Children, Innocence, & Sexuality

March 14, 2006 12:30 PM

[book/other media recommendations]: I'm researching the sexualization of children, found in abusive situations as well as in less obvious contexts like child beauty pageants. Has there been a particular book/movie/situation that most eloquently laid out this topic for you?

There is one book in particular I'm looking for, a title I think I saw in another AskMetafilter question actually, but I haven't been able to find that original question or remember the title. The book's title may have had "innocence" in the title and possibly "sexualization", though sifting through Google, Amazon, Alibris and my university's catalog with these words is not ringing any bells.

Beyond this book, I welcome any other suggestions that strike you--documentaries, dramas, comic books, paintings, academic treatises (even your own!), Law & Order SVU episodes, whatever comes to you. This project is still very general in scope at this point, so there are no wrong answers (also, I apologize if this makes answering it more difficult :-/ ).

If it helps, I'm probably the least interested in JonBenet type stuff, and more interested in things like the ambivalence of Lewis Carroll photographs (but more current perhaps) and the varying ways we view them (accusatory or not). By the way, I am not a conservative with an agenda, dowsing for pornography where there is none; rather, I'm investigating what lies behind conservative *or* liberal accusations, who's making the images/cultural practices etc. in question, and what the creator and society gets out of them, both positive and negative. So far, I've looked at things as wide-ranging as the Jack Ketchum novel The Girl Next Door (and the Sylvia Likens case that inspired it) to the film/book Mysterious Skin to the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song Alice to various academic collections on child prostitution (international & domestic). Also some Andrew Vachss, Nabokov's Lolita, etc. If any of these have particularly illuminated the subject for you, I'd be interested in hearing why, though I'm looking more for new leads at this point.

Sorry for the length: it's a touchy subject with or without explanation, and I thought the background might be needed. Thanks so much, everyone, for your help :-)

posted by ibeji to society & culture (17 comments total)

One thing I always found extremely alarming was the songs selected for kids to sing for the Kidz Bop CDs. I mean, they sung Britney's "Toxic," for God's sake:

There's no escape
I can't wait
I need a hit
Baby, give me it
You're dangerous
I'm loving it

Too high
Can't come down
Losin' my head
Spinnin' 'round and 'round
Do you feel me now?
posted by WCityMike at 12:39 PM on March 14, 2006

Not sure if it's quite what you mean, but Heather Corinna explores a lot about sexualization of children and how that hypocrisizes (is that a word?) our age of consent laws in the essay Rage of Consent.
posted by occhiblu at 12:45 PM on March 14, 2006

There was a TV program in the UK during the 80s called Minipops
posted by kenchie at 12:50 PM on March 14, 2006

Was the book you were thinking of called Erotic Innocence? If it wasn't, it sounds perfect for your subject.
posted by bubukaba at 12:58 PM on March 14, 2006

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood. The book begins: "As I write, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are among the highest-paid models in America..."
posted by russilwvong at 12:58 PM on March 14, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

historically there has always been a swing in how we perceive children vis a vis sexuality. From our perspective children and sex should not mix, but in reality we have done a piss poor job in regards to this. For my money issues of power in conjunction with sexuality is what does the most harm.

As much as it is over played the popular website MySpace has been catching a lot of flack lately because of incidents of young children using it in "provocative" manners which (rarely) results in offline, inappropriate meetings between minors and adults. And while Myspace has tried to limit access they do display prominent sexual ads.

Children WILL mimic adult behavior, and to some degree at a certain age may believe they want that attention and action. Adults need to act like adults and maintain the boundaries.
posted by edgeways at 1:20 PM on March 14, 2006

Sally Mann photos...
posted by nimsey lou at 2:14 PM on March 14, 2006

The movie "Pretty Baby" by Louis Malle
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078111/

The "career" of the Olsen Twins

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
posted by ollsen at 2:29 PM on March 14, 2006

Living Dolls, although you may have seen it.
And the documentary Painted Babies, which is not on imdb for some reason.
posted by oflinkey at 3:21 PM on March 14, 2006

I'll second Living Dolls.
posted by nuclear_soup at 3:56 PM on March 14, 2006

Taxi Driver, the movie.
posted by availablelight at 4:40 PM on March 14, 2006

Taxi Driver is something I've wanted to see, availablelight, thanks for reminding me...

nimsey lou, your Sally Mann mention brings up an interesting point: do you think Mann is sexualizing her children subjects? It seems to me much different than Lewis Carroll, for instance: Carroll posed and chose costumes (or lack of) for his subjects, whereas Mann almost always shoots the kids doing what they do ordinarily (play dress up with lipstick or or run around naked by the river). It's all in the looking, I guess, which is what I'm interested in exploring; so I'd be curious to hear what you (and others) see when they see a Sally Mann photo... Thanks for mentioning her.

[some Mann photos here, my favorite here, a more controversial one here]
posted by ibeji at 5:11 PM on March 14, 2006

Was there ever a metafilter thread on Saaya Irie the 11-year old Japanese girl who was easing tension between China and Japan with her bust.

Also, Child Supermodels.

(not safe for anybody, ugh!).
posted by Chuckles at 5:26 PM on March 14, 2006

holy shit, Chuckles, *eek*. Thanks, though, it definitely relates to the question at hand... :-/
posted by ibeji at 5:54 PM on March 14, 2006

It might be sort of obvious, but you might also want to look into the many areas in which children and young teenagers are sexualized in parts Japanese pop culture, particularly in "hentai" and its subgenres.

This kind of pornography is also pretty popular in the US, so if your research is culturally specific this might still be a good thing to read about.

The wikipedia page is probably as good a place as any to start.
posted by bubukaba at 6:10 PM on March 14, 2006

You might try to find information about the (banned in the US and Canada) book Show Me. I don't remember who it is by, but it is a book of black and white photos that were supposed to illustrate bodies and growing up (and adults having sex) -- I believe from Germany, but possibly from a different European country.

Also of interest are two Canadian court cases -- one of Eli Langer and his paintings of child sex abuse; the other of John Robin Sharpe and his photo collection of minors. An interesting point in the latter court case is that it would have been okay for the minors to take pictures of each other and keep them -- it was an adult that made it not okay.
posted by mbrubeck at 6:51 PM on March 14, 2006

The Saaya Irie stuff is disturbing. What interests me is the explicit connection between her immature sexuality and water. I guess there's some kind of rebirth/cleanliness metaphor being belaboured here.

"Child Supermodels" is one of the ickiest sites around - on a level with "1st Flirt". I'd also put "Cute Cosplay Angels" in that category. I'm not hotlinking any of these directly because they are just dodgy and don't deserve direct traffic from Metafilter.
posted by meehawl at 6:12 AM on March 15, 2006