Sexualization of Young Girls and Pedophilia

[Stravo]

Two andecdotes to bring shape to what I am thinking:

I was leafing though I magazine with a friend yesterday as we chatted. It was one of those celebrity gossip mags with pictures of celebrities in revealing clothes, etc and the ads also had women in skimpy clothes, etc.

I glanced at an ad and admired the model's smooth silky legs and thought "yummy" and then upon closer inspection I noticed that the model was no older than 14. It was a young girl modeling some children's clothing for a store. I was surprised at my reaction and saw how they dressed her, adult makeup with eyeshadow and lipstick and realized that they had completely sexualized her and made her sexually attractive in the sense that when you looked at her you didn't think "Awww...how cute is she." it was "Wow, look at the legs on her."

At a costume store this weekend while buying party supplies I was scanning the list of costumes available and looked at the kids' costumes and stopped short at two of them: "French Maid" and it was fishnet stockings, miniskirt, the works that we usually get with the adult costume and another costume named after what I think is some sort of anime character or type where the girl is wearing highly sexualized school girl stuff, miniskirt and fishnets on legs and arms.

These costumes started at age 8 through 14 in size. So my 9 yo daughter could dress up as a French maid.

Why? What possible reason would a parent want to dress his daughter in that manner? Were there sexualized young boy costumes? NO.

These two incidents in the span of a few days got my gears churning and thinking about how over the last decade or so little girls have started to be dressed and treated like older girls. Some of the fashions we see in these magazines and such make these preteens into sexual objects. Putting a 12yo in miniskirt and fishnets and heavy makeup is NOT anything BUT sexual. Sometimes I am a little horrified by what I see in my daughter's older cousin's teen magazines in how young girls are presented.

And now when you think of the Amber alerts and the apparent plague of child predators you have to wonder if society is helping breed them with this implicit sexualization of young girls. I don't see a similar trend among young boys. I don't see revealing clothing, muscle shirts, etc that make young boys into sex objects so I really have to wonder what is going on.

Any thoughts on this? Am I being an overly senstive dad type? Am I overreacting?

[Enigma]

There's a reason the word "prosti-tots" exists. This has been around for years. Drive by a few schools and you'll see this. Here in Canada it doesn't help that the consenting age for sex is 14.

[Surlethe]

Perhaps there's some third mechanism responsible for both the apparent increase in pedophilia and the sexualization of young girls. It seems that pedophilia is more biological than anything else; if this is the case, then the proportion of pedophiles in the population has not appreciably increased or decreased over time. What we're seeing is an increased sensitivity to pedophilia: what may have been socially acceptable or ignored in the past now inspires outright horror. Maybe this movement of the "moral zeitgeist" is also responsible for, in some manner, the sexualization of young girls.

[Knife]

I think the sexualization part is one of those funny (not really) cultural things, in that people think the sexy clothes are the end into themselves. The fad and the style seem to represent freedom and independence to the kids as well as a way to 'fit in', when in reality sexy clothes and make up are made to make female assets stick out and be emphasized.

So I think the sexualization bit is basically us lying to ourselves trying to turn something into something else when we know damn well it isn't. Kind of makes me think of the Sophie Loren where a few years ago everyone went around saying she was sexy pumping up her ego. Granted, twenty years ago, she was gorgeous, but two years ago she was in no way appealing to have sex with.

[salm]

Hasn´t it always been like this? The younger generation dresses in a manner that is seen as too revealing by many people of the older generation.
I remember that when i went to high school 10 years ago there was a debate by older people whether 15 year olds need to wear belly free shirts. People from my generation didn´t really understand what´s supposed to be so bad about a belly free shirt and what the whole fuss is all about. And i guess most people from my generation don´t even notice if 15 year olds wear this stuff now.
According to my mom in her days it was really rebellious and actually not allowed to wear a skirt shorter than then knees to school because of it being too revealing. these days most people would find this absurd. There are even school uniforms that are shorter than the knees.

[Knife]

Hasn´t it always been like this? The younger generation dresses in a manner that is seen as too revealing by many people of the older generation.
I remember that when i went to high school 10 years ago there was a debate by older people whether 15 year olds need to wear belly free shirts. People from my generation didn´t really understand what´s supposed to be so bad about a belly free shirt and what the whole fuss is all about. And i guess most people from my generation don´t even notice if 15 year olds wear this stuff now.
According to my mom in her days it was really rebellious and actually not allowed to wear a skirt shorter than then knees to school because of it being too revealing. these days most people would find this absurd. There are even school uniforms that are shorter than the knees.

