This is going to be a rambling post touching on a lot of related topics. Respond to whatever grabs you in comments, because this stuff needs to be discussed too much to fuss over what’s “on topic.”
A winter issue of Vogue Paris featured some photos of 10 year old girls made up and photographed to look like adults. You can see most of them here, but there was one CNN wasn’t allowed to post, and you can see it here. The first question, of course, is: is this acceptable, or a form of child abuse, or something in between? Sound off in comments.
The second question, however, is: can we learn something from this as a society? Jezebel makes a chilling point:
Here are just a few of the models who began working extensively at the ages of 12, 13, and 14: Tanya Dziahileva. Chanel Iman. Karlie Kloss. Lindsay Wixson. Monika Jagaciak. Current Vogue Paris covergirl Daphne Groeneveld. Going back further: Kate Moss. Brooke Shields. Patti Hansen. Niki Taylor. Kimora Lee Simmons. Bridget Hall. Gisele Bündchen. Karolina Kurkova. Linda Evangelista. Christy Turlington. I could go on.
Bold emphasis mine. Those models you see on covers that look twenty-three are twelve. The ones you see that look thirty are, at most, sixteen. Why? I don’t know. The same thing doesn’t happen with male models. Of course, twelve year old boys can’t be made to look like twenty year olds because their bodies develop at a different pace from girls’. But the fact that a young girl can be made to look like a grown women doesn’t mean that’s how the fashion industry should create photo spreads. It’s not like they don’t still need to touch up the photos of prepubescent girls to make them look good enough for the fashion world. And thanks to airbrushing and now Photoshop, even old hags like Julia Roberts can be made to look, well, at least passable! (That was sarcasm: Roberts is beautiful without Photoshop, but it seems Lancome disagrees.)
There’s more from the Jezebel article, which I strongly recommend reading (you have to click each picture to get another “page” of the article):
Girls who get scouted are thrust into a very adult working environment. Suddenly, they become girls who are signed as independent contractors to agencies that may screw them over. Girls who may be asked to do nude work. Girls who in any case have to change clothes at jobs in full view of perhaps dozens of photographers.
And let’s not forget Corey Feldman’s recent remarks in the wake of Corey Haim’s death. He says Hollywood’s big secret and “#1 problem” is pedophilia, and it’s everywhere, and the casting couch applies to kids, too:
“I was surrounded by [pedophiles] when I was 14 years old. … Didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until I was old enough to realize what they were and what they wanted … till I went, Oh, my God. They were everywhere,” Feldman, 40, said.
The trauma of pedophilia contributed to the 2010 death of his closest friend and “The Lost Boys” co-star, Corey Haim, Feldman said.
“There’s one person to blame in the death of Corey Haim. And that person happens to be a Hollywood mogul. And that person needs to be exposed, but, unfortunately, I can’t be the one to do it,” Feldman said, adding that he, too, had been sexually abused by men in show business.
I strongly suggest reading this article too – it’s a short, disturbing read. The uninformed wonder why pedophilia is so common in the Catholic church, and now they can wonder about Hollywood too. But what do these two groups have in common? Power. Lots of it. If you enjoy abusing people, working in Hollywood behind the scenes is the way to go. You don’t have to work around the industry long to figure that out. If you don’t want to support abuse, working behind the scenes becomes difficult. If you don’t like being abused, working before the cameras becomes nearly impossible.
And into that environment, which has chewed up and spat out adults (mainly adult women), we throw children. The fashion industry is at least as bad. The creep factor is off the scale.
What the hell are we doing? Is our culture just really secretly okay with adults sexually abusing kids? Because people sure aren’t bothering to educate themselves. All the clues are there. You can learn most of it from TV shows these days. No schooling or reading of books (just magazines) is required. And yet, people still just don’t seem to give a damn. It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.
If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.
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I almost got into modeling as a little girl, but something about it made me nervous. Now I’m glad my mom didn’t force it on me. After seeing America’s Next Top Model I don’t know why anyone would want to be one, let alone kids. I cannot believe someone thought it was a good idea to take pictures of that girl topless. I wonder how she felt about the photo shoot and where her parents were. Seriously, are they aware of any of this or do they just not care?
Dina Bow(Quote) (Reply)
Dina Bow,
Sadly, her parents probably thought “Well, she doesn’t have breasts yet, so photographing her topless is a-okay!”
I wonder how much of this rampant abuse has to do wth the belief that bad people can be recognized on sight? How many parents have thought “nobody here LOOKS like a pedophile, so my child is perfectly safe in this environment”?
