Growing up, we listened to a lot of blues and rock and roll in our house, but there was always one particular song that my mother always told me that she hated. American Apparel has, naturally, come under fire for its sexist advertising for some time now, and while, like many feminists I cheered its advocacy of the full bush, many of the ways in which the company chooses to depict women unnerves me, not least because the schoolgirl trope is something that I bought into myself. I feel embarrassed by it now, and should probably detag myself from the photographic evidence residing in the deepest depths of my Facebook, but at the time the act of dressing up like little girls seemed like just a bit of fun, a nostalgia trip back to our schooldays. When I was at the age that I was attending school discos, I never snogged another girl in the knowledge that it would turn the guys on. I never snogged anyone, in fact, and my outfit mostly involved tie-dye. I hate the idea that, in sexualising the school uniform, I may have contributed to this kind of culture, a culture I began to understand in my early teens. This power we seemed to have over these strangers confused and titillated us. Nevertheless, we knew on some level that being a schoolgirl had currency. As with any form of sexism, things often become clearer when you question whether or not the boys are doing it too, and you only have to imagine an orderly line of adult males bent over in little short shorts, Just William caps and with drawn on freckles on their noses to expose the disturbing place from which the sexual fetishisation of schoolchildren originates. But it certainly does not belong in , in a country paralysed by a terror of paedophiles but in which adult women are encouraged to become complicit in the sexualisation of schoolchildren by channelling them through costume.
Objectives and Research Questions
Site Information Navigation
Lady Gaga's "Monster" played in the background. Winnifred and Danielle are modern-day year-olds. But they're not playing dress-up -- they're getting ready for a Lady Gaga concert. Winnifred carefully curates her online profile, pushing her budding sexuality to jack up her Facebook "likes.
Account Options
Winnifred, 12, a precocious New York City girl on the cusp of adulthood, wears fish-net stockings and low-cut tops, striving to emulate her musical idol, Lady Gaga. Laura, a year-old kindergarten teacher from Alexandria, Va. Nichole, 32, of Clearwater, Fla. Perhaps they do not represent typical American youth, but they all feel the pressure to be beautiful and to be sexy. All three stories are intertwined in "Sexy Baby," an award-winning documentary about how technology and pornography are shaping the sexual identity of young girls. With Facebook, smart phones and instant access to the Internet, a generation of children is getting their sex education from online porn. It had its world premiere earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Rashida Jones wants us to talk about the taboo. The goal: to start a frank discussion about sex. The series has drawn some criticism after two women said they were shown briefly in a Periscope clip without their permission, and an adult film actor who appeared in the series claimed she had revoked her permission to be filmed. The creators have responded , saying their practices adhered to legal standards. Jones spoke to TIME about porn as sex education, how technology both facilitates and hinders intimacy, and the recent controversy. That was my in into this world because I think technology is a huge part of that. That movie represents a very specific set of stories that come out of a very specific type of porn. It did not represent all of porn, and there was a conversation among people in the industry about whether that movie was really representative. And I understood the fact that people inside the industry felt stigmatized and marginalized by that movie because it could be the only thing that anyone has seen inside the porn industry.