It’s not, though. Depending on the laws of your country or state, it may be both immoral and illegal to act on that lust. But, if people had to answer honestly, I think most would agree that there’s nothing immoral about finding a post-pubescent girl attractive. In places where 18 is the age of consent, an adult wanting to have sex with a seventeen year old? Bad. An adult actually having sex with a seventeen year old? Bad. An adult thinking a seventeen year old is attractive? Pretty normal.
The difference, of course, is that the heroin dealer is in clear violation of the law, and the fashion photographer and advertising director are not. Would you like to try that one again?
So it sounds like you’re one of these people concerned solely with legality not morality.
But in any event, let me repeat the very quote you inserted with the parts you were unable to grasp emphasized:
Now .. we don’t agree, but pay attention next time to what you’re responding to.
Stated more simply, if I write “If A then B” and you disagree with both A and B, argue A, not B. Clear enough? Moreover, note that I didn’t specifically endorse either A or B here, just the implication “If A then B.”
I got annoyed by a confused non sequitur response, and replied hastily just adding to the confusion. :smack: Let me summarize in a calmer voice.
Is it immoral to parade underage models on the runway when sexual titillation is at least a partial goal? I don’t know. I’m not sure OP knows the answer either, but everyone else in the thread seems to feel that the answer is no.
I’m asking about this unclear topic, not answering, but one response seemed particularly wrong-headed. That poster used the profit motive to defend the morality of such underage titillation. :smack: This seemed like a faulty argument to me, and my analogy with the well-known heroin dealer’s argument “Someone else would be pushing it if I weren’t” was simply intended to make the fallacy clear.
Clear, yet? If not, I give up.
I’m glad this is your calm voice; not sure how I’d respond to your condescending one.
You present young teen-aged models on the same moral plateau as heroin. On this, we do not agree. A fairer comparison would be with child actors, quite a few of whom lead sad, unremarkable adult lives. But their used-up youth is immaterial to the arguments you’re making, most of which center on the viewers’ (i.e. your) prurient fascination with the models. Since a fair portion of the world’s male population finds the sight of hair and ankles prurient, I am not swayed by this argument.
You’re pushing a moral argument where one isn’t wholly appropriate. Morality is pretty subjective, especially when it doesn’t coincide with the law. Ads with girls who wear provocative clothing bother you, and you’re angry that they don’t bother everyone else as well. (Do teenaged girls, the target audience of these ads, get a vote in whether these fashion spreads are immoral or not? Do you think they’d agree with you in overwhelming numbers?) Or are you actually sticking with the craven “I don’t really have an opinion here, I’m just asking a question” pose? Might be more convincing if you hadn’t compared fashion shoots with pushing heroin.
But again, I don’t think there’s any evidence sexual titillation is part of the goal here. They’re marketing their clothing for teenage girls, whether a 40 year-old man is titillated is irrelevant, since titillated or not a 40 year-old man isn’t going to buy their product. They’re using a teenage girl to sell there clothing because they want to appeal to other teenage girls.
Plus, again, I don’t think the clothing displayed in the video is particularly sexually titillating.
Both of you are totally ignorant about how the business works. First of all, maybe a handful of the hundreds or thousands if child actors have a “used-up youth.” I don’t know if you mean unremarkable and sad as going together - many child actors grow out of it, and have happy productive lives (remarkable or not) with possibly a nice money cushion.
I don’t know if septimus considers a kid modeling jeans and t-shirts as exploited, or just bathing suits. Is a kid doing a photo shoot exploited, or only ones on the rare runway?
This is the second time you’ve put words in my mouth in this thread. Check back and I think you’ll find my only mention of “exploited” was to assert the model was not exploited.
I interpret OP as asking “Is there a double standard here? Where does one draw the line between fashion modeling and pornography?” I am simply agreeing to what only OP and I seem to see, that: Yes, the line-drawing is unclear.
Heck, IIRC you’re a circuit designer, Voyager. You know if I state “If A then B” I’m asserting neither A nor B, just commenting on an implication. Based on my position here (which is “It is hard to draw the line.”) for all you know, instead of opposing underage fashion modeling, I could be favoring child pornography!
(Ooops. Now the people in this thread that don’t understand simple logic will start calling me pro-pornography. :smack: )
Who isn’t pro-pornography? Never mind, but that strikes me as practically un-American.
So you don’t think the modeling in the video was pornography and so far as I can tell no one else in the thread except maybe the OP thinks its pornography and even the OP doesn’t really say he thinks so, though I guess you could argue thats what he means by “I could argue that its [sexual in nature]” (though he never did actually argue it, merely asserted that he could)
So while perhaps there exist cases where the line drawing is unclear, in the case the OP links to, it seems that there’s little disagreement about what “side of the line” its on. Which then makes it pretty poor evidence that the line isn’t in fact fairly clear.
I apologize for not posting actual child pornography.
You might want to look into an organization called A Minor Consideration, an advocacy group for exploited and mismanaged young actors. There are more of them out there than you’d suspect. While I have no first-hand experience as a child actor, I have a bit more second-hand experience than you’d guess; when Jeremy Gelbwaks, the original Chris Partridge, left The Partridge Family and was replaced by another kid who didn’t even vaguely resemble him, he wound up at my school on the other side of the country. The best thing I can say about his experience is that most of the other kids wound up even worse when the show ended. And he had a much stabler family than Cassidy or Bonaduce.
It should be noted that she actually imposes restrictions on what she will wear. She insisted on wearing a bra under a top that she thought was too transparent during a shoot. That’s not typical, so I’m not overly worried about her being exploited.
I really appreciate this post and the OP’s, I didn’t view the vid, and I don’t need to to get what is being asked. And I agree…