Sexual Images of Children in the Media: Promoting Pedophilia?

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by PinkieLee

And we can't forget Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby....

I have mixed feelings about that movie. Well, maybe not -mixed- feelings, but...here's the deal.

I like that movie. A lot. It's easily one of my favourites of all time. (Although I have to fast forward through the "selling her virginity" scene). I get why that movie squicks people out, I do. But I also think that movie is -very- different from the sexualisation of children via pageants and commercials and letting your kid wear knee-high platform boots.

Pageants, adverts, too grown-up clothing for children are all framed in a "this is okay, this is normal, this is acceptable" light. Pretty Baby, on the other hand, I think it's pretty clear that the people involved in making that movie made it from the perspective of "this shit happened and this shit is bad and had far-reaching impact on the people that this shit happened to". I don't feel like that movie in any way tried to frame the sexualisation of the character that Brooke Shields played as anything positive.

Now, what does concern me is how the adults in Brooke's life at the time framed things for her, or if they bothered to talk to her about it at all. I really have no idea. But I do hope that she had several sit-downs with an adult who explained to her that the things her character did or see are awful things for a little girl to do or see. I hope the grownups in her life checked in with her frequently to see how she was doing.

But I do think that vilifying a movie that depicts childhood prostitution and equating it with being pro-sexualisation-of-children is akin to insisting that a movie in which a rape or murder occurs is pro-rape or pro-murder. It's just not the same thing.