"Barack Obama, David Beckham um... Nelson Mandela and that guy from The Apprentice, "bit mean but really clever" was the response when I asked a group of 14 year old girls to name a few famous males they admire. And then I asked them to name a few admirable, inspirational women.
"Um Jordan she like, came from nothing and now is minted, Cheryl Cole, love her hair she's so pretty, Colleen Rooney she's pretty and natural and seems to have the perfect life: money, famous husband, her own TV show everything! Oh, and Britney Spears but when she was thin."
And herein lies the problem of a generation, for while we celebrate men for their prowess in politics and sports and business when it comes to women there is only one thing that we really ever celebrate them for, and its rarely about what they accomplish and almost always about how they look. In fact, even when women do accomplish something their appearance seems to trump whatever the achievement in question is - remember Gail Trimble winner of University challenge and the abject chaos she caused by being a) smart and b) seemingly disinterested in fashion or conforming to beauty stereotypes?
The thing is, we have convinced young people that being a celebrity (regardless of what you are being celebrated for) means you have achieved something worthy of adoration and acknowledgment. We have then gone on to make celebrities out of mainly one type of woman "sexually desirable" and their accomplishments (performing, singing, being on TV) are seen as a product of this and not the result of work or talent. So while we idolize women who fall into this category we ignore or minimize the achievements and successes of women in the vast majority of other professions.
Many researchers and clinicians would agree that exposure to this type of objectification and such hyper-sexualised female ideals, is linked with lower self-esteem, poor self-image and lack of confidence in girls. This of course can in turn affect a girl's capacity to reach her potential, thus explaining the results of studies like a 2005 UK online survey of almost 1000 girls aged 15-19 years which found that 63 per cent considered 'glamour model' and 25 per cent 'lap dancer' their ideal profession from a list of choices including teacher, doctor.
Very simply, young people get their behavioural scripts from the messages that they are bombarded with most consistently, and we are responsible for giving a generation of girls a script that says 'your value lies in being desired- if you want to succeed, bank on your looks and not your brain- be a WAG not a PhD'.
We are now beginning to see the effects of that message for both young women and men as well. A recent survey by Onepoll found that over 50% of men said brains did not factor into their decision when choosing a mate as long as the girl was good looking because it was important to impress their friends, with eight out of ten men saying they would be intimidated by a clever girl. Another study from the University of Chicago, that looked at on-line dating preferences, found that men displayed a significant bias against women who were more educated than them. The message is clear- a girl isn't an equal to challenge you, instead she is a prize whose appearance reflects on your value as much as it does on hers.
For those girls who don't identify with celebrities and WAGS, sadly there is a dearth of positive female role models offering equivalent social authority. Where are the editorials about amazing female scientists and explorers? Where are the accolades for females sporting teams? Why aren't we celebrating young female activists out there trying to change the world? We need to change the scripts we hand down to young people and we need to do it soon or we risk distilling the value of a generation of young girls down to the most superficial, meaningless aspects of who they are. And who knows, if we begin to celebrate healthy, positive female role models, then maybe next time I go into a school and ask girls who they admire, they'll look the cover of the front and back pages of newspapers for ideas, as opposed to page 3.