Public’s apathy enables sexualization of children

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/05/2009 (6200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Child abuse wears many disguises.

At the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s annual conference Wednesday, delegates were shown a clip from Toddlers & Tiaras, a highly popular program on The Learning Channel.

A little girl, maybe six years old, was forcibly transformed into a beauty contestant by her overweening mother. The bikinied child screamed and cried as her mother spray-tanned her, ordering her to roll her belly for even coverage.

Karmen Walker sat still for the thick makeup, the attachment of a massive hairpiece and the insertion of a set of false teeth known as "flappers." They’re designed to hide any missing baby teeth and give the illusion of a gleaming beauty-pageant smile.

Costumed as a harem girl, Karmen performed in front of a large audience, her mother performing the moves with furious concentration in the audience.

The most chilling clip was the child, expressionless, saying: "I’m smiling on the inside."

A panel of child exploitation experts confessed they had to look away during the brief video.

"I think we know whose needs are being serviced," said Tink Palmer, a child sexual abuse specialist from Great Britain. "It’s not the child. This just shows the quickness with which people exploit children."

Dr. Sharon Cooper, CEO of a consulting firm that provides medical care, training and expert witness experience in child maltreatment cases, said: "I think it’s dismaying that we choose to celebrate children as sexual objects."

But the sexualization of children is all around us and, as earnestly as experts in the child abuse fields work, there are those who shrug off detractors as humourless.

Look at the recent Joe Underthings campaign, where girls who appeared to be on the cusp of puberty were used to sell bras and panties. Loblaws, the parent company of Superstore, was forced to pull the campaign.

Still, after I wrote about it, a man claiming to be a father sent an email saying he’d be "proud" to see his young daughter portrayed this way.

Where do you go with that?

"There is little public outrage about this stuff," said Dr. John Wiens, dean of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of education. "We should be screaming from the rooftops: ‘This is child abuse!’ "

We should be but we’re not.

According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, kids account for 61 per cent of all victims of sexual assault reported to the police and 21 per cent of all victims of physical assault.

Seventy-two per cent of Canadians feel that if someone wanted to access child pornography online, it would be very easy to do so.

Is there a direct line between turning a four-year-old into a lipsticked imitation of Miss America and child sex abuse? Does a Burger King commercial featuring young girls shaking their butts while a character leers at them equate to child porn?

How about if that ad runs, as it does, during early-morning cartoons? Does that change your mind?

There may not be a direct line but it shouldn’t be hard to connect the dots. What we’re showing our kids, and accepting ourselves, is that sexualizing children is the norm. If little girls want to be popular and famous, they have to be an adult caricature of pretty.

If they want attention, they have to dress like cheerleaders or strippers, to encourage strangers to gawk at them.

The boundaries between adults and children have been blurred and we’re doing squat to redefine them.

"We are far too willing to accept what is being placed in front of us as entertainment," said Sharon Cooper.

Tink Palmer was even more blunt.

Referring to Toddlers and Tiaras, she said: "I saw physical abuse. I saw emotional abuse."

She paused.

"There should be a campaign to stop it."

Write a letter. Make a phone call. Send an email. Tell companies you won’t support them if they exploit children to sell their products. Shout it from the rooftops.

And if you’d truly be proud to see your young daughter sexualized in an underwear ad, I hope someone is protecting her and watching you.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca