It bothers me. Anything that (I think) oversexualizes young girls, pushes them into adulthood (or sexual maturity), or promotes their sex appeal to men bugs me on several levels.
I realize that young girls often will play dress up, wearing boas and heels and makeup ,and pretending to be mommy or movie stars or whatever. To me, that is fairly innocent. When it’s adults supervising this type of “pretend,” and taking photos of it for profit, it crosses a line for me. And these girls wouldn’t have to be too much older than they are now to start to sense a difference, I think.
I also don’t like kid’s clothing that allows 6 year olds to dress like teenagers. Call me a prude, a prig, or hopelessly outdated (I know they sell it everywhere). It bugs me. For one thing, I think it has the potential to make these girls targets for attention that they are not ready for.
Aside from it giving me the screaming heebie-jeebies there’s still the entire ‘objectification of women’ issue. I do think that small, incremental harm is done every time a woman is viewed (and perceives that viewing) strictly as an object of sexual gratification.
Speaking off the top of my head, of course, but I can only imagine that this is magnified for females at such an impressionable stage of life.
Of course, these models are probably 38 years old, just look young, and the mother is probably named named ‘guido’ or something…
I think it’s sick. Especially after looking at the link that Kaje provided. No child should be wearing make up like that, dressing like that, and posing like that. The parents are exploiting their own children to make a quick and easy buck and they’re not thinking about the long term effects this is going to have on their children.
Mark this down as yet another issue Stoid and I disagree on.
This is child abuse IMHO. These parents are selling off their child’s images to be used as sexual pictures.
I think it is wrong from the second it started, but I think it gets even worse as it goes on.
The parent knows who her customers are. The parent is doing this for the money. The parent is obviously dressing her child provocatively and coaching her on her poses in order to make the pictures “sexy.”
If this doesn’t fuck up a child then I don’t know what would.
Maybe the mother could sell her daughter into a year of sexual servitude in Sudan when she hits 16. Think of all the “education” she could pay for with that money.
Well, what I find interesting is how willingly everyone here has decided to vilify the subscribers.
Don’t get me wrong, the parents are idiots, particularly the ones who are willing to allow their pre-pubescent children to run around in thong underwear and sell the photos. I said the same of that Jon-Benet Ramsey girl, those parents were idiots.
The mantra of SDMB, particularly in Great Debates, seems to be “Avoid gross generalizations at all costs.” Yet here you all are railing about the potential harm that all of these pedophile sicko subscribers could potentially inflict on their innocent victims. Considering how well these businesses are (apparently) doing, I find it difficult to believe the subscribers are all, or even predominantly, pedophiles. There isn’t even any evidence suggesting the subscribers are predominantly male. Note that in the following quote we go from someone to men without any apparent reason:
So before we were talking about people, but now it’s men. OK, so what men? Let’s take the one guy listed, Mr CTP, what evidence is there that person is actually a perverted psychopath sicko? Does anyone actually have the user profile from Yahoo!, it wasn’t available when I looked The a/s/l line said 32/M/USA in his ONE post. But, could it not be a 13-year-old boy? Does anyone know?
The evidence presented seems a little misleading also, as there seems to be a total of 3 messages at this Yahoo! club, indicating it’s not exactly a hotbed of activity. The other username listed in the article didn’t exactly generate a lot of controversy. The user agreement at the site Badtz Maru links to specifically lists a number of offenses which will get you banned, which seems designed to keep “inappropriate” material out of the club.
Lets face it: They don’t know who the subscribers are, and neither do you. Are there some pedophiles? Maybe. I’ll even give you probably. Is the “product” in poor taste? I guess that’s questionable. It seems akin, again, to the pageants of Ms. Jon-Benet. But it seems poor form at best to assume the worst about an apparently large group of people without any corroborating evidence. I could expect this from http://www.wired.com, but I expected better from the people here.
