Dreampepper

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."

Comic Book Resources has first-hand accounts of ordering a live miniature monkey in the early 1970's from a now classic back-of-a-comics-book book advertisement.

"It came in this little cardboard box. I mean, I’m saying small. It was probably the size of a shoebox, except it was higher. It had a little chicken wire screen window in it. There was a cut out. All you could see if you looked in there was his face. I brought it home, and I actually snuck it into the basement of the house.

...

No instructions [were included]. He had this waist belt on, a collar, if you will, on his waist, with an unattached leash inside the box. So I opened the box up inside the cage, the monkey jumped out, I withdrew the box and found the leash. I have no idea where it came from; I assumed it came from Florida. I figured, well, it’s probably near dehydration, so I opened up the cage to put some water in it. It leapt out of the cage when I opened it up the second time! I mean, it was eyeing the pipes that I was unaware of. As soon as I opened the cage, it leapt up and grabbed onto the plumbing up on the ceiling and started using them like monkey bars, and he was just shooting along in the basement, chirping pretty loud. It was heading towards the finished side of the basement, where there was a drop ceiling, and if it got into those channels, I never would have got it. It would have been days to get this thing out of there. I grabbed it by its tail, and it came down on, starting literally up by my shoulder, like a drill press it landed on my arm, and every bite was breaking flesh. It was literally like an unsewing machine. It was literally unsewing my arm coming down, and I was pouring blood. I grabbed it by its neck with both my wrists, threw it back in the cage. It’s screaming like a scalded cat. I’m pouring blood. My friend’s laughing uncontrollably, and my father finally comes in the basement door and goes, ‘Jeffery! What are you doing to that rabbit?’ And I go, ‘It’s not a rabbit, it’s a monkey, and it just bit the hell out of me.’ ‘A monkey? Bring it up here!’ I’m pouring, I wrapped a t-shirt around my arm to stave off the bleeding, carried the cage upstairs, and I don’t know why I bothered sneaking it in, because they fell in love with it, and it was like, there was no problem at all. They took me to the emergency room and I got 28 stitches on my arm. "

I remember traveling with my parents as a kid, looking through the back of the vintage comics, Conan, and Heavy Metal my dad bought for me, wishing with all my being that I might have an address someday so I could send away for my very own pet monkey. (Conan was my colouring book). This got so bad, especially after my parents took me to a market where some guy was actually selling them, that when they bought me a fluffy stuffed white monkey I promptly named it Monkmonk and carried with me absolutely everywhere. In fact, this desire was so powerful that I still have it, sitting on a shelf, much weathered, still wearing the flowered pink dress my step-sister Brianna wore back from the hospital when she was born.

Long nights spit out like toothpaste into an unfamiliar sink. She looks up, enamel, black tile, an older building. Wooden floors. Tall doorways. Stained glass. A dragon in the next room, sitting on the couch, warming his hands on a sweetened cup of bitter tea. White walls. Cold windows.

Her hands float up to her hair, straighten some curls, frame her eye in the mirror. She peers through her hands, brought together in a symbol she found in a photograph on the internet - fingers curled, first knuckles together in a twin arc, thumbs stretched, touching underneath - the childish shape of a heart. Her certainty shakes. She lets it.

He's wrought of mixed signals, sliding shades of affection and neglect which don't add up. The smell of his soap. Her heartbeat. An iron-work of conflicting opinions, kissing like he carries a new bastard disease of self-reference, wit, and deflection. Short brown hair. No eye contact. A thousand words in a picture that breaks her framed ideals. Attraction built instead of found. Panic filled breath, though her panties are balled up in her purse already. Feet cold on the tiles. (Uncomfortable echoes of explosive scenarios from younger relationships, feeling exploited). The scalpel of self-examination. Her motivations are an underground factory of facts conveyor-belt punching out hurt confusion. Very little he says matches up with what he does. She doesn't know why these steps are being taken, but what she lacks in reason, she makes up in loyalty. There is very little new under this son.