You illistrate the point I was trying to make. Those clothes become the symbol of independence and their attempt to push the boundries of their times.

And it might be true, however a short skirt is still a short skirt because it shows off a girls legs. Whether or not it is also what ever fad symbol for what ever generation to rebel, it's also showing off a girls legs.

[Mobiboros]

As an aside a 14 year old is, most likely, too old and developed to be considered pedophilia strictly by the definition of pedophilia. Paraphilias are taking non-sexual things and sexualizing them, which means any human who's entered puberty is considered ineligable (As that's nature point of saying "Nope, you can procreate now".). However that doesn't excuse that a 14 year old should not be dressing like a hooker.

Also, it's hard to sexualize most 13 and 14 year old boys the same. At 14 a girl probably has started developing and gaining some adult female proportions. At 13 or 14 most boys are still rather doughy since their physical maturation takes a longer, slower process.

[Darth Wong]

(sigh) Wake up and smell the coffee, prudes. It's not that we are "sexualizing" 14 year olds; it's that the Victorians DEsexualized 14 year olds and it's finally wearing off. Romeo and Juliet was about a couple of 14 year olds. The human body becomes naturally sexually active at that age. Your biology screams at you to become active around that age. Anyone who thinks that 14 year olds would be "naturally" asexual without big bad TV and "decadent" pop culture is living in a puritanical dream world.

[Johonebesus]

If we went for a really natural society, teenage girls would be claimed by older men, not dating teenage boys. People tend to forget that Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy; the protagonists ruined themselves because of their own stupidity. The Bard's message was that stupid little teenagers ought not to act on their emotional impulses.

We didn't just inherit prudishness from the Victorians, we inherited the idea that people should only marry after adolescence, choosing mates for themselves based on love. The problem isn't simply sexualizing fourteen year olds, it's sexualizing them and then telling them they can't get married for years yet. Since we aren't willing to go back to the old ways of parents marrying off their teenage daughters to older bachelors, or having teenage couples living in multi-generational households, we have a dilemma.

Then there's the problem of sexualizing prepubescent girls. Stravo mentioned French Maid costumes for eight year olds. Have you ever seen a child beauty pageant?

Our sexual mores are really messed up. Maybe in a few more generations we'll get a working culture.

[Shinova]

Our sexual mores are really messed up. Maybe in a few more generations we'll get a working culture.

As opposed to the past few centuries?

[Frank Hipper]

(sigh) Wake up and smell the coffee, prudes. It's not that we are "sexualizing" 14 year olds; it's that the Victorians DEsexualized 14 year olds and it's finally wearing off. Romeo and Juliet was about a couple of 14 year olds. The human body becomes naturally sexually active at that age. Your biology screams at you to become active around that age. Anyone who thinks that 14 year olds would be "naturally" asexual without big bad TV and "decadent" pop culture is living in a puritanical dream world.

14's one thing, I remember being 14 and horny as a motherfucker myself; but sexy, revealing costumes for 8 year olds is something else.

Something I don's think is entirely tangential is this "Bratz" line of dolls and cartoons.
Choosing the hottest boy while shopping for whore costumes seems to be the entire gist of the crap, and it's geared to an audience that in no concievable way is old enough to make responsible decisions about either boys or clothing.

Purple glitter eyeshadow, lowrider jeans, and midrif-baring tops are something that makes my skin crawl when I see it on little kids; and I am not talking about teenagers.

[Simmon]

Purple glitter eyeshadow, lowrider jeans, and midrif-baring tops are something that makes my skin crawl when I see it on little kids; and I am not talking about teenagers.

My skin crawls when I see purple glitter eyeshadow on anyone. Matters of taste, of course, but who would come up with that?

[the wicked prince]

You are not overreacting. I have noticed ads on the web I recall that seemed clearly targetted toward pedophiles. And these on mainstream sites. (No I don't look at kiddie porn, lol)

Most disturbing

[Napoleon the Clown]

As an aside a 14 year old is, most likely, too old and developed to be considered pedophilia strictly by the definition of pedophilia. Paraphilias are taking non-sexual things and sexualizing them, which means any human who's entered puberty is considered ineligable (As that's nature point of saying "Nope, you can procreate now".). However that doesn't excuse that a 14 year old should not be dressing like a hooker.

Also, it's hard to sexualize most 13 and 14 year old boys the same. At 14 a girl probably has started developing and gaining some adult female proportions. At 13 or 14 most boys are still rather doughy since their physical maturation takes a longer, slower process.

