The s-xualisation of children — and more specifically, girls — has been a big topic over the last month or so. From the frivolous to the serious, it seems a tipping point has been reached.
Now to work out just what it means.
- Beyonce’s booty in hot water.
Parents everywhere — well in the US — were incensed by the ads for pop star Beyonce’s kids range, Dereon (more like Pimp my Kid). The publicity shots had been around for over six months, but there was an inexplicable resurgence in criticism.
“What is the next ad going to look like?” asked PopGumbo. “Babies wearing gold metallic bikinis while five-year old boys throw Monopoly money on them. Let our children be damn children at least ’till the age of 8. Then they can worry about bikini waxes and putting out.”
- Fashion Week comes of age. 14-year-old Polish model Monika Jagaciak was due to headline at Australian Fashion Week — until controversy about her age forced producers to replace her with Mischa Barton. Fashion Week has put a new rule in place to stem criticism: models must be 16+ — age not size — to participate.
- Disney#1: Miley’s back.
Disney star Miley Cyrus — Hannah Montana’s alter ego — is photographed for Vanity Fair by Annie Leibovitz with a shot that sparks furore. Wrapped in a sheet looking mildly dishevelled, Cyrus’s naked back is revealed. (Is anyone else thinking, forget nudity, give the girl a burger?)Salon‘s Rebecca Traister nailed the hypocrisy of society’s outcry over the pics: “…come on — in a world in which we market push-up bras (and “Cheetah Girls“!) to preadolescents and ‘tweens, in which Vanity Fair throws naked or lingerie-encased women on its covers whenever possible — are we really so appalled by the sight of a less-clad-than-usual 15-year-old who has already been packaged, marketed and unrelentingly sold, sold and sold to America’s daughters?”
- Disney#2: Big Trouble in Little China.
Disney, quick to condemn the Cyrus shots, should probably have checked its own record first.
Slate burst the bubble: “Staring down at the throngs of shoppers on Beijing’s Xinjiekou Nandajie Avenue, a busy commercial thoroughfare about a mile west of the Forbidden City, was a white girl who looked all of 12, reclining in a matching bra-and-panties set adorned with Disney’s signature mouse-ear design. In a particularly creepy detail, the pigtailed child was playing with a pair of Minnie Mouse hand puppets. In the upper left-hand corner was the familiar script of the Disney logo.”
- David Jones drops its suit. David Jones Limited dropped its landmark case (reported in Crikey) against The Australia Institute and former executive director Clive Hamilton over the institute’s controversial 2006 paper “Corporate paedophilia — s-xualising children by advertising and marketing”, which nominated the company (alongside Myer) as guilty of producing s-xualised images.
- Growing up S-x and the City: A fizzer of a furore. The s-x-peddling show — now on publicity rounds for a new movie — turned one 14-year-old into a hussy, reported America’s ABC News. “Carrie smoked, so I smoked, Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that’s what I did too,” said Lisa, now 22. “It wasn’t S-x and the City ‘s fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior.” Lisa is now a Morman whose husband forbade her to watch the show for a year for fear she would slide back into sin. We’re not sure S-x and the City is the problem.
- Australia’s homegrown controversy. Last Thursday, Miranda Devine wrote in horror of the invitation for Bill Henson’s show at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, which “features a large photo of a girl, the light shining on her hair, eyes downcast, dark shadows on her sombre, beautiful face, and the budding breasts of puberty on full display, her hand casually covering her crotch.” A complaint was made to police. They duly seized the pics, sparking the biggest mainstream discussion of art in Australia since… P-ss Christ. As yet, still no resolution to the question: What is art?
The debate over Bill Henson’s photos has shown our contemporary culture for the ninny coop it is. We should not be making decisions about what to display on the basis of how the perverts might respond, or there’d be no display of anything (there’s even people who get off on shoes, after all, not to mention sheep).
I know what Henson’s on about because I used to be a pubescent girl and I know what it’s like for one’s body to start to turn into something that is suddenly of interest to men and boys, sometimes really horrible men and boys. One used to be invisible and now one is visible, sometimes scarily, distressingly so. The photos explore that phenomenon.
They also throw back on the viewer his/her own response to the images, in a way that is unsettling. What to make of this? How to respond? Who’s the innocent and who is the guilty?
In addition, our culture has profoundly ambivalent feelings about children. We don’t really like them much and call them ‘rug rats’ and ‘ankle biters’, treating them like vermin or a form of toxic by-product. When they are little we can be somewhat sentimental about their innocence and cuteness and we try to make amends for our dislike by elaborate displays of commitmetn to ‘child protectiion’.
When children turn into teenagers that goes and they are recast as monsters and troublemakers. In that role they bear the brunt of all our projections of our undesirable urges and feelings: aggression, violence, self indulgence, drunkenness, sexiness….
Bill Hensons’s young model stands on that cusp between the ‘cute’ and the reprehensible. She has not asked either to become the focus of men’s unsettling attention nor the symbol of society’s baser urges, but she has, by dint to her changing body.
The trouble is all in our heads and Bill Henson has shoved our noses in it, naughty man.
All a bit subtle to those who think in cliches, including the ‘abuse’ cliche.
Just having a look at Devine’s piece there is no doubt she put a pretty sold article together according to her own values, alot of cross referencing whichever side you prefer. But I blogged myself on this perfect political storm coming before I read her piece (I referred to Telegraph’s front page bugle a day later). A brewing storm with gusts of wind from various directions – Orkopoulos sentence of 9+ years earlier in the week for predation on adolscents. Moral sword play by the Labor aligned arts community at the Sydney Writers Festival on sexism as per the famous Ernies book which ran on abc tv earlier in the week. The riposte by Sydney Telegraph soon after re alleged sexism of the Defence Dept regarding false claims against Ms Zaetta. Before these hot topics were sexual morality/gender issues involving not so much Culture Wars as the Moral Panic Wars – namely SD Telegraph blowtorch on respected (female, welfare rights) defense lawyer approach to rape victims, which spun off into a gender issue about real or false harrassment claims by one Ms Vivenne Dye against CBA, (and previously allegedly against a phone co. ). Which then spun off to moral panic by SDT/Sky Tv over ABC so called abuse of ANZAC Day coverage as ‘immoral’ delay in live broadcast. And before that it was Patrick Power convicted of child p*rn supported by 40 defamation suing legal colleagues and their character references. In other words the press, especially the SDT, and Devine as a News Ltd wolf amongst the Fairfax sheep, are ramping up moral panics, and selling lots of newspapers and slagging their rivals left of Genghis Khan. Mission accomplished I suppose.