I'm usually one to join in practicle jokes, and actually love setting them up, but this picture was of one of the Olson twins in a tube top, and I wouldn't have any part of it. The co-worker was insistant, and I ended up taking out the picture and destroying it.

I'm no prude, and I'm certainly no stranger to porn of all kinds-- as long as it's a portrayal of activities between consenting adults of the same species.

I checked with my daughters and found out the Olson twins are 16, but I think the photo in question was taken before that.

Seriously, those aren't the worst I've seen. Back when I had cable, I watched a doc. called "painted babies" and it followed three "mothers" and their daughters around to those twisted pageants that were yanked into the spotlight with the death of Joan Benet Ramsey. It is enough to make one run for the hills. Did you see the picture of the little boy too? Shirt open on his abdomen leaning back? These are just pedophile's warm-up pictures. What the fuck is wrong with people?

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: Trinitty ]

This little girl had a nightmare of a mother. A nightmare because the girl was 3 or 4 years old and this mother was a drill sergeant. Nasty, nasty treatment of this girl. The girl had nothing but "girly" stuff. They applied the makeup with a trowel. It was just awful. They actually have "coaches" that get paid thousands of dollars to help their daughters act just right. The parents and coaches encourage the daughters (as young as 3 years old) to "flirt" with the male judges. It's just awful. My nose was wrinkled through most of the program.

Oates was obviously daring Mummy and Daddy -- so sue me, as it were ...

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: skdadl ]

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: audra estrones ]

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What the fuck is wrong with people?

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I have a list...
Pertinent to this topic: Peter Pan syndrome, cultural obsession with sex, the human being as an object of trade and consumption....

That's what makes this stuff not only possible but highly profitable. And nothing says "America" like profit!

...poverty, unequal opportunity, ego-privation

And you can tell with these women -- they're living vicariously through their kids. The kids aren't doing it because they enjoy it, they're trying to earn their mothers' love. Some things shouldn't have to be earned.

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Her mother constantly harangued and pushed an obviously very ill child through the whole thing. A tag on the end noted that she died two weeks after the last pageant they shot, where she had com in second.

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On my first read of your post, I missed the exact nature of the girl's illness, and wondered if she died from anoerxia.

Thing is, I imagine that's happened in this context, too.

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Some of the parents use their child as an extension of their own ego; a second chance to achieve what they want for themselves.
In the beauty-pegeant world, it's usually mothers pushing daughters. Fathers try to push their sons into sport for the same reasons.

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Yes, that's a good analogy, though I've seen some pretty bloody-minded mothers in the stands, too. Hockey parents, collectively, can be as ugly a bunch as any I've encountered.

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

On the other hand, baby beauty pegeants sure look sick, and my problem with modelling has always been the sexual angle: they take a 14-year-old girl, make her up to look 25, then shoot her in poses like a 7-year-old. That can't possibly appeal to anyone but a pedophile.

Of course far more pedophiles are relatives and close friends of family, or trusted adults.

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Is there as much difference between acting and modelling as i think? It seems to me child actors potray normal children - so it's just work. (While i'm not all that keen on children working, i'd rather send them in front of a camera than down a mine.)

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There's not really that much difference, in my opinion. I've done both, they're different aspects of the same kind of thing. Of course, the extent of the difference depends on the role.

And as far as acting being better than being down a mine... Well, I don't think the kids who died in the making of "The Twilight Zone" some years ago would say so... I've often wondered how their parents reconciled putting their children in such a dangerous situation for money.

Having said that, I wonder at what age do these children start to become responible for their lives? When do the Olsen twins cease to be defensless children being sexualized (I remember seeing a picture somewhere of the two 16 year olds presenting an award wearing low-low-cut pants and very visible g-strings underneath) and become young adults responsible for the image they are presenting? Similar with Britney Spears. I think it's gross the way she's treated by the media and the viewing public, but I have also yet to see her appear in anything which... well, anything really. I believe she is finally dressing herself now.

On the other hand, if you are a parent, you are largely responsible for what that young adult has learned up to that point, and that certainly has a large bearing on who that adult is, at least in the first few years.

I just posted in the string on rape sentencing my belief that we are turning into what I like to call a "hyper-community". We are so over-populated now that we no longer feel in touch with each other in our society and there is no pull to work together to better ourselves as a group. We act like a million anti-social beings all lumped together in the same land-space.

My point is this - Britney Spears acts on what she knows. She has been mistreated and misinformed since birth. She is a danger to our society because she teaches young girls to be sexual objects and young boys to treat girls as sexual objects. However, we cannot fully blame this on her. Her parents and her crew have created her, and she has just gone along with the act.

So what can we do to stop parents from damaging their children in this way? I'm not suggesting that we enforce all parents to raise their children in the same everyone-be-a-clone manner, but are there not limits to what we can accept? These are not just other peoples children. They are part of our society and they have an impact on everything we are and everything we do. We have a responsibility to each other that no one acts upon any longer.

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Or do these children who were born into the media light like this ever become responsible for their actions and images? Or do we just to chalk them up to plundered innocence and lost causes?

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A journalist in NYC who is a good friend of mine went down to Cuba with a friend (also a journalist, about 45 at the time, and married). Turns out his friend was going down there to screw 15-year-old girls. My friend even got turfed out of the hotel room he was sharing with his buddy, because the latter was taken up with his little "girlfriend". Buddy claimed that it wasn't prostitution as he didn't pay the kid any money - however he took her out to a fancy tourist restaurant, bought her clothing and a television for her family... yecch!