Azzy(Quote) (Reply)
I’d say kids are being exposed to very sexualized role models at a very young age and told it’s “romantic” and we internalize that that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m thinking Jasmine, Ariel, that Atlantis princess whose name I can’t remember, and Pocahontas who tell girls that “exotic” means sexy and scantily clad (because “uncivilized” means they’re comfortable in their bodies, but this being a white-privileged and conservative society, we do not think that way, so it becomes “othered” but often mimicked by white persons), we have the other disney princesses with their also very young lives becoming romantically entangled in not-very-great circumstances, plus Barbie, plus everything else…it’s so conditioned into us it’s “normal”. So it doesn’t surprise me AT ALL that parents would be okay with this, that the girls who are these models are doing it (after all, shouldn’t the only thing a girl wants in life be to be desired? /s), it doesn’t surprise me that girls and boys alike are being taken advantage of by older perverts who can get away with it (and they know they can–their role models are Roman Polansky and all the people who will never be named…why should they fear retribution?), none of this surprises me. It only saddens me, disgusts me, and makes me even more contemptuous of the power-hungry pervs and those willing to be ignorant about the effects of all this.
So, yeah, I’d say the US DOES support pedophilia. It supports it when 11 or 12 year old girls are criticized when they are raped, supports it when the majority of role models given to young people are sexualized (for girls) or hyper-masculinized and violent (for boys) and we adhere to that fallacious dichotomy. It supports it when power goes unquestioned and abuses of power unpunished. It supports it with porn that specializes in girls that are or are made to look underage.
The weird thing about pedophilia, as well, and when I say “weird” I mean “not very surprising but I wish I could expect better” is how very OMGAWFUL pervs who go after boys are compared to pervs who go after little girls, and how much BLAME people seem to be able to put onto girls. HOW IN THE WORLD can a girl 11 to 13 be BLAMED at ALL for any rape that happens to her?
Sorry. This whole thing made me all ranty. So very effective article, then.
As for the Paris Vogue thing, to be honest, I would say somewhere in between. But I am biased by my upbringing, which in the context of US childrearing made me both ashamed of sexuality but thinking young girls should be sexual. THANKS DISNEY. As a kid playing dressup I looked like any one of those girls at some point, albeit with worse clothes and less skilled with the makeup. So, I would not say young girls should never look that way if they want to dress up that way and explore how clothes and makeup can work, and use their imaginations. The poses, the photography, and the fact that this is a spread in a major fashion mag? Much more sinister. On the one hand I could see it as a form of commentary. On the other hand, that would mean I should be seeing something different from normal, but where the male superheroes dressed up as female ones with female poses works, this absolutely does not. It’s kind of like the book The Magicians, to me. In order for it to be a commentary it shouldn’t be saying the EXACT SAME THING of what it’s commenting on.
Long comment, sorry. Article much appreciated. Rage, less so, but I have society at large to thank for that.
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
The Other Anne,
And to add RE Paris Vogue: a commentary should not victimize or sexualize those it’s trying to protect with its commentary.
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
I wish that nudity wasn’t sexualized so much. Then we could probably make better commentary on sexuality. But as it stands, even in mocking or pointing out or satirizing sexuality, you are showing something sexual. You can’t not do it by not intending to do it. I’d love to have kids (and adults by extension) feel free to be art by wearing whatever or running around half-naked just like they used to when they were tots, but even now there’s no age so young it’s not sexual to somebody, it seems like. When the idea that National Geographic was porn fodder became mainstream and a regular joke, it made even just pictures of people wearing a totally normal outfit to them into something sexual.
It’s pretty sad and sickening, but you kind of have to deal with the world as it is. If they really wanted to challenge it, they’d put more effort into every single issue into desexualizing nudity and the human body and would have a range of models of all ages and sizes.
megs(Quote) (Reply)
That picture in question, by itself and in a vacuum? Perfectly acceptable. In fact, I think that’s a particularly striking picture. Outside a vacuum, and existing in the world as described by Corey Feldman? That’s could possibly be considerably less acceptable. Unacceptable, even!
In general, a pet peeve of mine is when nudity by itself is regarded an inherently sexual. I’m also of the opinion that the more taboo a subject of matter is, the worse corresponding deviants will become as they feel like outcasts from society and retreat into the culture that makes them different from everybody else. So when I see photos like that French Vogue spread, wherein the subject matter is not really sexualized, the best thing you can do is acknowledge them as merely good or bad art.
Of course, there are photos out there of minors which *are* clearly sexual or lascivious in intent, and those should definitely be dealt with.
