and justifiable as the girls’ own choice. “Choice feminism” maintains that whatever a woman chooses is inherently a feminist act. Twenty-three-year-old Canadian photographer Petra Collins became celebrated by the fashion industry for her provocative photos of teenage girls, some of them nudes. “I think people aren’t comfortable with feminine sexuality,” Collins told
Oyster
magazine in 2012, when she was nineteen. “I find people are uncomfortable when a woman is expressing her sexuality instead of repressing it. In our society, nude or sexually suggestive images of women are automatically seen as negative and objectifying…We need to make room for the female view of sex and accept it. Until then we are going to be uncomfortable with photos like mine.” Interestingly, Collins speaks of “women” here, not girls. She doesn’t address questions of exploitation surrounding images of girls who are underage; and then there is the question of who or what exactly defines “the female view of sex.”
And again, the question of what constitutes child porn necessarily presents itself. When kids have easy access to porn and are watching porn, it’s not all that surprising that they are also posting what might be identified as porn, child porn. In 2014, The Daily Dot reported that Vine, the video-sharing service on which users share six-second looping clips, banned “sexually explicit material” after reports that children were posting sexually charged videos of themselves on the site.
“One user,” The Daily Dot said, “identified as an 11-year-old girl, posted a series of nude videos in which she performs sexual acts alone. Another, who appeared to be between 9- and 12-years-old, repeatedly exposed herself while describing sexual intercourse in exchanges with someone identifying himself as a 32-year-old male. Another profile, dedicated to aggregating sexual and nonsexual videos of children, contained over 1,700 Vines and was followed by 964 users. The comments sections for the videos were equally troubling, loaded with explicit sexual language and frequented by Vine users who were clearly adults. Many attempted to lure the minors off Vine and into private chat rooms.”
In a horrifying twist, it’s the justification of some pedophiles and child pornographers that their victims “want” to perform sexually in front of cameras. In 2015, sixty-six-year-old Ian Wraith was arrested in Fareham, Hants, England, for running a pedophile website with more than 1.6 million pictures and videos of children with “every single indecent image possibly in existence,” he reportedly boasted to investigators. According to the
Daily Mirror,
“He even claimed he didn’t believe all of them were indecent—instead saying the abused children were happy to be in front of the camera. During an interview he attempted to defend his actions, telling cops: ‘You wouldn’t believe what these kids get up to when they’re on their own with a camera.’ ”
“Girls think it’s cool” to present an underage aesthetic “ ’cause it’s supposed to be, like, shocking,” Sophia said.
The girls said they didn’t think most girls who posted provocative photos in this style were trying to elicit sexual encounters with adults or even boys.
“They’re just trying to get more likes,” Sophia explained. “It’s like a cool girl’s way of being like the Kardashians.”
It was another essential principle of marketing: sex sells. And so if building a social media presence is similar to building a brand, then it makes a warped kind of sense that girls—exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images of women and girls—are promoting their online selves with sex, following the example of the most successful social media celebrities.
“Some people in our grade post pictures of their butt and boobs in a bikini and you see everything. It’s totally common,” Victoria said. She thumbed through her Instagram account,
Oyster
magazine in 2012, when she was nineteen. “I find people are uncomfortable when a woman is expressing her sexuality instead of repressing it. In our society, nude or sexually suggestive images of women are automatically seen as negative and objectifying…We need to make room for the female view of sex and accept it. Until then we are going to be uncomfortable with photos like mine.” Interestingly, Collins speaks of “women” here, not girls. She doesn’t address questions of exploitation surrounding images of girls who are underage; and then there is the question of who or what exactly defines “the female view of sex.”
And again, the question of what constitutes child porn necessarily presents itself. When kids have easy access to porn and are watching porn, it’s not all that surprising that they are also posting what might be identified as porn, child porn. In 2014, The Daily Dot reported that Vine, the video-sharing service on which users share six-second looping clips, banned “sexually explicit material” after reports that children were posting sexually charged videos of themselves on the site.
“One user,” The Daily Dot said, “identified as an 11-year-old girl, posted a series of nude videos in which she performs sexual acts alone. Another, who appeared to be between 9- and 12-years-old, repeatedly exposed herself while describing sexual intercourse in exchanges with someone identifying himself as a 32-year-old male. Another profile, dedicated to aggregating sexual and nonsexual videos of children, contained over 1,700 Vines and was followed by 964 users. The comments sections for the videos were equally troubling, loaded with explicit sexual language and frequented by Vine users who were clearly adults. Many attempted to lure the minors off Vine and into private chat rooms.”
In a horrifying twist, it’s the justification of some pedophiles and child pornographers that their victims “want” to perform sexually in front of cameras. In 2015, sixty-six-year-old Ian Wraith was arrested in Fareham, Hants, England, for running a pedophile website with more than 1.6 million pictures and videos of children with “every single indecent image possibly in existence,” he reportedly boasted to investigators. According to the
Daily Mirror,
“He even claimed he didn’t believe all of them were indecent—instead saying the abused children were happy to be in front of the camera. During an interview he attempted to defend his actions, telling cops: ‘You wouldn’t believe what these kids get up to when they’re on their own with a camera.’ ”
“Girls think it’s cool” to present an underage aesthetic “ ’cause it’s supposed to be, like, shocking,” Sophia said.
The girls said they didn’t think most girls who posted provocative photos in this style were trying to elicit sexual encounters with adults or even boys.
“They’re just trying to get more likes,” Sophia explained. “It’s like a cool girl’s way of being like the Kardashians.”
It was another essential principle of marketing: sex sells. And so if building a social media presence is similar to building a brand, then it makes a warped kind of sense that girls—exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images of women and girls—are promoting their online selves with sex, following the example of the most successful social media celebrities.
“Some people in our grade post pictures of their butt and boobs in a bikini and you see everything. It’s totally common,” Victoria said. She thumbed through her Instagram account,
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