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I recall a Saturday Night feature from around 10 years ago, about a Canadian journalist who'd originally gone to Bangkok, I believe, in the late 70s or early 80s to write exposés about the sex-tourism business.

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She is a danger to our society because she teaches young girls to be sexual objects and young boys to treat girls as sexual objects.

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I don't think that's necessarily true. I used to hold a similar opinion on the ethics of Madonna's music/lyrics in the '80s, but I look at it rather differently now. The object is not to stifle speech or actions we disagree with, but to be media literate. Britney Spears can't teach my daughters to be sexual objects if I actively teach them to deconstruct the message and to value themselves. That, as clersal just pointed out, is my responsibility.

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So what can we do to stop parents from damaging their children in this way? I'm not suggesting that we enforce all parents to raise their children in the same everyone-be-a-clone manner, but are there not limits to what we can accept? These are not just other peoples children. They are part of our society and they have an impact on everything we are and everything we do. We have a responsibility to each other that no one acts upon any longer.

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In a sense, you are advocating enforcement of parenting values, and I think that's intrusive. I might not agree, I may even be disgusted, but once I advocate telling other people how to raise their kids and with what values, I open the door to let other people do the same to me. Perhaps there are those who feel it's criminal that I'm not raising my chidren to believe in Jesus, or feel that I shouldn't allow Barbie in the house... Parents all screw up somewhere, in varying degrees, and the best you can hope for is to get it mostly right.

If you're interested in effecting societal change through children but don't have any of your own, become a "Big Brother", or volunteer somewhere that has kids' programs. But don't go the route of telling people how to raise their kids. Chances are, they're doing the best they can with what they have.

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The object is not to stifle speech or actions we disagree with, but to be media literate. Britney Spears can't teach my daughters to be sexual objects if I actively teach them to deconstruct the message and to value themselves.

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But this is the hard part. How can we get parents to take on this responsibility with their children? I'm not suggesting we put all parents who let their children listen to Britney in jail. But what about social ills likethe child beauty pagent? Or the adult beauty pagent for that matter. I don't want to step on anyone's toes or do away with people's freedoms, but where is the line to be drawn? Why is it illegal to show a movie of a naked child at a porn theatre, but beauty pagents are ok? It's a matter of relativity. Currently, child beauty pagents are legal, so we would view making them illegal as an infringement on our rights. At one point, gladiator matches and slavery were also legal, but we have since come to view them as harmful to the betterment of society.

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In a sense, you are advocating enforcement of parenting values, and I think that's intrusive

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I know that this is a case where as soon as you open the door, millions of people are going to stick their feet in and try and get their ideas as part of enforced parenting. But again, there are parenting ideas which have been outlawed due to the fact that they drag us down as a society. Corporal punishment for one. Locking your children in tiny boxes without supper for days on end. These are things which do nothing but damage the children (in referencing corp. punishment, I refer only to those who took it too far and beat their children. I in no way, shape or form present a personal view on this matter). So can we not also say, for example, that placing your children in a pagent or into modelling where (despite the protests of some) they are being reduced to nothing more than sexual objects? Has there ever been a case of someone coming out a better person for having lived their childhood on the beauty pagent circuit?

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once you've got direct contact with kids, much of what you think you know.... You don't.

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I don't want to step on anyone's toes or do away with people's freedoms, but where is the line to be drawn? ... Currently, child beauty pagents are legal, so we would view making them illegal as an infringement on our rights. At one point, gladiator matches and slavery were also legal, but we have since come to view them as harmful to the betterment of society.

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If you're looking to draw lines, you know you're going to step on toes. That's a given. I think you are, to some extent, doing away with certain liberties people take in raising their kids. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Perhaps.

The other thing, too, is that gladiators and slavery have not been part of this society, but of previous ones. So that argument doesn't hold much water, in my opinion. Obviously, enough people think that beauty pageants are desirable (or at least harmless) and that banning them would infringe on a person's right to raise his/her child as s/he sees fit.

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But again, there are parenting ideas which have been outlawed due to the fact that they drag us down as a society. Corporal punishment for one.

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The other thing, too, is that gladiators and slavery have not been part of this society, but of previous ones. So that argument doesn't hold much water, in my opinion. Obviously, enough people think that beauty pageants are desirable (or at least harmless) and that banning them would infringe on a person's right to raise his/her child as s/he sees fit.

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But that's the whole point. At some point these things WERE a part of A society (whether it was ours or not, it was a closely related one. Take, if you want, putting Japanese people in interment camps during WW2) At some point, someone stood up and said, "hey... that's not so nice" and went against the grain. At the time, it must have seemed that they were infringing on plantation owners rights to own slaves, but by today's standards...

What about a child's rights to not be raised as a sexual object?

As far as the corporal punishment thing goes, well, I thought it was illegal. None of my parent friends hit/spank their children. My mistake. However, you can substitute another argument in there. Locking children in root cellars for a weekend as punishment, for example.

So even though I think it's just plain gross and that such parents aren't living up to their responsibilities, but where to draw the line is a purely subjective opinion on my part. And obviously not enough people think that sufficient damage is being done to do something about it.

My friend had no idea this specific horror was going on. He knew that his buddy was a bit of a sleaze, but had no idea that his constant cheating on his wife (note to all - I am not defending monogamy for all, people can screw as many or as much as they want, I mean lying and deceit...) involved edulcorated forms of child prostitution.

That would be a real moral predicament for me, because I would wonder whether I had a moral obligation to tell the wife of the cheating guy if I knew about it.

Not because of the psychological aspect of cheating, but because of the very real physical dangers involved.