Showing Puberty: Overcoming the Taboo in Children's Television

This article examines how non-fiction children's television programmes portray bodily changes and sexuality at puberty. Engaging with the body and the sexuality of children in the broadcast media raises cultural and social challenges. Public concern about social morality and the 'sexualisation of children', sexual objectification and pornography, together with the construction of childhood as a naïve pre-sexual stage of life, have silenced children's television when it comes to the subject of children's sexuality. However, a few programmes have offered an alternative to this taboo. Based on a study of 30 non-fiction programmes submitted between 1964 and 2016 to "Prix Jeunesse" international festival for children's media, this paper describes and analyses how these programmes present unique, thought-provoking and innovative ways of engaging with the culturally controversial issue of the body and sexuality on children's television.