Tony Earnshaw: Let children be children for as long as possible by cutting sexual content

It’s been called corporate paedophilia by some observers – the rush of explicit imagery that all too often tells children, primarily girls, that it’s hip to be sexy.

Writing in the Daily Mail in February, David Cameron compared it to toxic waste. “Premature sexualisation is like pollution,” he said. “It’s in the air that our children breathe. All the time.”

And, of course, he’s right. It’s everywhere, like a pandemic. In Australia, the Christian Lobby is campaigning against sexualised bus shelter advertisements. Girls are being conditioned into believing that, whatever they do, they will never be pretty enough, thin enough or sexy enough. And sex is the key word; it’s no longer about glamour.

The movies are as much to blame as any other industry. From the birth of cinema no-one has wanted to watch ugly people on screen: only matinee idols would do.

But permissiveness has been taken to extremes. As attitudes change – and movies have much to do with that, too – so we as a global community are being forced to accept the greater deterioration of standards in the films we watch.

Violence and profanity are creeping into lower rated films. And barely a new release goes by without at least a glimpse of the female form. Often it’s gratuitous and exploitative. An example is the prurient bedroom scene in 2009’s Jennifer’s Body in which the silky-smooth Megan Fox, all tight T-shirt, skimpy panties and long legs, seduces Amanda Seyfried. Who was it aimed at? Teenage boys? Teenage girls? Both? I don’t suppose the makers were fussy.

Jennifer’s Body carried a 15 certificate in the UK. But its posters didn’t. And there’s the rub. Children of all ages see this stuff everywhere. They are bombarded with it. As David Cameron says: it’s in the very air they breathe.

I want my children to remain children as long as possible. I don’t want them tainted by the imagery around them. I don’t want their innocence consumed and spat out. It’s not an old-fashioned concept or a vain nod towards my own formative years. That’s why it’s every parent’s duty to safeguard their children against overtly sexualised content. All too often we are witnessing distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. Adults can filter it; children cannot.

It’s not a Christian thing. It’s not a Tory thing. It’s our thing. All of us. Let’s let children be children – whether we’re parents or not.