"Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster Of The Cinema In Her Time"
by Salvador Dali
The TV show "Toddlers and Tiaras":
Accusations that "Modern Family" actress Ariel Winter's stage mom made "attempts to sexualize" her 14-year-old daughter:
15-year-old actress Chloe Moretz is repeatedly made up in movies to look the "Lolita" part:
The latest news is that little girls in bikinis are apparently being used in China to show off automobiles at car shows.
According to the site Jalopnik, girls as young as five at the Chutian Auto Culture Festival were "scantily clad, wearing tall boots, and swaying their hips" to show off cars:
Of course, their parents volunteered them for the job. Parents or the community at large "sacrificing" the best of their young is a primal story, from ancient times to overbearing stage parents to "The Hunger Games."
But the best current metaphor for the little girl who suddenly "grows up" too fast would have to be Renesmee Cullen from "Breaking Dawn Part 2": who not only grows from infant to school-girl age (the actress portraying her is 9) in an amazingly short amount of time, but is "imprinted" as basically a "soul mate" to the character of Jacob, played by 20-year-old Taylor Lautner:
"It’s a fine line, and I was worried about it," Lautner admitted of Jacob Black's supernatural, (platonic — for now) love-at-first-sight connection to Renesmee, the half-human, half-vampire offspring of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. (By comparison, Edward's a century older than Bella, so in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad....)
Played by 9-year-old Mackenzie Foy, Renesmee grows from infant to school-age girl in a superhuman span of time — and, in keeping with the story arc of the novels, Jacob is compelled by his Quileute legacy to instantly "imprint," or attach, himself to her side in a manner that eventually will take on romantic undertones."The term "imprinting" sounds a lot like "grooming"...but it's a theme used in some supernatural fiction to justify the bond between characters of vastly different ages. "It's a supernatural thing...you just wouldn't understand."
Of course, the uncomfortable intersection between America's #1 icon for children, Elmo, and a man who was allegedly trolling around for underage men throws yet another element into the mix. But haven't we been subconsciously "getting used" to this whole subject matter anyway, as a culture?
Isn't the baby character on "Family Guy" sexualized constantly -- and could you find one person out of ten on the street who would have a single negative thing to say about it? I mean, to see Stewie Griffin in drag dancing around a stripper pole is nothing, isn't it? Stewie, the toddlers in tiaras, the girls at the Chinese auto show -- all these cases could and are explained away as just "cute," the equivalent of a girl trying on mommy's oversized shoes.
As for the cases of Ariel Winter and Chloe Moretz, isn't it rather common for these teen actresses to work towards their "coming out" as Women, as some sort of rite of passage? Isn't that what Kristen Stewart did when she allegedly slept with the married director of her movie? Granted, she was in her very early twenties at the time, but had been heavily identified with a "teen" series of movies and had to impress movie-makers and the public that she was an "adult now":
Isn't that what Brooke Shields did when she posed in that racy Jordache Jeans commercial ("nothing comes between me and my Jordache?"):
Or was it years before for Brooke, in "Pretty Baby":
Isn't that what Miley Cyrus did when she took naughty phone pics of herself and then starred in her first "sexy" video, "Can't Be Tamed?"
Of course, Miley has seemed to do a 180 since then, shedding her long locks, wearing "butch" clothing and generally seeming sort of a bad-ass:
Anyway, while I do not subscribe to the idea of this "idyllic" view of adolescence as being like some sort of hermetically-sealed fantasy land where no thought or mention of sexuality dare encroach, I think being "sexualized" at too early an age is harmful for teens. Yes, back in "the old days" (and in some places, still recent), girls as young as 14 or so were already married and having kids. But consider the culture and the context.
Today's youth -- both male and female -- need time to mentally mature, especially in this society. And while they might "experiment" with each other (as teens are sometimes wont to do), teen/adult relationships by their very nature involve an imbalance of power.
We laugh and roll our eyes at the (mis)adventures and various cheesy soft-core photo shoots of "child bride" Courtney Stodden, who married actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16 and he was 51. But look at her:
And are we, as a society, devolving as much as we're evolving, going back to this primal, archaic state where the elder Alpha Male picks the best of the latest crop of young virgins, like something out of a feudalistic society? And at the same time, we're discovering and using technology waaaaaay beyond the spiritual and emotional development of most of the population.
It is, for me, an issue way beyond the immediate topic at hand. This topic is just a symptom of a greater problem: WE NEED TO EVOLVE FASTER PAST OUR ANCESTRAL "ANIMAL" BRAINS. Because we need the brainpower, insights, and basic spiritual evolution of our smart and innovative young women (and young men!) in this society -- it is vital to the overall development of our species. Rather than just draining their youth and contributing to the overall entropy of the Universe.
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