Well, this is a topic I had to get out of my system after I saw how Priyanka Chopra praised Billie Eilish's Vogue magazine cover. Well, it's the right for anyone to wear and be whoever they want but what we can clearly observe in Hollywood is something I call Alice Vagina hole of Hollywood! Is it vulgar to talk like that? Well, it is more horrific to sexualize every little girl in Hollywood and act like nothing is happening.
I know Billie Eilish is 19 already and in many countries, 19 is counted as an adult but, this is absurd that we see children in Hollywood growing up pushing toward the hole of a funnel in which they need to turn blonde and overly sexualized and the scariest part is being praised for that with adult actresses on such REVOLUTIONARY transformation! When Chopra said, "I think I just stopped and stared for a second" to praise Eilish beauty, it annoyed the hell of me. I asked myself, wasn't she stunning before such transformation? Was it necessary to boobify her innocence for someone like Chopra to be astonished?
Lolita Complex in Hollywood
We are seeing more and more sexualized images of children and teens in media not only by Hollywood but self-sexualization of these kids. How this can be happening? Well... The New York Times reported that "in 2018, tech companies uncovered over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused — more than double what they found in 2017." Well, possibly, I'm talking like a conservative who doesn't know what is freedom of choice but don't forget, I write about things the society doesn't like to hear. The TRUTH which they like to call Transgression or POLITICALLY INCORRECT!!!
In Hollywood, child sexualization among girls is very common starting from age 3. One of Shirley Temple’s first roles in 1932 was as an exotic dancer in a bar for soldiers in "War Babies." She was three years old at the time. An article in The Guardian analyzes Hollywood’s “Lolita complex” and the ways in which those in charge of Temple’s career exploited the sexualization of her childhood innocence.
According to NBC Natalie Portman says that "sexualized roles as a teen harmed her. We have thankfully begun talking about the need for consent in relationships, starting at a young age, but that can’t stop when the cameras roll." This is good to see the actresses are speaking about their trauma through their young age in Hollywood. I remember how Natalie was a sex symbol as young as age 10 after the movie, Professional. The cringe is not this only. It's about how they become sex symbols for a bunch of pedophile middle-aged men.
Do you remember when Britney Spears shaved her head? It was 2007 the time that seemed all of the child stars were cracking up. Something must have been very wrong with Hollywood if such icons had been driven to the point of a public meltdown. This is an old story with a never-ending happily ever after. In 1937, Graham Greene wrote these in a review of Shirley Temple’s film Wee Willie Winkie that "Her admirers—middle-aged men and clergymen—respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire." He claimed that perhaps Temple’s popularity with the public was more sinister than it was innocent and I do agree with him as we can see clearly what is going on in Hollywood.
Another example that recently spoke up is Matilda Star Mara Wilson who slammed Sexualization of Young Girls in Hollywood. Wilson is speaking out against the sexualization of young girls and sharing her own experiences of being objectified as a child star in an essay for Elle. She explains that someone wrote her fan letter, "his name was Don, or maybe Doug. He was a grown man, one I’d never met, and he wanted me to answer his fan letter. His writing was hard to read, but I could make out just enough: I love your legs, and Can I have your lip print on the enclosed index card?"
Ageism and its impact on society
As Wilson says in her essay, "part of the problem is that people want to accept … how many Don-or-Dougs there are out there. Some of these predators might be unreachable, completely unable to understand their actions. Child stars are seen as theirs: their property, their fantasy. The sad and scary truth is that they have greater access to child stars these days." This is upsetting to see how many of these little girls turned to sex symbols at a very young age and what does it do to our society?
Our society is sick and it's designed this way by those in power to brainwash the mass. This is not a matter only in Hollywood anymore but its power and impact on the rest of the world are what makes it unique. Another poll of "2,000 teens found that nearly 75% had received pornographic direct messages from strangers, even if they had a private account. And 55% of victims of sex trafficking in 2015 met their abuser through a website, app, or text." This clearly shows disempowerment, and girls are particularly at risk of feeling like their voices are suppressed and that objectification is normal because girls’ perceptions of themselves are shaped in part by the perceptions of them that they receive (Bussey & Bandura 1238).
