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IMPACT
Are we being Desensitised to Features writer Niamh Robinson addresses the rising exploitation and sexualisation of children in popular culture.
Speaking at a Women’s March in January last year, Natalie Portman recalled the moment she received her first fan mail aged only thirteen years old. Having made her debut as a child star in the 1994 French thriller Léon: The Professional, Portman remembered her delight at the prospect that her “art would have a human response”. On opening her first letter, the Black Swan actress told the 500,000 strong crowd how this exhilaration turned to complete horror when she encountered nothing other than the warped desires of a man who felt he had a right to her young body.
“I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me”, Portman revealed to those gathered before her. Drawing upon her own personal traumas to shed light on the sexualisation of children in the media demonstrated immeasurable courage, particularly when calling out an industry who prefer to quell uncomfortable and distasteful conversations. Portman continued by detailing how the experience had affected her. For fear of attracting further unwanted attention from these ‘adoring fans’, the actress spoke of the close guard she kept on her public persona and the identity she constructed in order to survive in the public eye.
“I built a reputation for basically being prudish, conservative, nerdy, serious, in an attempt to feel that my body was safe, and my voice would be
listened to”. Since when were children made to feel responsible for the predatory actions of fully-grown men? No minor should feel obliged to suppress their personality on-screen to curtail the sexual appetite of the audiences sitting at home. We have a duty of care to condemn the sexualisation of children in the media.
“Since when were children made to feel responsible for the predatory actions of fully-grown men? No minor should feel obliged to suppress their personality on-screen to curtail the sexual appetite of the audiences sitting at home” Horrifyingly, Portman’s story is not an isolated one. Across the film, music, modelling and advertising industries, there are similar accounts of childhood abuse and premature sexualisation. These issues affect both male and female young rising stars. However, the latter demographic is the primary target of inappropriate media coverage. Millie Bobby Brown, the star of Netflix series Stranger Things, appeared in a list of names entitled ‘Why TV is sexier than ever’ on a 2017 W Magazine cover aged only thirteen years old. Billie Eilish, the American singer-songwriter who rose to fame in 2016, was the victim of numerous eighteenth birthday countdowns on the internet, euphemistically the age when she was legal for sexual relations. Eilish recently revealed that her signature baggy fashion style is, in fact, more of a protective armour ensuring that “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath”. Kaia Gerber, daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, was featured in Young Versace, aged only ten, gazing