Technically, the term would be "ephebophile". Fourteen is still too young to safely get pregnant.


In any event, I find it somewhat disturbing that they've got shit like that for girls that are still too young to have any semblance of development. Hell, the attitudes regarding child porn and pedophilia are at odds with fashions being mentioned.

[Stark]

The gulf between underage teenagers and seven year olds in fuckme boots and pushup bras is huge.

[Spin Echo]

I found the "Future Porn Star" t-shirts for toddlers disgusting. Yeah, the kid isn't old enough to know what it means, but still.

[Mobiboros]

Technically, the term would be "ephebophile". Fourteen is still too young to safely get pregnant.

Which is a colloquial term whereas pedophilia is a clinical one that is often misused, which was my point. Whether or not pregnancy is "safe" is irrelevent, as hitting puberty effectively nulls the label pedophilia because they person is no longer a non-sexual entity according to biology.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I seem to recall hearing from some source that may as well be a hallucination, that many Pedophiles like to purchase department store ads just for the above cited reasons...

[Broomstick]

(sigh) Wake up and smell the coffee, prudes. It's not that we are "sexualizing" 14 year olds; it's that the Victorians DEsexualized 14 year olds and it's finally wearing off. Romeo and Juliet was about a couple of 14 year olds.

Actually, there's a line in Romeo and Juliet said by Juliet's father about her having "not yet reached the change of 14 summers" and that's why he thinks she's too young to marry just yet, which would would seem to indicate that she is not quite physically mature and menstruating.

The human body becomes naturally sexually active at that age. Your biology screams at you to become active around that age. Anyone who thinks that 14 year olds would be "naturally" asexual without big bad TV and "decadent" pop culture is living in a puritanical dream world.

Not that 14 year olds from the past would be wholly ignorant of sex in most cultures, but people ARE physically maturing much earlier than they used to. Women used to start menstruating in their late teens, around 16 prior to the 19th century, and in hunter-gather groups 18-20 wasn't uncommon. In the US we're looking at 12 years old. So we have 14 year olds who have reached a state of physical maturity that in the in past wasn't seen until 18. Mentally, though, they are still 14 because there isn't any indication the brain is maturing any faster.

Stravo's reaction is not at all puzzling - he's reacting to the image of a physically mature human female. Not his fault her body matured before her mind.

What I find disturbing is the equating of sex and sexualized clothing as liberating or whatever. There's nothing wrong with enjoying sex, but there's more to being an adult woman than being a walking cunt. If you can't cover your body as well as reveal it, if you can't say "no" as well as "yes", you are not liberated, self-empowered, or whatever they want to call it.

[Darth Wong]

Stravo's OP combined two questions:

1) Isn't it disturbing that 14 year olds can be made to look sexy, as if they are already sexual creatures. That's what I was responding to earlier; like it or not, at 14 years old human beings are naturally sexual.

2) Isn't it disturbing that 8 year olds can dress up like sluts.

The difference here is that the 8 year olds can't really look sexy. Even when they're dressed up in slutty clothes, they just look ridiculous, not sexy. Now I suppose you could say that pedophiles would say otherwise and that it's dangerous to entice them, but they have serious psychological problems and it's not as if they would be any less attracted to pre-pubescent girls if they dressed more conservatively.

14's one thing, I remember being 14 and horny as a motherfucker myself; but sexy, revealing costumes for 8 year olds is something else.

How about swimsuits? Do you figure that 8 year olds should wear aquatic bur'quas, like the Muslim girls do?

[Adrian Laguna]

(sigh) Wake up and smell the coffee, prudes. It's not that we are "sexualizing" 14 year olds; it's that the Victorians DEsexualized 14 year olds and it's finally wearing off. Romeo and Juliet was about a couple of 14 year olds.

Actually, there's a line in Romeo and Juliet said by Juliet's father about her having "not yet reached the change of 14 summers" and that's why he thinks she's too young to marry just yet, which would would seem to indicate that she is not quite physically mature and menstruating.

Act 1, Scene III:

LADY CAPULET

This is the matter:--Nurse, give leave awhile,
We must talk in secret:--nurse, come back again;
I have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel.
Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse

Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

LADY CAPULET

She's not fourteen.

Nurse

I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,--
And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four--
She is not fourteen. How long is it now
To Lammas-tide?

LADY CAPULET

A fortnight and odd days.

Nurse

Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Juliet is no more than two weeks shy of 14 when the play begins. Romeo's age is never stated but I'd peg him at 16. Note that while the father is reluctant, both Juliet's mother and Nurse are not averse to the idea of her being married, and being the women closest to Juliet they probably are better informed about the state of her development.

