Letters to the Editor
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For the good of mankind
Could someone lay Parson Jim and shut him up already?
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BMI -take with a small Siberian salt mine.
"BMI, yeah they should have BMI calculators I thought that was what they were trying to pass in Spain. I think it was 18.5 or so. I think that would be a responsible thing to do for the health of the models."
I'm 53 and my BMI is a little under 19 NOW (5'8, 124 pounds). I'm sure it was under 18.5 when I was 17 and hadn't yet filled out. A lot of young women are very thin, but gain weight as they mature. I looked thinner than that woman when I was her age - my ribs stuck out. But I ate whatever I wanted - 3000+ calories a day. I kept track once for a few days when my mother was dieting and had a calorie counter book. I get tired of people insinuating that everyone who is thin is sick or has an eating disorder. I have very slender, narrow bones and am just tall for someone with my frame size. My 18-year-old son is 6'3" and weighs about 150. He eats like a horse. He just exercises a lot and inherited my long, narrow bones.
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So you don't think
the modeling industry should have a bmi index for the safety of the models? I wasn't implying that there aren't some very thin people who keep it that way naturally but they are in the minority. I have always been skinny, but a lot of that has to do with the food I put into my mouth. Not everyone is lucky like you and has very "narrow bones".
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Give the girl a sandwich
The photos don't bother me so much... just the bone-thinness of her. OK, some people are like that naturally, some get like that from athletics. A fair few others, especially in the fashion industry, get there through some fairly unhealthy means.
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Not child porn, but not cool either.
I don't really care what other societies do. These pictures sexualize a skinny young girl. To what end?
Spare me the "edgy" rationale. "Edgy" is as overused as "political correctness."
Kids should be allowed to be kids, not objects of sexual desire for adults.
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We're just an anti-sex culture
We will never be able to have a serious debate about the welfare of children, to say nothing of the exploitation of women, until we can separate our extremely prudish anti-sex culture from these issues.
Almost all debates and "scandals" in the U.S. about what some people perceive as pornography boil down to people being against sex. The child pornography debate is especially fertile for the anti-sex crowd, because it's so hard to not look like a jerk when criticizing someone who claims to be defending children. But the reality is children are just used as a stand-in for the adults' prejudices (which is in fact exploitative of children).
I like to say, whenever someone says, "but what about the children," watch out. You can almost always be certain that your rights are been stepped on.
What's more, the majority of psychological studies even show that children in general recover from sexual abuse far more readily than other forms of physical abuse and neglect. In fact, neglect, more than physical or sexual abuse has the most lasting detrimental impact on people's lives. But no one wants to touch this with a ten foot pole, because it is so taboo to suggest that sexual abuse is not the worst possible thing that could happen to a child.
Meanwhile America has these skewed debates about children and sex that do nothing to improve the welfare of children. Somehow even a large contingent of feminists have latched their fates to this deeply anti-progressive anti-sex agenda. While what children really need are the obvious things like better schools, including a total transformation of the bully culture that predominates in schools (and is part of how we teach people to be competitive for our corporate culture); parents who don't have to work two jobs and never see their kids; less exposure to violence (real and in the media); better food; health care.
As a broad social phenomenon--specific personal experiences/exceptions notwithstanding, which I'm sure other people will bring up--the whole child-sex debate is just a canard.
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Isn't this article promoting the photos?
Come on, look at the articles title, "Child porn or edgy art?" It's designed to suck people in with a sex angle. And then Broadsheet provides a link to the photos? So somehow when we Salon readers look at the photos it's okay because we're being objective social critics (yeah right), while it's bad when everyone else looks at the photos? This is classic media sensationalism passed off as social commentary.
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This is totally standard fashion photography.
Almost to the point of being boring. Paolo Roversi is usually way better than this.
Skinny underage girls in skimpy clothing? Oh, the horror! This has been going on in fashion magazines since the 70s at least. And not just in Europe, either. Here's a clue for you: fashion models are considered over the hill if they don't have established careers before age 18. Those women in the glossy magazines who look like they're 25? Aren't. Sorry.
The outcry over this is every bit as ridiculous as the foofaraw about Kate Moss snorting cocaine. Won't somebody please think of the children? Please. EVERYBODY in the industry is coked to the gills 85% of the time.
Ordinary folks would feel a lot less oppressed by the fashion industry if they had the foggiest idea how it actually works.
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What makes it porn?
Is it porn only if the model thinks it is?
Is it porn only if the photographer thinks it is?
Is it porn only if the publisher thinks it is?
Is it porn only if the consumer of the picture thinks it is?
What if only a few pervy consumers think its porn and everyone else agrees its art (arty?)?
Skinny people have rights too, correct? Haven't we already figured out that anorexia comes from some place else than pictures that make middle aged women feel bad? No offense.
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Looks like Abu Ghraib
Few letter writers here are looking any deeper than the child sex/nudity angle. We should be asking why we are trying so hard to convince ourselves that images of a malnourished, weak, child shown humiliated by ridiculous poses with exceptionally expensive apparel are acceptable. And there IS a "snuff" quality to a couple of the photos. Reminds me of photos I saw recently on the wall of a mall optometrist store of a woman who looked fresh from a few hard rounds in the ring and only lightly made up afterward. What's going on here?
Maybe if we asked ourselves this, we might discover why all those Abu Ghraib photos didn't galvanize the nation into correcting our horribly immoral torture policies.
Ad agencies are simply holding up to us a mirror that shows us what gives us some secret pleasure or titilation--the pain and humiliation of another human being.