When I first saw the photos of 10-year-old Vogue model (yes, if you haven’t heard about this story, that girl is TEN) Thylane Loubry Blondeau, I thought there was some artistic quality to it. She’s gorgeous, yes. There’s no doubt to that. Looks like a young Brooke Shields even. A young Brooke Shields was made to pose naked in a movie about a young prostitute when she was about the same age. I digress.
There are more photos taken of this girl with strands of jewelry around her neck, topless underneath and just donning a pair of jeans. Of her finger wrapped around her jeans belt loop. The above photo doesn’t really do justice to the overt sexuality of the kinds of photos this girl is taking. The Vogue shot from above, seems to me, more like a play on dress up. Mommy’s little girl wearing all the nail polish and the diamonds. I want to look older, Mommy.
But what else is it about that photo? Is it the pout? Is it the way she’s draped over the tiger head? You are being told to look at her in a much different light than you should be looking at her. You are being asked to see her as a centerfold. As someone desirable. It’s creepy, that photo. Isn’t it?
Time “Healthland” blogger Susanna Schrobsdorff says she’s surprised by the uproar (and there’s quite a bit of it–just do a google search on the girl’s name) since all sorts of media outlets have and have been oversexualizing girls. From padded bras at Target to Toddlers and Tiaras, to the Barbie with the three-inch-heels that my daughter plays with– girls are undoubtedly being taught that sexy is good. Says Schrobsdorff:
“Indeed, the pressure is starting earlier and lasting longer — right past the Demi Moore generation into the age at which women start collecting their Social Security checks. Fifty-year-olds are now regularly shopping with their daughters at stores like Forever 21. And perhaps that hits at the crux of the issue: are we supposed to look forever 21 whether we’re 10 or 30 or 50? In the same Vogue issue with the kid models were middle-aged models (some looking surgically enhanced) posing the same way as the teens and tweens.”
The issue here is not so much about what we’re supposed to look like, it’s about what our girls are supposed to look like. The line is blurred constantly between teenage girls and their mothers. Anyone remember that scene in Foxes with Jodie Foster where her mother was jealous about Jodie’s tight jeans because her mother could no longer fit into them? Jodie Foster was a teenager in that movie. Watching that scene as a child, I couldn’t understand what it would mean to age or to sprout jowls or have a permanent crease between my eyes that I now lovingly refer to as “the valley.” Now–helloooo 40!–I know.
But does it mean that somehow I’ve bought into this for my life and that somehow I’m going to send the same message to my daughter? Uh — no. There’s a difference between playing dress-up and what Cinderella Ate My Daughter author, Peggy Orenstein calls “age compression.” Age compression is about how quickly our daughters are maturing now as opposed to how slowly they matured 30 years ago. Prime example. Barbies used to be targeted for girls ages 9-12. Now girls are DONE with them by age 6. My neighbor’s daughter gave me a giant box of Barbies for Elke just a year ago. She was 11. My mother said, “She’s done playing with Barbies now? What’s next?”
This is my fear for a girl like Thylane. If you’re dressing up to look like a sexy Mommy, and if people are paying for you to look like a sexy young thing — what’s next? This is my fear for any girl. And there’s not a lot of control we have over it. This is part of a generational evolution. Say it started with Britney Spears and I’ll show you Madonna. Say it started with Madonna and I’ll show you Marilyn Monroe. Sex is nothing new when it comes to selling a product, clothing or an image. It’s only new when our girls are going too fast too soon because they are marketed to by mega-companies who know what kids want, and YES, that includes the slutty witch costume that your 10-year-old wore to school last Halloween because, why not, she looked cute on it, and it’s harmless. Right? Right.Riiiiight.
So where do we end this dialogue? I’m not sure. I was a tomboy as a kid. I hated wearing dresses. I hated the attention it brought me. Maybe there was one summer where I dabbled in sexy bathing suits, but, Jesus, I was 16! I wasn’t a little kid. Will Elke feel the same? Will she always want to wear age-appropriate clothes at 10? No, probably not. But as her mother, I’m going to have to say: Hey, sista. You’re 10. You can’t wear that. You’re just a kid.
Miriam Novogrodsky
August 11, 2011
h – i love this piece. i saw the photos earlier in the week and was disturbed and uncomfortable and yet, not surprised. they are really just a coninuation of an already well established trend to accelerate girls into sex objects. it is difficult to convey the reasons, as a mother, that this is upsetting to a roomful of pre-teen girls who are just wearing what is in style…by the end of the last school year, the vice-principal at my kid’s junior high was measuring the length of the shorts the girls had on — too short, you went home and changed. but, here’s the thing. my mother taught for years. the sexualization of kids via the clothing industry? it’s gone on for a long time. my mother always said, it was the adults around the kids who actually sexualized the clothing, were made uncomfortable by the mini skirts and half tops. what if we just ignored their belly buttons and taught? just a thought. it’s a thought, totally off topic, to the photo but not to what it represents on a more, in our lives, level…ugh. actaully. it’s so disturbing. thanks for the piece. miri
Andrea Chisholm
August 11, 2011
I have a ten year old daughter. Luckily she’s still a tomboy, still feels awkward in the bikini she wanted so badly this summer. But she is obsessed with teen vogue and idolizes girls just a few years older. I am safe for now…but then again she has been at camp for three weeks. Yes these photos are CREEPY- but what is creepier is someone who wouldn’t find the photo disturbing. I haven’t looked but I have a hypothesis that both the art director and photographer are men. I could imagine it’s an egomanical triumph to create a sex object from a little girl…If they are women well then shame on them-
Hayley Krischer
August 11, 2011
Andrea I think Tom Ford designed the shot.