[Master of Ossus]

(sigh) Wake up and smell the coffee, prudes. It's not that we are "sexualizing" 14 year olds; it's that the Victorians DEsexualized 14 year olds and it's finally wearing off.

Uh... wasn't the age of consent in Victorian England 12 or 14? I think the myth of their prudish culture has been exaggerated as time went on.

[Broomstick]

Juliet is no more than two weeks shy of 14 when the play begins. Romeo's age is never stated but I'd peg him at 16. Note that while the father is reluctant, both Juliet's mother and Nurse are not averse to the idea of her being married, and being the women closest to Juliet they probably are better informed about the state of her development.

Marriage in the middle ages was not just about physical development. In fact, in a lot of cultures physical development was almost irrelevant for the ceremony. Even in cultures with child marriages, though, there was a recognition that fucking a girl before physical maturity wasn't really a good idea for either the girl or her future prospects of motherhood. Hence a distinction between marriage and consummation.

The mere fact Juliet's mother and nurse are discussing her readiness for marriage rather than saying straight out something like "it's time she was married" period indicates, to me, that Juliet is right on the edge of adulthood but maybe not quite all the way there.

[Broomstick]

Stravo's OP combined two questions:

1) Isn't it disturbing that 14 year olds can be made to look sexy, as if they are already sexual creatures. That's what I was responding to earlier; like it or not, at 14 years old human beings are naturally sexual.

Hm... the physically mature 14 year old sure can be slutted up - a physically immature 14 year old looks just as ridiculous as an eight year old in a slutty get up.

Nowadays, it's a lot more common to find physically adult 14 year old females.

2) Isn't it disturbing that 8 year olds can dress up like sluts.

The difference here is that the 8 year olds can't really look sexy. Even when they're dressed up in slutty clothes, they just look ridiculous, not sexy. Now I suppose you could say that pedophiles would say otherwise and that it's dangerous to entice them, but they have serious psychological problems and it's not as if they would be any less attracted to pre-pubescent girls if they dressed more conservatively.

I think we should consider two points:

1) we should not set societal standards based on a pathology as rare as true pedophillia (which is reacting sexually to children, which is different than reacting to a young person who looks physically mature.)

2) a true pedophile might, in fact, be less attracted to a child dressed as a sexualized adult than to a child in more "innocent" attire. It really does depend on the nature of the perversion in a particular case.

I think what cranks society's handle on the slutty tot problem is that at some point slutting up young females starts to trigger a visceral reaction in normal men who are reacting to possibly deceptive visual stimuli. I am concerned about teens dressing as sluts because at that age it would be very easy for them to give off mixed signals, or to be naive as to the effects of their appearance on men. I'm not saying women should wear burqas (of course not) but it is a fact that appearance does affect the way men treat women. Giving off signals of sexual readiness/availability when that is not actually the case is deceptive, does lead to hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and when either young men (who are inexperienced themselves) or unscrupulous men (who don't care about the women they interact with as people) are involved things can get very ugly.

Nor is it strictly about how much skin is showing - a woman can wear very minimal clothing without non-verbally screaming "I'm ready to fuck", and she can be completely covered from the chin down and excude utter sexual readiness. It's a combination of how those clothes emphasize secondary sexual characteristics along with how she moves. It's how bare legs in a swimsuit can be less sexually overt than the thigh-high leather boots of a dominatrix.

Women - and if they're physically mature enough to trip a reaction like the OP's they're women for the purposes of this discussion - need to be educated in appropriate signalling. Walking alone down a street at 10 pm is not the time to turn on the sex appeal. At a social event like a dance you should be able to turn on the sexual charm. Maybe I'm an old fart, but dressing 8 year olds like whores to attend school or as daily wear does not seem to be a proper education in this area.

[Frank Hipper]

14's one thing, I remember being 14 and horny as a motherfucker myself; but sexy, revealing costumes for 8 year olds is something else.

How about swimsuits? Do you figure that 8 year olds should wear aquatic bur'quas, like the Muslim girls do?

Of course not, unless you're talking about thongs...not that I have ever heard of, nor seen a thong in a Young Miss department.

French Maid costumes have basically come to be fetish gear, for one thing.
On an 8 year old, a flowery pink, two piece swimsuit and a near ass-baring French Maid uniform with fishnets are the difference cutesy and sickening to me. It's a matter of association and intent, not just skin exposure.

I have a visceral, horrified reaction to small children dressed in clothing that would be sexually provocative on an adult, even if it's only for pretend.