Last, but not least, I’m not saying that you’re absolutely wrong, and there are no pedo’s homing in on this. I’m saying that I’d rather you got some more solid evidence before assuming such.
That someday we will reach an age of higher enlightenment, where the sexualization of prepubescent girls carries no social stigma?
There’s been an erosion in recent years of the idea that parents should not allow their girls to dress in provocative ways. (Need a link? Hell, go walk through your local high- or middle-school. Did girls dress like that when you were in school?)
Well that’s a great arguement if you happen to be a member of NAMBLA or something. Are you equating homosexuality with pedophilia? Because that’s what it sounds like.
I need to go shower. I couldn’t take any more of their posts or their web sites. Anybody who would sell their child like this deserves to be put in prison, and have their children taken away from them.
This is a pure violation of the parent-child relationship and an abuse of the child.
I’m so pissed off that not only could a parent sell off their child like this, but that people on the SD could defend it.
Well, I don’t think that’s what it sounds like, and I kind of hope my opinion on this will carry some weight. I understand, but disagree with one-half of, the analogy that s/he’s making.
Moving right along, more descriptions of the types of material in question having come to light, I am starting to feel more and more creeped out by it. I stand by my earlier assertion that in the clearly innocent types of pictures that were speculated about earlier (baking cookies, children’s clothing catalogues) nobody is in the wrong, no matter what use those pictures are put to. However, the bit about scantily-clad children is starting to alarm me. However, I would argue that in those cases it is the people who take the pictures, and them alone, who are potentially responsible for harming the child. Once a picture has been taken, the child can’t be un-exploited by banning its distribution. What goes on in the mind of someone receiving such materials cannot harm anyone, assuming it stays that way - in the mind.
I consider myself a 100% sex positive person, and I found it a little creepy.
But, it is not without precedence. Lewis Caroll had a thing for taking photos of dressed up little girls. He was a definatly a pedophile, although most sources agree he stopped at photographing. Mostly, he was a shy guy who was intimidated by grown women. It is easy for us to all picture pedophiles as slobering madmen. The truth is a little more complicated.
And while children should not be exploited, it is inaccurate to believe that they are assexual beings. Our society tends to push that under the rug. The big question is, is there a way to deal with that sexuality without causeing exploitation or harm? I don’t have an answer for that one.
I would certainly rather see men looking at these photos than going out and marrying their 14 year old neice (a la Poe). While these sites are pretty unsavory, I can think of things that are a heck of a lot more disturbing.
Perhaps the most worrisom thing for me is the mothers. From what I saw on the messege boards, they were raking in the cash, and busy thinking of new money making angles. I just hope that they can still keep their children’s happiness in mind, not just the bank account.
Well Matt, your opinion always carries some weight with me whether or not I agree with them. I’m willing to give Tacer the benefit of the doubt and assume that s/he didn’t mean it that way. (Tracer sorry about the s/he thing but it sounds more polite then it.) But I do disagree with you. What other point to the analogy is there?
I agree. I’m more disturbed by the parents responsible for these kids then I am the people who subscribe to such services.
I disagree. I think the exact opposite - the harm comes in distributing the picture, not in taking it. If I take a picture of my baby daughter naked in the bathtub and show it only to family members, that is innocent behaviour. If I take a picture of my baby daughter naked in the bathtub and selling it over the internet, I am violating her privacy.
To answer the OP - are what these parents doing “wrong”? Usually, when faced with those decisions, I ask myself “would I personally do it?” To take an example from the article, would I sell (for $75) a video of my 13-year-old daughter cavorting in thong underwear? No, I wouldn’t. That’s because I think it’s wrong. The activity of 13-year-old girls playing in thong bikinis is generally considered to be private and not meant for public consumption. On the other hand, if someone wanted to buy a video of my 13-year-old daughter winning a 10K race, I would not be so averse to the idea. Of course, if the person were a known sex offender, I would be leery, but I think the odds of that happening with a video of an athletic event would be much lower than if the video represented my daughter in the (almost entirely) nude state.
