Warning: Contains kinderwhores.

[foxtongue]

A nine year old girl in Peru won a television station contest where she got to star in a remake of her favourite music video. Unsurprisingly, she chose a Britney Spears video, Toxic.

9 year old Toxic

As a refresher, the original video.
Behind the Scenes video, (spanish). Backstage video.
Photos of her at her kinderwhore television job.

Once you get past the initial shock, as polarizing as stumbling upon a beauty pageants for kids, I think it's a powerful statement, however unintentional on her part or that of her parents or the people who helped put it together. (Consider how many people must have been involved. Location, make-up, the teeny tiny wardrobe, cameras, post, etc. It's more than just a few.) A significant number of comments criticize the video and her parents shouting child abuse, exploitation, and paedophilia, but very few have asked why this video appealed to her in the first place, why it's normal now for children to be worshiping hyper sexualized pop tarts, a much deeper, dirtier manipulation, shameful yet largely ignored. The questions that should be asked are nastier, "since when did we start marketing Sex Sells to those under twelve? Why are teenagers our sex symbols and prostitots now just a matter of course?" Bratz dolls, the Spice Girls.. Remember when little girls in stripper-wear lip syncing to songs about sex was still weird?

William Strawn put it most concisely, over on my Facebook where I posted it last night, "Is this really sick? Or a reflection of all the little girls who imagine themselves in Britney's position? Or even just an idea that we have a very vague line in our society where it starts being okay to exploit women, putting them in highly sexuallized roles. Britney was 17 when she started, look how well that all turned out for her."

Comments

[benpeek.livejournal.com]

Remember when little girls in stripper-wear lip syncing to songs about sex was still weird?

1994.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Interesting that it would be the same here and there. I suspect it was an international thing as the Spice Girls gained popularity.

[qp4.livejournal.com]

Before that, but yeah, '89 - '92 maybe?

Madonna, Luther Campbell, and MTV, that's what got the ball rolling.

[riotlounge.livejournal.com]

Or it could be it's okay for older/mature women to be highly sexualized but parents aren't doing a good enough job policing what their children indulges in every day.

Media isn't there and inculcating children by itself - it's parents not being more active in their children's questions/mindset and media consumption.

If I was a pop star and I wanted to be highly sexualized, I think it would be my choice to do so.

[theotherbaldwin.livejournal.com]

I agree. Just... the video made my soul feel greasy. :(

Though y'all're right that it's also a much subtler science nowadays. Witness the Jonas Brothers, f'rex.

Ew.

[following-bliss.livejournal.com]

Greasy is an understatement. I need to wash this off me. Or possibly scour it off. Course steel wool might do the trick.

I don't mean to criticize those who can use this as a jumping-off point for a (much-needed) debate upon the commercialization of sexuality, the raising of children, and so forth. But apparently I've got about as much stomach for that as I do for open-heart surgery: seeing this in action, all I want to do is curl up in a fetal position, rock back and forth, and say "ew, ew, ew, ew, ew".

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

http://guanabee.com/2009/10/nine-year-old-does-toxic/

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the questions you are asking, too. That's what crossed my mind.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

37 seconds.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Britney has that effect on people, I hear.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

This, and the prostitots link make me think "Is this an ad for a charity to give homes to child prostitutes... or an ad for a sex tourism company?"

[sepulchrave.livejournal.com]

I've been commenting for years on how little girls no longer wear normal children's clothing. The designers have been recreating mini versions of adult fashion and it's increasingly disturbed me. This 10 year old does not need to be wearing skin tight jeans with a chic looking top. What happened to being a kid? What happened to wearing teddy bear jumpers and normal fitting clothing?

[envoy.livejournal.com]

Bugsy Malone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Malone).

[saeble.livejournal.com]

the disparity between the sexes in this 'hyper-growing-up' is highlighted with the video. the 'victim' men in the video are definitely little boys in suits, no fake stubble, no clothing that would help suggest broad shoulders or big 'guns'. there are no other indications of what's considered a sexual maturity for a male.

perhaps that's the next horrible step.

what disturbs me more is the predatory nature portrayed, that she's not only sexual but using it as a weapon to boot. shes 'sexy' and evil to boot.

at least with both the vids in this post there's a degree of absurdity which has you smiling uncomfortably. you know its a very fake and plastic scenario which stops any chance of you buying it for real, however, I'm 36, not 9. Could I tell the difference at that age ?

the deep irony here is that the vids probably need an 'R18' rating to stop other little kids emulating the kids in the vids. be nice to think there might be a censorship or classification person out there with the stones to slap something like the above with an MA16 rating or better. an action something like that would hopefully drum home how freakin' horrid the whole thing is.

...and the answer is:

[(Anonymous)]

Mainstream Western society avoids confronting a progressively dysfunctional and schizophrenically fractious view of female sexuality that publicly and vehemently excoriates (identified) pedophiles while simultaneously insisting that all women must shave themselves smooth as a 6-year-old in order to be considered attractive.

...and the answer is:

[papavic.livejournal.com]

Mainstream Western society avoids confronting a progressively dysfunctional and schizophrenically fractious view of female sexuality that publicly and vehemently excoriates (identified) pedophiles while simultaneously insisting that all women must shave themselves smooth as a 6-year-old in order to be considered attractive.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

I think the one thing that unites all tweenaged girls (and for that matter, boys) in the world is that they all feel they're a couple of years ahead of their age bracket in terms of, y'know, Maturity. This is why there's a magazine called Seventeen marketed to fourteen-year-olds.

And since this (partial nudity) is obviously the only role of a Girl, obviously the way to pander to the precocious, is to sell them on the scandalous standards that girls 3 years older were into 3 years ago.

I figure exploitation is an arms race and this girl is just staying ahead of the curve.

also,

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

WTF, PARENTS?

[kencf0618.livejournal.com]

Crap. I haven't been interested in fourteen-year-olds since I was in junior high myself, and now I see that some Peruvian nine-year-old is in in play? Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. I bet she had the time of her life making this video.

[vebelfetzer.livejournal.com]

My immediate response to this was that it was a cutting and extremely clever rebuttal to the careers of pubescent pop stars. Something to raise controversy at the Tate Modern. Now that I see more backstory, I know that isn't the case.

I still have mixed feelings about this. Sexualization is a cage for anyone, at any age. Children are not sexless, either, as much as we collectively shoved our fingers in our ears about the subject. Sex play, as any psychologist can tell you, is normal in young children, and not a cause for alarm.

At the same time, sane people cannot help but be shocked and horrified by videos like this, and by the pageant culture in the United States. I think the difference is that here, as in pageants, the sexuality is projected onto the children, and is the perverse, blinkered, trashy "hotness" that is pervasive in television and pop culture. Blonde, tan, wiggly, big-breasted "hotness" is a value totally removed from charm, intelligence, or even plain old attraction.

It goes back to my assertion about the characters in Lolita, one of the most accurate and brutal books about female childhood sexualization ever written: Humbert's only sin in the whole book was not saying "no". It's really a novel about the failure of fatherhood as much as anything else. Children absolutely, as a poster said above me, love to play at being sexually desirable. Our responsibility as adults is to give them a safe, cloistered space in which they can exert their own development without being punished for it by exploitation or ridicule.