SALT LAKE CITY — Public policies protect young kids from images of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, drug use and even cereals that contain too much sugar. But when it comes to potentially harmful portrayals of what it means to be a girl, families are largely on their own.

In just one year, grade school-age children could take in as many as 80,000 “sexy girl” portrayals just watching kid-targeted TV programming, according to psychologist Christia Spears Brown of the University of Kentucky. No one’s sure how often kids get a sexualized view of what it means to be a girl from all the media they consume.

While girls are told they can choose their futures, their role models for the path to popularity are typically more concerned with looking sexy than being accomplished or smart, according to Brown’s report for the Council on Contemporary Families. In “Media Messages to Young Girls,” Brown details the confusing messages media provide children — especially girls — and notes the problem is far from benign.

Girls as young as 5 and 6 aspire to look sexualized, complete with short skirts, belly shirts, lots of makeup and heels — though those same girls in Brown’s research rate sexualized women as “less worthy of being helped when in danger than nonsexualized women,“ said the professor of developmental psychology and author of “Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue.”

“They really seem to hold that as the image of what it means to be popular,” Brown said. “Part of what’s concerning is that we’re seeing it really young and also that the girls themselves don’t associate it with a lot of other positive traits.”

But even though a sexualized image may be sought-after, it doesn’t garner respect. Brown found that girls who hope to look and dress like role models that portray popularity as requiring looking sexy say that girls who do that are not smart, nice or athletic.

“You have this real bind of aspiring to be like someone because that’s who’s kind of pretty and attractive and popular. Yet, she’s not really associated with any of the things we think we want our kids to value: doing well in school, being kind to others, being strong. And so that becomes problematic,” said Brown.

The American Psychological Association says sexualization occurs when any of these four aspects occur:

A person’s value derives solely from sexual behavior or sex appeal, excluding any other characteristics;
A person is held to a narrowly defined standard that equates physical attractiveness with being sexy;
A person is objectified sexually — valued only for others’ sexual use — instead of seen as someone capable of acting independently and making decisions; and/or
Sexuality is imposed on a person inappropriately, as in the case of sexualizing children.

Sexualization, the association says, can harm cognitive function, physical and mental health and healthy sexual development, creating byproducts like eating disorders, poor self-esteem and depression.

The sexualization starts with television. Even cartoons offer sexualized female characters and children watch an average of 4.5 hours of TV daily, said Brown. But that’s far from the only source of the message, which is contained in music videos, lyrics, movies, video games, magazines and on the the internet.

Even toys have impact. Dolls are sexualized, aside from baby dolls. And some stores feature a full line of makeup and skimpy clothing and underwear for very young girls.

A high cost As an experiment, researchers gave some grade school-aged girls a sexualized doll, “Fashion” Barbie, then asked the children about their career aspirations. Girls who played with the Barbie doll had fewer goals than the girls who instead played with Mr. Potato Head, who has no sex appeal.

In grade school, boys are “largely clueless” about sexuality, the report said, so the pressure girls feel is self-generated.

In middle school, Brown said girls hold sexualized aspiration even closer, endorsing the notion that it’s important to get boys’ attention, which can be accomplished by looking “hot.”

Her research found sexualized girls think they should pay attention to how their bodies look and they expect boys to focus on their bodies, too, and not on other attributes.

Sexualized girls, including girls who are very capable in school, show less motivation to learn and are less confident in their academic ability. They are more likely to not raise their hand in class, even if they know an answer. Even very young girls told Brown they sometimes “play dumb.”

“That’s just really disturbing,” she said.

The impact is predictable: By middle school, girls may have lower academic motivation and try less in school, which leads to less academic achievement and learning. That, in turn, can change their future trajectory, making it harder to catch up or go to college, for instance. And there are other effects. Girls who bought into a sexualized image find that hard to achieve and sustain, so they are less happy with how they look. They may want to be thinner than their bodies are designed to be, Brown said.