How do you determine what pictures of your children are acceptable to show to people? While the “logical” answer is “a picture of a person in the nude is no more harmful than a picture of a person dressed”, in practice society’s conventions dictate what constitutes “acceptable” behaviour. If I show to my co-workers a picture of my adult daughter eating a hamburger, this is a common enough sight that not very many people will be offended. If I show to my co-workers a picture of my adult daughter having sex, that would be inappropriate and wrong.
I suppose, if one were to be absoultely objective, there’s nothing wrong with being sexually attracted to prepubescent girls. The difference between pedophelia and homosexuality is that in the latter, there are two willing partners. In the former, BY LAW, there are not.
That’s what makes statutory rape, rape. It doesn’t matter if the 17 year old is the seducer, leads you to her bed, and is on top, it’s still rape by law. The minor is presumed not to have consented because she (or he) is incapable of making that choice.
Now, I have no idea if these videos are illegal. But I don’t think it would take a great leap of logic to transfer the ideas presented in statutory rape over to this. It doesn’t matter if the girls in the video suggested the idea, set up the camcorder, and dressed themselves in fishnet stalkings. Their parents should know better and the child can’t consent to this type of activity.
Well … no. Hell, adult homosexuality still carries a social stigma.
My point was that, basically, most everybody seems to be saying that if a man feels sexually attracted to pictures of pre-pubescent girls, whether or not he acts on that attraction, then he is a sick fuck who needs psychological help to keep from turning into a pedophilic stalker. And that anyone who dresses up their daughters for pictures that pander to this demographic ought to be locked up.
We have a couple of factors muddying the issue here, too:
(1) Little girls are also given makeovers and dressed up in sexy outfits for those really-young-girl beauty pageants. Are such beauty pageants also “pandering to sickos”?
(2) The customers to these sites don’t seem to match the profile for pedophiles. They’re looking at pictures of little girls who are dressed up to look like they’re already in puberty. Your average pedophile is equally likely to be interested in little boys as little girls, and prefers pictures that emphasize the child’s physical immaturity. No photos of little boys appear on these sites, as far as I know.
Now, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute here! Is that article claiming that out of the 300 million people in the U.S., only 10 million are girls under age 20?!
You seriously cannot see the difference between being attracted to a mature adult of the same or opposite sex, and some young pre-pubescent child, who is not one’s equal?
gee, since I’ve posted in multiple threads about child molesters etc, and have actually seen data, worked w/molesters, talked to folks who’ve conducted studies, let me ask you to supply proof of your assertion that ‘the average pedophile’ is equally interested in little boys as little girls’ and not interested in those who’ve reached puberty.
(I do agree you have a point about the beauty pagent stuff, however, I don’t see the same level of involvement at selling/marketing to folks who are apparently seeking out thong bikinis to send to the kids)
So lets say that you get in a bike accident and bang your head. You wake up the next morning with a thing for younguns.
You, being a kind and caring person, know better than to act on those urges. Yet, they are still there. You would rather not look at nude pictures of kiddies, because you are horrified at the documentation of exploitation. But, one day you discover a way to deal with your new found sexuality without really hurting anyone.
Are you sick? Are you evil? Or are you just plain unlucky.
Should you be condemned despite your work at keeping your urges from hurting anyone?
And yes, a child can consent to playing dress-up. What happens after that doesn’t really involve the child anymore, does it?
Well, those of us who have been in the pedophile threads may remember that my position is pretty loose on the matter.
I looked at a few of the links. I didn’t find them extra disturbing, though I concede that I can imagine why some might construe these as a little disturbing.
However, I can’t see that pictues of girls wearing clothes they could wear in public, or on a public beach, should be considered pedophilia.
I can see that the parents are being deliberately ignorant with respect to the message boards and such.
Arnold, I have an interesting question for you. If your daughter desired to sell those photos of her after she grew up, would you consider that to be all right?