DNi(Quote) (Reply)
I wrote an article years ago on how the best solution might be to have a lot of non-sexual nudity (including people who don’t look like actors) to dilute the onslaught of “naked=sexy” imagery. Might give people some perspective. I mean, a 100% asexual person probably gets totally naked at least once a day (changing clothes, showering, etc.). We all undress a lot of times for non sexual reasons to every single time we undress for sexy reasons. But if you were studying our culture from another planet and had nothing but media to go on, you’d think nudity was a purely sexual thing and people somehow showered, shat and changed clothes without getting naked.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Any chance of a link? I’d be very interested.
I’ve thought about related ideas in the past since when I was training in art I was surprised to discover how having nude models around during drawing classes wasn’t a sexual experience at all. However, I never managed to come up with a way to make nudity more acceptable in society that wasn’t likely to create more problems than it solved.
Dom Camus(Quote) (Reply)
I think about these things constantly.
Children are permitted to perform sexualized content or display nudity in acting and modelling with parental permission, but when it’s prostitution or porn the same parents would be pimps. And yet there isn’t really any real difference between the two situations, except in degree. I tried to talk about this with someone responsible for child safety in the film industry in Vancouver (you can report abuse of minors if you see it on set) and he was not familiar with children performing sexualized content in films. I guess he never heard of Kirsten Dunst’s first kiss in Interview with a Vampire. And there was a Quebec film last year with two kids in their early teens kissing, with lots of tongue, as part of their job. This should be strictly illegal. Any sexualized content or nudity in modelling or film should be treated like prostitution/porn. If there’s an age where it’s legal, then it should never happen below that age. And if it’s illegal it should simply never happen. Surely it can’t be that hard to protect kids.
Many parents simply don’t know what to expect and trust the directors/producers too much. Anyone familiar with the Milgram experiments??? People defer to those in authority automatically, and often even defer to them when they don’t want to, when it causes them great stress. In part as a result of the Milgram experiments, professionals (lawyers, doctors, researchers, therapists etc.) have professional codes of conduct to keep them from unwittingly (or uncaringly) causing harm to the people they have power over. Producers and directors do not have a professional code of conduct. Apparently they are not worried about being sued. Or hurting anyone. The only use of the word “professional” that I have come across in film is the idea that underlings should show up on time, sober (no problem with that) and do as their told. Because the boss *always* knows best.
At least in modelling there are activists trying to unionize and protect models better. But I am seriously disappointed with the actors unions I see here in Canada. Apparently they are afraid to apply basic standards to “art”.
This issue affects people of all ages. (The Milgram subjects were adults.) I can see why people get confused about how much agency adults have (though the Swedish model of prostitution legislation should make inroads here, as it did for me), but surely it ought to be easy to apply the same uniform standards for minors across all industries. And if you’re not sure, play it safe!
Arggh!
Anemone(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not an American, but: yes, and other countries too. Beside what everyone else has said, one only needs to look at the ubiquitous infantilization of women. The obsession with youth and hairless smoothness of skin, babyteen clothing and accessories, artificially high-pitched voices, feigning child-like ignorance because knowledge and experience aren’t “sexy” and will put men off, “barely legal” schoolgirl porn … These are definitely warning signs to me. Child-like women and sexualized children go hand in hand.
Children are (generally) easier to overpower, easier to manipulate, easier to intimidate, have less life experience, no financial or legal independence … What’s NOT to like about a real child or a babified woman if you feel entitled to another person’s body, life and obedience? And that entitlement is still damn strong and the backlash against women’s rights has never stopped …
Korva(Quote) (Reply)
Dom Camus,
Found it:
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-nudity-doesnt-bother-me/
It’s a VERY old article, and if I wrote it today I’d have added in more context about how it’s sort of impossible to actually achieve non-sexual nudity in the context of a civilization that’s been so thoroughly trained to equate nudity with sexiness. Also, while a Xena discussion brought up the subject, I did not mean to imply that the nudity in Xena was intended as non-sexual, but I wasn’t very clear about that.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Korva,
Beside what everyone else has said, one only needs to look at the ubiquitous infantilization of women.
Very good point.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks Jennifer. It may be an old article, but it makes the point well.
Dom Camus(Quote) (Reply)
I think so too. The girl looks like she’s playing dress-up with her mother’s clothes and shoes (the shoes are obviously too big for her). Actually, I think there’s nothing sexual at all in those pictures. The problem is the mindset of people who look at them and see something sexual.
Banning pictures like that or banning nudity won’t make pedophilia go away, because neither those pictures nor nudity tempt proper people into commiting sexual crimes. What this world needs is to ban victim-blaming, we need to make it socially unexceptable to be a sexual predator.