What does it tell you about these girls turning into women? This is where you should be seriously worried. Here comes the matter of ageism. Here's an example of which Millie Bobby Brown being sexualized Brown was the August 2017 cover of W Magazine where it listed the then 13-year-old child actor as part of a "Why TV Is Sexier Than Ever" magazine story. Now, why are you concerned about such a topic, and why ageism comes in handy to talk about it?
I read several articles about actresses been rejected for a role considering being too old. Now, what is too old by Hollywood's standards? Before making the biographical film about singer Stevie Nicks In Your Dreams (2013), Reese Witherspoon was one of the favored candidates for the leading role. But later on, when Nicks was asked again if Reese Witherspoon would be the protagonist, she replied, "I’ve already told (Reese) she’s almost too old." The truth is she was around 37 years old.
Anne Hathaway declared that after turning 30, job offers were limited, "when I was in my early twenties, parts would be written for women in their fifties, and I would get them. And now I’m in my early thirties, and I’m like, why did that 24-year-old get that part?". Do you want more?
Maggie Gyllenhaal by age 37 was told that she was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55.
At 28, Elizabeth Banks was denied the role of Mary Jean in Spider-Man in 2002 and producers hired 18-year-old Kirsten Dunst, instead.
Olivia Wilde, at 29-year-old, auditioned for the role of Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street, she was rejected because she was too "sophisticated" for the role, and the casting team picked Margot Robbie instead.
Emma Thompson, in Sense and Sensibility, was told that she was too old for Hugh Grant who was one year younger than her.
44-year-old Charlize Theron wasn’t rejected but was instead the one who turned down the offer to play a role in Wonder Woman because of her age. She declared in an interview "This is a great example of how Hollywood slaps you when you start aging." However, the casting crew wanted her to play Hippolyta, Wonder Woman’s mom. Remember that Gal Gadot is only 10 years younger than her.
Here's to shock you more: Catherine Zeta-Jones was denied a role at the age of 19. She mentions that the director, "told me I was just a little bit too old and a little bit too pretty." for the role in Broadway in Aspects of Love. She was only 19!
The Impact: Cultural Addiction to the Sexualization of Minors
You should remember the movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer" in 1997 after which Jennifer Hewitt was subjected to endless disturbing questions about her breasts. The actress was barely 18 at the time yet the media prey on the former child star in degrading, misogynistic ways. Here we are, two decades and many child stars later, Billie Eilish became the victim of a similar unwanted sexualization. In 2019, when she was 17, a viral photo of the "Bad Guy" singer wearing a tank top "elicited a social media onslaught of slut-shaming, sexual objectification, and degradation." (source)
What we need to understand is that the fault is not in the girls either star or ordinary, but it is how such decisions are made by adults to dress girls in media in such an adult way for a publicized show, and the response it elicited from the public, reveals a prominent issue deeply entrenched in the entertainment industry. Young female stars are hyper-sexualized by the business that they are in, then either celebrated or criticized for that same sexualization by the public. Young stars really can’t win, no matter what they do. As grotesque as that would be, the truth is far more grotesque because the child and teen sexualization and pedophilia are far more normal than that.
As K. B. Hoyle in an article about the movie "Cuties" says, "It is the product of perverse people who are perverse consumers who drive a capitalistic structure to give us what we want. We are a culture not only tolerant of sexualized minors; we are addicted to the sexualization of minors. And it’s much easier to rage about the hypothetical pedophile in the shadows than it is to examine the shadowy corners of our own hearts and what our entertainment consumption choices have created."
Kids like Eilish rose to fame at a young age She became known for wearing baggy clothes that hide her frame in order to avoid being sexualized in the way so many young stars before her have. This alone sparked controversy and dialogue in the media, with many shocked that a child would not want their body to be objectified. What does it tell you about what is going on with the media? There is no way female stars can win this war! How sad it is to see Eilish predicting her future after the viral photo of her in "Bad Guy" by saying in an interview with Dazed that "There were comments like, ‘I don’t like her anymore because as soon as she turns 18 she’s a whore.’ Like, dude. I can’t win. I can-not win." and well, that's the TRUTH, She, Her, US cannot win!