Truth is, sexually charged exhibitionism isn’t quite as new as we sometimes think, said Steve Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood”.
“Remember ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos, which first appeared in 1997,” Mintz said. “Ironically this kind of exhibition represents a grossly distorted version of feminism: That is, the young women typically described this behavior using the rhetoric of self-determination and sexual liberation.”
What, then, is the effect of social media?
“Proponents of social media celebrate the idea that the private should be public, that intimacy is not to be secreted away” Mintz said. “And this rejection of reticence is embraced by many young people.”