So yes, I think the entire fucking world supports (hetero)pedophilia. But if you take those pics of Thylane Loubry Blondeau out of context of this fucked up world, then I don’t see any problem with them.
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
I agree with your point – that the photos are not the problem. I’m far more concerned that maybe the working conditions young models and actors experience create a situation that looks to pedophiles like a buffet bar. It sounds like that’s really the case, and if so, we as a society are pretty much sacrificing children to get our entertainment.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
This. I’m having a time articulating anything today. The pictures alone actually do bother me, though. Something about the girls’ faces is what is pinging me, not the dress-up factor, so even taken out of context I’m bothered by them – but in the context of a society telling young girls to look older and older women to look younger by any means possible, I can only conclude it’s one giant effed up monster of a world we live in.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
M.C.,
The only thing I take issue with is a nitpick (sorry) but it’s not just the mindset of the person looking at the photos–if its in a vacuum, yes, very true, but we are conditioned to see certain poses made by certain genders and other visual cues to be seen as sexual. To place all the burden of mindset on the person looking at them instead of acknowledging a much larger context ignores the fact that we live in a society that teaches us certainthings from the get go. A small nitpick, I think, because otherwise your meaning is clear, but I have a hard time blaming people for seeing something sexual in a picture that has all the cues we always get for “sex!!!” from the media.
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
sbg,
I think you’re articulating it well, and you’re right. MC said the photos don’t cause pedophilia, and I agree, and my primary concern is the kids being used as models and actors. BUT you are right – there are elements of these photos that do contribute to rape culture. In fact, there are elements of them that wouldn’t even make sense if rape culture didn’t exist, and perhaps those elements are what is bothering you. Because the looks on the faces, the way in some pictures one child is staring at the other… it’s coquettish, and for anyone unfamiliar with that word, it means “a woman who endeavors without sincere affection to gain the attention and admiration of men.” In a perfect world, where women and men had roughly equal power, responsibilities and opportunities, someone seeking attention and admiration without returning anything would be simply an asshole. But in rape culture, it’s actually expected that women should flirt with and charm men they have no interest in, just in case they develop an interest later, or need some money or whatever.
The looks on the faces invoke some rape culture ideas, and that is problematic.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
True. As far as I’ve read on your blog (and others alike) the whole entertainment industry is a place where people are in grave danger of falling victim to sexual predators. Pedophilia is just the tip of the iceberg.
I understand what you mean. I just don’t see sexual cues in those particular pictures, but maybe I’m just too used to this kind of advertising? I do get creeped out when I hear of child beauty pageants, though…
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
I just wanted to say that, like many others, the mere fact of the girl’s nudity doesn’t bother me –but something about the picture does. And I think it’s her expression, and her pose. People keep talking about ‘taking the picture out of context’, but it seems to me that the photographers haven’t actually GIVEN it any context. She’s just standing there, staring at the viewer, with the default model purpose of pleasing/intriguing the viewer –and THAT bothers me. If she looked fierce, like she was playing dress-up as some wild jungle queen, or engaged in actually DOING something, I’d be more comfortable with her nudity –because it suddenly isn’t her PURPOSE. If that makes sense.
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
M.C.,
You’re not seeing coquettishness in some of the expressions, and a lack of agency (thanks, Raeka, for helping me put a name to that one) in the others? See my above comment on how coquettishness can’t exist outside rape culture (it would just be “assholishness”) and Raeka for what’s “missing” in some of her expressions.
Raeka,
Thank you! It’s that infamous “lack of agency” that you need to be sexually alluring (what Karen Healey called “pornface”). It’s there, and I don’t even know how you get a child to look that blank.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
No, I think she looks bored. Maybe a bit uncomfortable in the topless pic (look at how she’s pulling up her shoulders).
Actually, those pics remind me how Empress Maria Theresia (and other monarchs of her time) had their children portrayed in grown-up fashion clothes. Like this one: http://www.turkcebilgi.com/uploads/media/resim/maria_theresia_familie.jpg
Everything from the clothes to the posing looks so fake.
M.C.(Quote) (Reply)
M.C.,
As far as I’ve read on your blog (and others alike) the whole entertainment industry is a place where people are in grave danger of falling victim to sexual predators. Pedophilia is just the tip of the iceberg.
Comparing this with the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church, could there be something in common between artistic and religious establishments? They’re the ones that pride themselves on having truths to teach about the world; might that tie into them being friendlier ground for those that prey particularly on the young?
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
SunlessNick,
Damn, where’s that ‘Like’ button when you need it?
