Kids Grabbing Boobs: A Poll

In My Humble Opinion
1

First: Apologies to everyone for the length.

Second: Mods, if this goes to GD, that’s fine with me. It’s certainly GD material, but GD is not my intent. I don’t really have a defendable position on this (unless “bewildered” is defendable), so I can’t defend one. I am just interested in other people’s opinions and rationales for same.

So, here we go…

A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of “The King of Queens,” wherein Carrie (the female lead played by the smokin’ hot Leah Remini) is asked by her boss at her law firm to watch his grandson. Said grandson’s parents are out of town, and Grandpa is babysitting, but must work. So, he brings Grandson into the office and asks Carrie to entertain him for the day.

Carrie (of course) accepts, trying to get in good with her boss, and brings a bunch of toys with which to entertain said Grandson. Grandson is about 3-4 years old.

When Carrie attempts to engage Grandson in playing with toy trains, Grandson rather unabashedly grabs her breasts. Both hands, both breasts. On camera. Not off-camera, behind the corner of a desk, or otherwise implied in any way. Carrie, rather visibly surprised and not a little disconcerted, pulls his hands away and informs him that he’s not supposed to touch people there.

As soon as she releases his hands, he grabs them again. This happens three or four times during the scene, He gloms onto the things repeatedly. (Jealous? Me?)

For the sake of completion, here’s how the episode ends:When Carrie decides to brave the consequences of refusing this job duty at the potential risk of her career, she is about to inform her boss, but is interrupted by his telling her that she’s been replaced by someone his grandson likes better. cue pan over to grandson sitting happily in the lap of another woman with much larger breasts, low-cut blouse, and cleavage you could bury your face in. HA-HA-HA! Get it? He likes her better 'cause she’s got bigger tits!

I was rather astonished to see this on late-afternoon television (6:00pm), much less at all.

My question(s) is/are: How do you feel about this (personally, I didn’t know HOW to feel, hence the IMHO thread rather than GD)? There are the “Informed Consent” advocates that scream to high heaven anytime sex is mixed with children & adults. “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” they scream.

So was this wrong? Surely, the child in question could not give informed consent for this. Also, it was (while possibly not perceived as sexual to the child in question) obviously sexual to the adult audience, and done precisely so for their entertainment.

So why was this okay? Should it be okay? Where is the line drawn, and why? Who is it drawn by, and why? Who SHOULD it be drawn by, and why?

To add more to the mix: what if the genders had been reversed? A four year old girl grabbing an adult man’s crotch? Is THAT okay? Is it funny and charming? Would it be allowed? Should it? Ending for this alternate version–The male intern is told he’s being replaced, because Grand-daughter has found someone she likes better. *cue pan over to grand-daugter sitting happily in the lap of Ron Jeremy. HA-HA-HA! Get it? She likes him better 'cause he’s got a bigger cock!

What if the ages had been reversed: the adult making sexual contact with the child. An adult woman tickling a four year old boy in the crotch? An adult man grabbing a four year old girl’s chest (or other parts)?

I’m assuming that someone responsible for the child’s well-being had to give consent for this on his behalf, but how far does that extend? If his parents can consent on his behalf to have him grab her breasts, can they consent on his behalf to have him suck on them? can they consent on his behalf to have her give him a blowjob? If not, why not?

Just to be overwhelmingly clear: I’m not taking a position on this, because I don’t know what position to take. I am also not advocating ANYTHING, for those will try to claim that. I am just trying to parse this. It seems so at odds with what I perceive society’s position to be, which is that anything remotely resembling adult/child sex is abhorrent and unacceptable. This episode flew in the face of that, and thus I find it rather disconcerting.

Opinions would be welcome.

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Grandson is about 3-4 years old? Then it can also be interpreted as a breast-feeding gag. There’s no male equivalent to that unless he has massive man-boobs.

