Alison, age 10.

Ashley, age 8.

I stumbled across a link to these photos by Los Angeles photographer Susan Anderson on an art website. Her series is titled High Glitz. As art patrons, I think we are supposed to view the work ironically, but I am unable to do so, finding it frightening and disturbing. These are little beauty pageant girls, of course, and we are familiar with the genre.  Seeing them up close in detail like this is far creepier than the video footage I have seen. The children are objectified, sexualized, and fetishized. They are turned into some kind of exaggerated joke, like over-the-top drag queens. But it’s not funny is it?  Follow the link and see for yourself.

It seems to me that more and more the boundary is blurred between girlhood and  womanhood. Little girls are sexy, the media tells us in pictures: pouting centerfold models with lollipops in their mouths are seductively posed with white teddy bears. And how about other end of the spectrum — older women employing everything including injectibles and surgery to look younger and thus more alluring. If young equals sexy, how low do we go? Look at the world of fashion. Most runway models are between 14 and 19 years old, and some are as young as 12. What does that say about us, about what we have learned to want? (I’m asking about both men and women.)

Of course there is a powerful commercial motivation to these activities. So perhaps we are looking at a slippery slope, with Bratz dolls at the top and criminal underworld of child sex trafficking down at the bottom. (According to the United Nations, it is the fastest-growing area of organized crime). It’s striking to me that the role of child prostitute provided the original momentum for the careers of several female movie stars: 12-year-old Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby, 14-year-old Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, and 13-year-old Penelope Cruz in a French soap opera, Série Rose.

Most women I know react immediately with rage and revulsion to these photos of children dressed and groomed to look like sexy women. But if you can get past those feelings for a moment, what comes after the anger, when you calm down and think about it?
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, as I try to sort out mine.