--
They stood at the bus stop, both consciously skipping their friend's gathering for opposite reasons. One feeling too welcome, another feeling not welcome at all. "I would have thought you were imagining it, but I noticed it too." "I cornered him at the party, asked him what was wrong. He said there was nothing. In eight years, I think it's the first time he's ever lied to me." Her thoughts embraced her absent friend, (his fingers so deeply entwined in her ribcage she would love him forever), even as she felt like her words were a disappointed betrayal.

As they stood close, defensively, against the suffering neighbourhood, she kept up a monologue, quiet like a gentle run of dirty water. Memories, sad and unpleasant in retrospect. "How did you grow up?" A hungry childhood, social friction, hotel rooms. He nodded, implacable, in a way she found welcome. "I read the bible fourteen times, no one ever steals the things. They just sit there in the otherwise empty drawers, collecting dust and lonely people." Anecdotes, wry short stories, a battered flow of narrative ornamented with sober, dry laughter, breakdown asides, and serious expressions. Later, sitting, her legs swung unselfconsciously under the seat.

--
I cycled past my father's apartment last week. He has a giant poster in the window, an image he's sent to me. I almost went and knocked on the door. I stopped, looked, put one foot on the ground. I don't know why I stopped the same way I don't know why I kept going. Instinct, impulse. Either or. He lives much closer to me than I thought. Near enough that no matter what, we're on the same bus-routes, we share the same corner store.

--
"There was a woman named Ha there who showed me Samurai movies and fed me Korean fried chicken as I sat on a stool in the hotel kitchen. I ate all they had, the hotel had to buy more the next day, and I ate all of that too. I was a starving little thing, so bright and blonde and tiny you'd barely think I could walk, but I was always hungry. I remember my parents would go without sometimes so that I could have food. I lay in bed next to my mother and heard her belly grumble, five years old, listening and knowing that I had a sandwich and she had not. It's made me a little neurotic about food. (Hell, I'm an adult now and I'm still so poor I'm starving to death.) I don't like eating alone or cooking only for myself. And I can't eat in front of someone without offering them any. In fact, I'll put it off, go hungry for hours, rather than eat in front of someone who won't have anything themselves, because it was greedy to eat alone, it meant you were depriving someone else."

I have found my laughter from where it was hiding. This time, for the very first time, it's allowed out of the closet with tears still in its eyes. When I grew up, I grew up in a strange canadian cultural vacuum. I would stare out the window of the truck at all the houses gliding past and wonder what real people had inside thier houses. What was on the other side of so many doors? I lived in hotel rooms and on some basic level, they're all the same. Clinical transiency. Fake flowers, soulless bedspreads that match the thick ugly curtains, television remotes that you either find next to the miniature fridge or bolted to the table. Cable is an option, but there's always an ice machine that clunks in the middle of the night. I used to pad out into hallways and sit against them sometimes, because it was a light I could read by. Anonymous. The trick is that they're always anonymous. The furniture is not your furniture, the life you live within those walls belongs to no one. I grew up being not real people.

My body jerked me across my bed when I woke up this morning. An unfamiliar hand had touched me on the shoulder. Left over reflexes I really should work on controlling a little better. I was up late, reading, unable to think about my tomorrow. Too many things. I have a livingroom picnic this afternoon with Brian. We're putting down a blanket and making sandwiches. If I was a better person, I would suggest we pretend we're on a beach somewhere, but I'm not. So I won't. Breakfast today with precious friends led into a pleasant walk up the drive and some actual grocery shopping. It's like my world spun around. A smile has been affixed to my face. Someone I don't know stopped me on the street on my way home with my bags, "I see you all the time on the drive, but I've never talked to you, but today I felt I had to say something. You're really pretty when you're happy". He was my height, with dark brown hair and a slightly crooked baseball hat. I wouldn't recognize him again.

Adrian's finally a father. Send tentative moments of nervous congratulation over to him and A.J. They're braver than the rest of us. When Adrian first informed me at SinCity, almost six months ago, I actually began to fall and he had to catch me. Apparently that was the most popular response.

It's Ryan's birthday on Monday. I had mixed up the date, thinking it was to be on Sunday, September 11th re-wiring my brain for importance. I thought about having party for the Fallen Towers, a wake for the American Empire. Very antique commiserations, a very old world celebration. Fancy dress, champagne glasses we smash in the street, a cake in the shape of a flaming airplane. A toast! Oh land of freedom, we barely had a chance to say that we're sorry for letting you become what you did.

Out in the real world, the California Assembly has become the first state legislature in the US to pass a bill endorsing gay marriages and pictures of Katrina are finally coming on-line. Someone accused me of harping on about New Orleans the other day, claiming that I was blowing the disaster out of proportion. I have to wonder where they're getting thier news, because I don't think I've an imagination that could overstate how badly the response was handled, (ex. Hosptial closed for President visit.), even down to the simplest things:"The good news: If you've survived Hurricane Katrina, the government will let you register for help online. The bad news: But only if the computer you're using is running Windows."

transmigrant's been posting some fabulous links on the topic, like this short clip available for download.

--

Carpark North has a video that sequels Human. They're the same children who work such miracle wonders as love, only a year later. They seem so much older, the wisdom has changed into something far lonelier. I don't like it as much, I feel it lacks the wonder that makes the first one gasp, but it's still interesting to see. Click on Media, then Video, to watch them. Human is simply divine. Andrew found a page of films by the same director on Videos.Antville, a multiblog list where people join and post links to "cool" music videos.

As a nice segue, I've discovered Sigur Ros's new album, Takk, is available for a listen on MySpace here.

--

Once I thought the world turned without me. I stood still in a small bubble that was coated with my name and no one ever saw me. Now I'm recognized on the street so regularly that my friends don't act surprised anymore. Last night after work, a tall boy approached us at a bus-stop. "I'm a struggling artist, I've just released my first CD." A familiar refrain, the voice of an indie kid who might not be any good, and we don't have any money, sorry. Mid sentence he stops, "Are you Jhayne?" Ryan laughed and part of me cursed for not knowing who he was. "We went to elementary school together. My name's Kyle!"

I blink, this is too surreal. My memories of him are as sharp as lonely knives, I used to watch him to try and figure out how he laughed in such a world. He wore a red t-shirt with a neat band logo on it and won all the racing games in the gravel field. The brightest flame of personality in the entire grade, he's now unrecognizable. What happened to his smile? Where's his curly mop of hair? "You were the tallest boy in grade seven. I remember you. You were the only one who danced at our end of year dance." I told him that I hadn't any money, but there was an ATM at the end of the block. As we walked, he explained to Ryan how I was the weirdest girl in our entire school. "You read books, well, I suppose you still do, but you were really strange." It occurred to me that he hasn't seen me in about a decade but he managed to know who I was. Does that mean anything? There's a guitar on his back, my eyes passed him over anyway. "Would it be safe to say that you were far more conservative then?" He didn't have any change, so I bought him peanut butter cups at the 7-11 on the other end of the block, handed him his ten dollars and felt uncomfortably like I was being charitable.

We talked a little more after that and I wished him luck and promised to e-mail him. I'm wondering where this will go, what I will discover about the people who ostracized me when I was twelve. Thinking now, I miss the rare kids who talked to me. I think he's still in touch with some. Brodie, he mentioned, a boy I knew in highschool who wasn't that bad. Rather sane, by my accounts. He played Seymour when I played Audrey when we put on little Shop Of Horrors. Our strange plant was a cactus covered in shredded newsprint. Apparently he's in a band now, the Living. They have gigs sometime. I hope to go.