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Like Silentgoldfish, I took this episode to be a feeding gesture, and not sexual at all. The only time I grabbed breasts as a child (about 8 yrs old), was my neighbor - who was making fun of me (a 16 year old picking on an 8 year old…how about that!)…so I reached up, grabbed both of them in my fists, and twisted…hard. I got big time in trouble for that, and I learned to keep my hands off others, but I remember it. :slight_smile:

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Yeah. I think perhaps you’re the one sexualizing this. I’d see it as a breastfeeding joke, as well.

There’s no reason to assume that boobs are a sex interest for little kids. When they’re babies, they’re interesting because they’re food sources and they’re squishy things to bounce your head off of. When you’re a little older, they bounce funny when mommy runs with you in the park. Only at school-age do kids start to understand that they’re “private parts” along with the vulva and penis.

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I don’t see it precisely as a breastfeeding joke.

However, it’s funny because it REALLY HAPPENS. Kids that age will do inappropriate stuff like that, and I’ve seen little kids grab boobs. At 3 or 4 I suspect most kids don’t remember breastfeeding anymore, but boobs are big things they can grab, so they do.

If this sort of thing didn’t happen, it would be creepy. But it does, so it’s just a funny observation of real life.

6

I’m male with 2 kids under the age of 2. I can attest that kids grab EVERYTHING. Yesterday, I was laying on the couch for a nap and my 20-month old reached up my baggy shorts and grabbed, and pulled!

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I work with kids age 5-6 at camp every summer, and it is a boob-grabbing extravaganza. Either they want to get your attention, or they want to be picked up, or they want a place to put their heads…if your breasts are in range, that’s what the kids go for!

All the female counselors joke about it, because it happens to all of us: if I’d seen the show you described, I would have laughed myself silly. I’m chalking that one up into the “it’s funny because it’s true” column.

8

That’s the funniest thing I’ve read today :slight_smile: .

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I don’t think it’s abnormal at all for children (of either sex) to take an interest in any part of the body. It’s a part of their natural development to be curious about the body, as well as everything around them. I’d think to a 3 year old, grabbing a breast or crotch would be no different than grabbing a fistful of hair or a foot… it’s just another body part.

I agree that I it’s only sexualized because we as adults identify breasts as a secondary sexual characteristic.

Switching genders and having a girl do the same would be just as innocent, however the OP’s question about reversing the ages would be very wrong. That’s molestation as the adult knows better, and parental consent to commit a sexual act with an adult still makes it illegal, and in fact, would (or at least should, IANA Lawyer) implicate the parent(s) as accessories to the child’s abuse.

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Well ::ahem::I remember breastfeeding::cough:: :o
I definately did not think of breasts in a sexual sense for a loooong time. I never understood what the fuss was all about them. That was how babies got food. I have since become a bit more appreciative ;).
I don’t really see anything sexual in the scene the OP describes. I think a kid should be told that it’s not nice to grab. Especially there, since it can be quite uncomfortable. As for sketchiness because the kid was being told to do this for TV, I still don’t see a huge problem.

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Yeah, I was just going to say that toddlers wouldn’t be thinking of boobs as sexual areas. They’d maybe remember when they were a source of comfort and closeness to Mum, and when they had unfettered access to them as well. If the kid was 12…that would be different.

Anecdotally, my little cousin used to have a penchant for finding and twisting the nipple of any male that picked him up who was wearing a thin T-shirt or was bare-chested. :smiley:

12

Howdy–

OP here, thanks for all the input. I’ll try (and probably fail) to be as brief as possible.

First off, I realize that kids do this sort of thing, and that they do not see it as inappropriate or sexual. I’ve been a kid, I’ve been around them, I know this. That’s not what bothered me about it.

What bothered me is that from an adult perspective, grabbing breasts (and it didn’t look like he was going in for a drink) IS considered a sexual act. Sure, maybe if it is initiated by a child, it can be construed as innocent; but in this case it seemed as if it was the adult influence encouraging the child to do this, just for the entertainment of the adults. That’s what bothered me about this.

