The Role of Food Insecurity in the Sexual Exploitation of Young Girls: Behavioral Control in Patricia McCormick’s Sold

The scarcity of food in impoverished areas critically endangers the future of the children raised in such conditions, driving them deeper into poverty. Year-over-year statistics reveal that food shortages expose millions of children to devastating health, educational, and behavioral problems. Even more alarming is that this uncertain availability of food contributes to various forms of child trafficking. This harrowing experience of modern-day child slavery is central to Patricia McCormick’s third novel Sold (2006). After spending months in Nepal — a country with one of the highest rates of malnutrition—McCormick, an American novelist, portrays true-to-life accounts of a young girl’s exploitation rooted in food insecurity. Sold tells the story of Lakshmi, a young Nepalese girl sold into sexual slavery due to poverty and hunger. The novel not only explores her pain and loss of innocence, but also how she was manipulated into accepting her fate. This study applies Icek Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior developed in 1991, to examine Lakshmi’s behavioral control and the manipulation she endures and investigate how food scarcity contributes to the coercion of young, impoverished girls into sexual slavery. TPB, a social-psychological theory, connects intentions to attitudes to explain human behavior, arguing that conscious actions are driven by an individual’s normative behavior and societal norms.