Sexy Children(?!) in Film and Music Videos (originally posted September 2013)

Watching Pop, Sex and Videotape with Annie Lennox has spurred some thoughts, and although I think though the premise of the program was interesting, the Helen Lovejoy 'think of the children!' approach was both typical and damaging, and cut off a huge chunk of the audience and those who should face some accountability-  male consumers.

Sex sells, music artists in particular have always been keen to practice this expression of sexual autonomy in a western culture where it is legal- and a freedom - to express adult sensuality.

'The Purge' teen(?) girl 
© Universal

This is where the term 'adult' is key.

This theme was something I noticed firstly in cinema, in the '2.4 children' Hollywood construct, the teenage girl will always be very good-looking, played by an adult actress, presented as 'secretly' sexually adept and dressed in some kind of altered provocative school uniform. You can bet on it. This 'sexy schoolgirl' paradigm has been carried out for years in a muted way (*cough* st trinians), but the 'sexy' subject in mass western culture does seem to be getting progressively younger.

I would like to focus mostly on music, and while this will not be another blog post about the evils of Robin Thicke, it will be a comment on a summer 2013 'trend' of infantalising (making an adult woman act and look - as much as possible - like a young child) and then fetishising them, shown most overtly Dianne Martel's classics Blurred lines and We can't stop, examples listed here :

*Miley is dressed in a torn up baby-grow-like onesie (traded for shortie dungarees in the VMA performance);

'Blurred Lines'
©Interscope

*Orally-fixated symbolism in We Cant Stop: lollypops, bubblgum, 'tongue-out' expression

*The Blurred Lines females have smoke blown in their faces and their hair played with while remaining vacant and passive

*They are then left mute, nonspeaking unless it's an animalistic 'meow' or 'roar';

'We Can't Stop'
©RCA

*They are also not dressed overtly sexually in a way that would characterise womanly sexuality (like lingere), but infant-like complete nakedness

*The movements of both We can't stop and Blurred lines' focus' are child-like: stomping around, twirling, odd little dances (with the exception of the twerking- ha)

*Both the Blurred Lines females and Miley are surrounded by toys and teddies;

*Over-use of childlike facial expressions in both

*The physicality of both sexualised focus' is extremely young

Something I've often wondered is if the psuado-teenagers were topless, but more similar in figure to say Kim Kardashian or Beyonce- would the video still be seen as 'a bit of fun', or soft porn? My argument is that the video only works when the subject is adolescent or androgynous, with a very young, predominanly white model-like physique. 

This begs the question of how the subject matter can be appropriate or artsy with an adolescent-like female focus, but not for another type of woman, and why this new-found idealism for the very young has made its way so seamlessly into modern society. Children can not be considered in charge of their sexuality: they are physically weak, emotionally vulnerable and most notably, voiceless in society. Reducing women to small children is encouraging peadophilic fetishism in a landscape where Rhianna, Nicki and Britney are able to twerk in a thong covered in glitter - as adult women - with an absence of moral outrage (and IMO, rightly so).

Yummy
©Interscope

It is easy to dismiss this trend in the music industry as the last taboo, that sticking out with a new form of fringe sexuality is a marketing ploy, but the response to the videos was only met with (in Miley's case) slut-shaming, and unmatched salivation from seemingly intelligent and socially-aware adult men (Blurred Lines)- not the warranted questioning or disgust at the weirdly chilldlike women.

This is why pop culture is an adult's issue.

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xoxoxo