Andrea Chisholm
August 11, 2011
HMMM- I rest my case! : )
Miriam Novogrodsky
August 11, 2011
gross. now i’m even more disturbed. thanks you two.
Andrea Chisholm
August 11, 2011
OK, So this has been bugging me all day. I’ve looked into the hoopla given that I missed it on the first go around. Not wanting to be a reactionary “femamom” I’ve tried to see beyond the image and buy into the photo series as a social commentary on the objectification of woman by the fashion industry and see the art intended to shock and incite debate. If that really was the intent I may take pause but without any additional ironic theme in the photo, I have to doubt that as the intent. Anyway bottom line is that the photos are creepy and perhaps silly at the same time.
Hayley Krischer
August 11, 2011
A- this is a great theory on what might be going on with why they’d put this kind of photo in a woman’s mag and I so appreciate you getting to the bottom of the art aspect of it.
But look beyond Vogue. This kid is in compromising photographs all over the place. I didn’t want to post them here because it draws the line to kiddie porn – seriously. The one I’m talking about is her half naked draped in tribal beads and wearing just a pair of jeans. Elle MacPherson could have taken that shot – see what I mean?
Andrea Chisholm
August 12, 2011
Yeah-saw that one and I agree. Really BAD judgement. The kid is beautiful BUT she’s just a kid. Plenty of modeling gigs out there for kid stuff. Thanks for stirring this pot.
Amy Griffiths
August 13, 2011
When I saw this picture my belly churned. I just about left my coffee on the counter to go buy a sewing machine and cancel my pre-school registration-on a mission to keep my daughter safe. Home made clothes and home schooling from now on. And no outside media beyond “Highlights.” Ever. Ok, so then I calmed down, but seriously, where is that little girl’s mother?
Kristen Goodell
August 17, 2011
YIKES! I came over from the Motherlode, but this is more interesting (and by that I mean horrifying) to me than the discussion about half-siblings. I don’t think I’m much of an over-reactor, but this is just so creepy. What’s poor Thylane going to feel like when she’s not a hot item anymore at 16 because she has actual breasts and the body of a young woman instead of a CHILD?
I’m into putting my foot down with overly revealing clothes (though weird, tomboyish, goth, and artsy are all ok with me
for my daughter. This makes me want to go right to lands’ end and buy some age-appropriate bathing suits.
Also I agree that it seems sad to me when kids are done with things before they really get old enough to enjoy them – in my town it’s birthday parties. People have big ones from ages 1-6, and by second grade, the kids have all been to all he party places and are kind of done with it.
Hayley Krischer
August 18, 2011
Hi Kristen, thanks for joining the conversation. I really hate judging other parents. (My goodness, today I put myself on the firing block with my guest essay on Motherlode and was judged sometimes pretty harshly.)
With that said, there is an element of unconsciousness I think that happens with the sexualization of girls. I don’t think these parents– including Thylane’s parent’s or the parents who are strutting their toddlers in pageants– are intentionally doing anything to hurt their child. But there are so many levels of destruction when you encourage this kind of adult modeling. It’s fun to play dress up with mommy’s clothing, but not a great message, or good for the kid otherwise if this is method of play/fun/attention — whatever you want to call it — is so focused on.
whatsaysyou
September 20, 2011
Thanks for your post, Hayley. That Vogue photoshoot just makes me want to throw up and I cannot help but wonder how could that child’s mum allow this. What sort of message is her mum and those people responsible for photo shoot are sending out? I may not be a parent but it is a sad fact that sexualisation and ‘adultification’ of kids is happening in this day and age.
Hayley Krischer
September 20, 2011
I think that’s just it — it’s totally irresponsible. The idea that the girl in the shoot isn’t being considered as a girl and is being considered as an object is what’s as equally as disturbing to me. Some people believe that their children are “adorable” when dressed to look like women. Fine. The mistake they make is when they strut the child in public. Take a look at what’s going on with Toddlers and Tiaras. I’m really not one to judge these things, but the parents who dress their BABIES as Dolly Parton or worse, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, are thinking “hey, this is funny to me.” Fine. You think that’s so fabulous. Fine. Dress her up at home. Let her walk up and down the staircase. Stop parading her publicly.
Toni Van Pelt
October 3, 2011
This is one of many steps used to ‘groom’ girls and perhaps their parents into prostitution, porn, lap dancing, stripping, you name it, to ‘please men’ including enduring horrific degradation and violence; at the same time they are taught to be obedient and submissive to men. It is a terrible triple bind we allow our daughters to become entrapped in. Oh and all this so these girls can make money, the only problem is they rarely make any money. They become sexual slaves. Time to take action and write to Vogue in protest!