexualised messages and images in media, billboards, toys, games, magazines and clothing.  Pornography is invading the lives of young people at unprecedented rates.

In the DVD, Melinda takes us on a visual tour of popular culture.  She unpacks how the proliferation of sexual imagery and messages contributes to a distorted view of bodies, relationships and sexuality in girls and boys, and affects our ability to raise happy, healthy, resilient kids.

“Melinda’s presentation leaves audiences reeling.  She delivers her message with a clarity and commonsense without peer.” – Steve Biddulph, author, Raising Boys, Raising Girls

Purchase Big Porn Inc, Getting Real, Faking It and the Ruby Who? book and DVD in one bundle for $100 and save 20% off the individual price.

Purchase Big Porn Inc, Getting Real and Faking It in one bundle for $70 and save 20% off the individual price.

Purchase Getting Real, Faking It and Ruby Who? DVD in one bundle for $60 and save 12% off the individual price.

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity.

Purchase the DVD and the beautifully illustrated children’s book together here for only $35 - saving 10% on the individual price.

“This powerful and humane book is a breakthrough…Big Porn Inc shows us we are poisoning our own spirits.” - Steve Biddulph

“A landmark publication” - Clive Hamilton 

The unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.

Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography.

Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray (eds)

Contributors: Abigail Bray, Anna van Heeswijk, Anne Mayne, Asja Armanda, Betty McLellan, Caroline, Caroline Norma, Caroline Taylor, Catharine MacKinnon, Christopher Kendall, Chyng Sun, Diana Russell, Diane L Rosenfeld, Gail Dines, Helen Pringle, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Jeffrey Masson, Julia Long, Linda Thompson, Maggie Hamilton, Matt McCormack Evans, Meagan Tyler, Melinda Liszewski, Melinda Tankard Reist, Melissa Farley, Natalie Nenadic, Nina Funnell, Renate Klein, Robert Jensen, Robi Sonderegger, Ruchira Gupta, Sheila Jeffreys, Stella, Susan Hawthorne.

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“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” - Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist

Getting Real puts the spotlight on a critical issue of international concern: the sexualisation and objectification of girls and women in the media, popular culture and society more broadly.

Girls and young women are growing up in an increasingly sexualised environment.  Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a ‘thin, hot, sexy’ norm.

Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.

Getting Real brings together for the first time, some of the most vocal critics of the widespread pornification of culture. Academics, psychologists, authors and activists, they call corporations, the media and the sex industry to account for creating this toxic environment.

Melinda Tankard Reist (ed)

Contributors: Tania Andrusiak, Steve Biddulph, Abigail Bray, Selena Ewing, Melissa Farley, Julie Gale, Maggie Hamilton, Noni Hazlehurst, Clive Hamilton, Renate Klein, Betty McLellan, Louise Newman, Emma Rush, Melinda Tankard Reist and Lauren Rosewarne.

MORE ENDORSEMENTS…

Do you read women’s lifestyle magazines?  Know someone who does?  Have you thought about how magazines might affect you when you read them?  While millions of women around the world seem to lap up the magazines’ mix of fashion, sex, relationship advice and product promotion, Faking It takes a more cautious and critical view.

Faking It reflects the body of academic research on magazines, mass media, and the sexual objectification of women.

Author: Selena Ewing  Editor: Melinda Tankard Reist

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity.  Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others.  Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Winner: Audience award – BIFF Kids Film Festival

Winner: Best International Family Short – Garden State Film Festival

Ruby Who? A film by Hailey Bartholomew and Natala Stuetz

Starring Zali Bartholomew

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity.  Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others.  Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Written by: Andrew & Hailey Bartholomew

Illustrated by: Alarna Zinn

Defiant Birth says that society’s demands for physical perfection are placing enormous pressure on women to terminate ‘imperfect’ foetuses diagnosed by prenatal technology.

The intensely moving and courageous stories of 20 women who continued their pregnancies despite immense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations to terminate, are told in Defiant Birth.

Defiant Birth is the story of women from around the world who were told they should not have their babies because of perceived disabilities – either in the child or themselves. Facing silent disapproval and sometimes open hostility, the book chronicles what happened when these women went ahead and had their babies anyway.

Melinda Tankard Reist (ed)