I will admit for the record that I hadn’t considered the “breastfeeding” angle…but again, it wasn’t presented as if that was his intent. He wasn’t going in for a snack; he was going in with both hands blazing, double-barreled, full-contact grope (think Jman’s scenario without the twisting…ouch!). I’ve seen the same in pornos, just not with a four year old. Especially with the ending, the implication seemed to be that he was a precocious pervert with a fetish for gazambas.

Possibly, and I’m willing to admit this is a possibility. But the ending kind of circumvented that “it’s all innocent” argument for me.

Sure, it’s “funny 'cause it’s true”. But is it STILL funny when it’s imposed upon a child (without their knowledge or informed consent) for the entertainment of adults? That’s the issue for me, here. When does the line get crossed? Who draws the line?

To riff on Jackknifed Juggernaut’s scenario a bit, and hybridize it with one of my earlier questions: What if it had been an adult male and 4 year old grand-daughter? What if the scene had been shot and it was passed off as “Well, kids will be kids, and grabbing at that wiggly thing isn’t remotely sexual, so whoever thinks it is has their own problems”?

What (to throw this into a further perspective) if Michael Jackson has written a new song about the delightful innocence of children, and wanted to re-enact JackJugg’s experience by using himself (Jackson) as JJ and a random youngster of a fan who brought their child to Neverland as the child? Should we still buy the “it’s all innocent, because kids do these things and there’s nothing sexual about it” argument?

I like to believe that I’m less uptight than most people when it comes to kids and sexuality, but this has really bothered me. I find it astonishing that I (who didn’t find the age gap between Mary Kay Latournau and Vill Fallau to be objectional…although lots of other things were) would end up being the prudish one here.

The world is a weird place, indeed.

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Replace “funny” with “sad” “dramatic”, “scary” or any other adjective and the question still holds - there can be little real informed consent for child actors for illiciting any emotion via their filmed performance. We’ve accepted that they cannot work as their own agents, and so we appoint legal representation to them.

Literally who draws the line? The department of labor or department of professional regulation in the state where filming took place, the Screen Actor’s Guild and the child’s parents, in that order.

There are hundreds of restrictions on child actors, from the number of minutes they can work per hour per day to what they can film. There are detailed lists of sexual behavior they can not portray. Most of them are based on “purient interest”, same as FCC fines, but other are more specific, nixing behavior based on lack of clothing, body part, etc.

One parent or a guardian must be present at all times when a child is working, and must approve all directions (even if by not objecting.) Just like in other areas of life, that parent may not make the same choices for their child you or I would, but we as a society recognize their legal right to make those decisions on behalf of their child.

I’m willing to admit that perhaps breastfeeding wasn’t what the writers had in mind. But what you detailed was not pornographic in that it was not done with intent to tittilate or “appeal to purient interests”. It wasn’t meant to turn you on. It was meant to make you laugh. It was a kid touching a secondary sex characteristic which was fully clothed. It was funny 'cause it was inappropriate, not cause it was sexy. Consider a kid who liked to pick his nose and wanted to pick his babysitter’s nose. That final reveal could have been to an old man with a huge schnoz. Ok, I’m not a comedy writer, obviously, and boobs are funny 'cause they’re boobs - but my point is that it wasn’t a sexy thing, it was an inappropriate thing. “Kids will be kids” means that kids will do things grown-ups won’t 'cause they haven’t learned all our rules yet. Or, if they have, because they’re little and cute enough to get away with breaking them. And that’s funny!

How many crotch punches, kicks, jabs and other hits have you seen kids give to grown men on film? I’ve seen hundreds. I think this was most analagous to a crotch-shot. Done for laughs, not for sexy.

Frankly, I’m far more concerned about filming of horror movies or movies where kids are crying a lot - although, even there, lots of trick videography is used to make things look bad to us but shield the kid from what’s going on on screen.

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Some people actually breastfeed as late as age 5. There was a woman in Illinois who did time for it. But 3 or 4 is not all that uncommon. I also see this as a breastfeeding gag.

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Some people actually breastfeed as late as age 5. There was a woman in Illinois who did time for it. But 3 or 4 is not all that uncommon. I also see this as a breastfeeding gag.