Preteen Modeling or Child Pornography?

Any person with internet access can innocently Google the words -preteen model. It may be a parent seeking information on modeling –however misguided- for their little tutu wearing ballerina princess or possibly a social action group interested in educating young girls on the “beauty” industry. For whatever reason, the words seem basic and somewhat harmless. You might picture a headshot of a little girl with freckles and a huge smile playing in the grass. Or you could picture a little girl in a beauty pageant wearing a sparkly dress, tiara, and way too much makeup for her age. I admit whole-heartedly that the whole beauty pageant image is incredibly disturbing, but still it is nothing compared to the images that appear under the title – preteen model. Go ahead and try it…

Instantly you are bombarded with images of highly- sexualized, underdressed “preteen models” touching themselves, laying in raunchy positions and exposing their young underdeveloped bodies. Freckles are now accompanied by Victoria Secret lingerie and the headshot is now a butt shot that reveals most of the 7 years old’s thong. The girls are being marketed as sex objects. What’s worse is that they are being taught at a young age that their bodies are objects for male delight and consumption. They are growing up with the belief that admiration equals objectification.

But the images do not stop with lacy thongs. The second site that came up in my Google search contained images of grown men touching and in some cases even having sex with these “smiling” 6-8 year old girls (who are obviously too young to give consent). This is psychotic. What has become of our society? Grown women are infantilized in mainstream media and everyone in America is aware of this equation… youth=beauty. Well, now the youth is even younger. These images are scary because they normalize perverse behavior… and the desire to de-virginize an 8 year old girl is perverse. Period. A man that actually acted on this fantasy would be shunned as a sex offender yet it is still okay to provide this fantasy. We shun psychopathic behavior but by having such easy access to these images we train men to act like psychopaths. The idea that a man could even achieve sexual arousal by looking at a girl so young is to say the least, disgusting.

At any mention of male-child pornography there is protest and court hearings –and rightfully so- but there is no fight against this horrific epidemic of girl-child pornography that is being masqueraded as “preteen modeling” on the internet. What can we do about it? I have been asking myself that all day? I guess that the first act is to unveil this whole exploitation of female youth, focusing especially on how common and easy it is to access. If female child porno is this accessible, I wonder how many people are actually sponsoring it. What scares me more than its existence is its audience. Let’s expose the truth… Modeling, I think not… It’s PORNO.