Gabriella(Quote) (Reply)
SunlessNick, I think you’re really close to the truth of it. You may recall me mentioning that Roy Hazelwood, former FBI profiler, believes most sex offenders have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I agree, because NPD is the only personality type that would enjoy rape (others may engage in it for other reasons, especially including mob psychology incidents, but they wouldn’t get kicks from it like an NPD). NPDs want glory, and to feel superior. Both the priesthood/ministry and the film industry offer opportunities for glory and a sense that you’re superior.
And then of course, once you get a pack of NPDs in an environment that allows them to thrive, others pick up on this and gravitate toward it. Because both environments openly and publicly defend known child molesters, I’m sure child molesters are flooding into their ranks these days.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well a man who rapes a girl is still performing heteronormality. What is important to a heteronormative society is that men are active and women are sexually passive and available–consent isn’t a necessary or relevant part of that equation. From any moral perspective there shouldn’t be a difference at a man (or a woman) raping a 12-year-old male or female, but if there’s a stronger reaction to the former you can probably safely chalk it up to an objection to homosexuality. I think you could argue that a man molesting a boy was still performing heteronormality to an extent, because except for the genders of the people involved, the sexual “encounter” is still happening in an unequal power structure.
Speaking more broadly, is there any evidence that US society views sexuality as anything other than an exchange, where something is “taken” or “given”? Because these pedophiliac interactions seem like a microcosm (with stronger contrasts) for how society views sexuality in adults too.
Shaun(Quote) (Reply)
Shaun,
I wonder how this dynamic changes when it’s a white woman with a male child of color?
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
I’m not sure. The context the Other Anne brought up seemed to be more about male offenders. As a general rule though boys molested by women are “congratulated” and often addressed as if they scored or “won” something, because heteronormativity/patriarchy dictates the male is always receiving something. Going based on the way society sexualizes people of color I would imagine this attitude is even more extreme when the victim is a boy of color, especially since white women are viewed as a more desirable prize, but I’m not knowledgeable on race politics.
(The way I’m using the terms, heteronormativity is a facet of patriarchy as it governs sexual relationships within a patriarchy).
Shaun(Quote) (Reply)
Shaun,
I would definitely agree that that sort of ingrained heteronormativity is a part of it. And definitely a lot of the child victim blaming, in regards to children who are girls, is that they were asking for it by looking older and dressing “like sluts”, so it plays into that idea that the only thing “taken” from them is something they already freely give anyway (by dressing how they want, which APPARENTLY puts them in a perpetual state of consent), so “it’s not that bad” in the eyes of people because, well, that’s just why girls are here, right? To provide something for men?
And I’d probably say you’re right in regards to the homophobia inherent in the extreme focus on pedophilia with male victims and male perpetrators.
I went to Reddit the other day, because every once and a while I hate myself enough to want to venture there, and of course I got pissed off right away by a thread about a registered sex offender (an IAMA), in which he coerced a 15 year old girl to lie to her parents, go to his house, where he got her drunk and “had sex” with her when he was 20. Even in his post he was so self-centered, not at all thinking about how that effected HER, and his only remorse was that being on the registry was effecting his life. Commenters were SUPPORTIVE of him and his “plight”. And when a woman spoke up and said she had sex as a 15 year old with a 25 year old, and now as an adult she realizes how she was too young and she didn’t have the real capacity to make that sort of decision well, and she thinks the man was way out of line and really should have known better and how creepy that is…she was argued with, people blamed her because she needs to “take responsibility for her own actions” (and no mention that the MAN needs to take responsibility for HIS), etc etc. Anyway, I’m out of Reddit again for another few months. Urgh.
Shaun,
Yup, I was speaking specifically of male offenders, but since I failed to specify, it’s kind of my bad and it’s fair to bring up everything else.
To bring media into this, in CSI one of the male characters was raped by a female babysitter when he was nine, and it definitely doesn’t take the stance that it’s something he should be proud of, or even that he should just “get over.” It still effects him and it’s kind of the closest I’ve seen to the sort of “character development” that’s often given to women (a sexual victim past that motivates a current heroism, law enforcement job, etc.).
The Other Anne(Quote) (Reply)
The Other Anne, you are a brave woman, wading into Reddit like that. There is a very good reason that I only look at Reddit articles recommended by people I trust. Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me that so many of the denizens over there were commiserating with the poor, inconvenienced child molester. [::eyeroll:: Ew.] They tend to behave that way in threads about completely unrelated topics, as well.
re: CSI — Which character? I stopped watching after 3 or 4 seasons.
Robin(Quote) (Reply)
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