Charlotte Church has attacked the sexism of the "juvenile" male-dominated music industry, which she said was increasingly creating and promoting child-like sex objects.
The singer, who became a teenage star with her album Voice of an Angel, has backed calls for an age-ratings system for near-the-knuckle music videos and said radio executives needed to shoulder some responsibility for play-listing artists who relied on "soft porn" to boost their profile.
She spoke of her concern about sexual imagery to sell music, with singer Miley Cyrus appearing naked in her video for the single Wrecking Ball, in a speech to radio executives.
Church, who like Cyrus found success in her early teens, told how she faced considerable pressure to promote her music in ever more suggestive outfits and she said the legacy of revealing outfits is that she faces a barrage of abuse online, being called a "slut" and a "whore".
In the John Peel Lecture at the annual Radio Festival in Salford, she warned many younger stars succumbed to the pressure to sell their sexuality.
She added: "Now I find it difficult to promote my music in the places where it would be best suited because of my 'history'. But at the time it was the option presented to me."
Church, 27, said women were being "coerced" into sexual roles to cling on to their careers and she classified women who were overtly using sexual imagery to boost their careers, such as Rihanna and Cyrus, as "unattainable sexbots".
She said that approach was "the most commonly employed and most damaging, a role that is also often claimed to be an empowering one".
Church added: "The irony behind this is that the women generally filling these roles are very young, often previous child stars or Disney-tweens, who are simply interested in getting along in an industry glamourised to be the most desirable for young women.
"They are encouraged to present themselves as hyper-sexualised, unrealistic, cartoonish, as objects, reducing female sexuality to a prize you can win."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article