Now we have a 9-year-old doing super suggestive Hip Hop dance moves in a “Slutty Red Riding Hood” Halloween costume.
But her mum assures us that she’s more mature than other girls her age.
I know you are talking about Toddlers and Tiaras here and since I am so fond of context and intersectionality, allow me to chime in: this is how mass media force feeds rape culture.
Toddlers and Tiaras is not only disgusting because it objectifies children. Sure, that’s the most obvious consequence. But it is also part of the machine that inoculates us with ideas that “girls that look older or act more matured than their age” are somehow sexual, regardless of their age. It’s exactly the same mass media rhetoric that the New York Times used when reporting the gang rape of an 11 year old somehow, justifying it by claiming the girl “didn’t look her age”.
What the parents in Toddlers and Tiaras express about their daughters is exactly the same argument that is later going to be used if, gods forbid, the same girls are assaulted.
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