Porn Studies

ISSN: 2326-8743 (Print) 2326-8751 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprn20

Painted whore-babies! Paedo bikinis! Bulging

penises! Fashion and media debates on children’s
sexualization

Annamari Vänskä

To cite this article: Annamari Vänskä (2016) Painted whore-babies! Paedo bikinis! Bulging
penises! Fashion and media debates on children’s sexualization, Porn Studies, 3:4, 453-456,
DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2016.1259961

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2016.1259961

Published online: 14 Dec 2016.

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Download by: [The UC San Diego Library] Date: 21 December 2016, At: 04:52
PORN STUDIES, 2016
VOL. 3, NO. 4, 453–456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2016.1259961

FORUM

Painted whore-babies! Paedo bikinis! Bulging penises! Fashion

and media debates on children’s sexualization
Annamari Vänskä
TIAS – Turku University for Advanced Studies, Media Studies, University of Turku, Finland

Worries about fashion imagery sexualizing children have become an integral part of contem-
porary media debates. Constructing a victim child robbed of her/his essential innocence,
these complaints paint the fashion industry as a dangerous field where paedophiles and
child pornographers lurk around every corner. Fashion advertising featuring children, as
well as advertising for certain kinds of clothing, are particularly prone to generate emotion-
ally charged complaints and policy documents such as The Bailey Review (Bailey 2011) in the
United Kingdom. This Forum article discusses the sexualization argument and its construc-
tions of a normative white, middle-class and heterosexual childhood.
In 2010 The Sun reported that high street clothing store Primark was selling ‘paedo
bikinis’, referring to the padded pink swimwear tops with gold stars designed for seven-
year-old and eight-year-old girls (see McCartney, 2010 for a discussion). It was not long
before indignant British parents and child welfare authorities were calling on consumers
to boycott the company. Primark was accused of promoting paedophilia by making
little girls attractive to male perverts. Finally David Cameron, the Conservative leader,
stepped in, saying he thought Primark was ‘encouraging the premature sexualization
and commercialization of childhood’. After Cameron’s intervention, Primark’s representa-
tives admitted their mistake, withdrew the bikinis and donated the profits they had
already received to children’s charities (Vänskä Forthcoming a).
A 15-page fashion editorial photographed by Sharif Hamza and published in the Christ-
mas issue of French Vogue in 2011 (Vänskä 2015) featured girl models in poses mixing child-
hood innocence with the seductiveness of adult heterosexual women.1 After publication,
the acceptability of the images was debated in newspapers, and in fashion feminist and aca-
demic blogs. Many writers understood the images as purposefully disturbing, but many also
condemned the strategy. For example, one blogger stated that the images represented ‘kin-
dergarteners in vampy lipstick and stilettos, (O’Connor 2011); another, a feminist-identified
blogger, argued that ‘this isn’t edgy. It’s inappropriate, and creepy, and I never want to see a
nine-year-old girl in high-heeled leopard print bedroom slippers ever again’ (Angyal 2011).
The British newspaper Daily Mail reported that a representative of the Mother’s Union
thought that the images sexualized children and that such ‘sexualisation … is one of the
most pernicious ills of our era’ (Mail Foreign Service 2011), while a spokesperson from the
British Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy & Counselling Service was reported to have
said that ‘the images were an antithesis of what childhood in our society should be,
serving solely the needs of adults and not those of children’ (Mail Foreign Service 2011).

CONTACT Annamari Vänskä annamari.vanska@utu.fi TIAS – Turku University for Advanced Studies, Media Studies,
University of Turku, Finland
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
454 A. VÄNSKÄ

Finally, an academic blogger reported that ‘eight readers … alerted us to a photo spread in
the December issue of French Vogue. The series of photographs is another piece of evidence
of the adultification of young girls, an adultification that looks suspiciously like child porn’
(Wade 2011, n.p.).
The Mothers’ Union chief executive Reg Bailey was commissioned by then UK Prime
Minister David Cameron to carry out an independent review on the pressures faced by
children. The Bailey Review has been widely discussed and criticized by academics ever
since (see Attwood et al. 2012; Barker and Duchinsky 2012; Gill 2012; Duchinsky and
Barker 2013).
Going a little further back to February 1999, fashion designer Calvin Klein had planned
to unveil an advertising campaign for children’s underwear in Times Square in New York in
the middle of New York Fashion Week. Shot by Mario Testino the campaign was intended,
according to the company, to ‘show children smiling, laughing and just being themselves’
and to ‘capture the same warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snapshot’ (in
Vänskä 2011). However, before the campaign reached Times Square, some images from it
were published in New York Post, causing a scandal: psychologists, the American Family
Association, and the then-mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani argued that the campaign
reminded them of ‘kiddie-porn’ and ‘paedophile porn’. Even some advertising experts
argued that it was a ‘dumb business move’: ‘Kiddie-porn is a very real problem and to
even play in the area is not appropriate’ (Key 1999).
Worries focused especially on one of the child models: a boy in white CK trunks. It was
argued that the photograph focused ‘in particular on the clearly outlined genitals of the
little boy’ and that there are ‘pedophiles in this society. Anything that could get them
excited is detrimental, irresponsible and reckless’ (Branson 1999). Within a day, the contro-
versy led the brand to withdraw its campaign, with the company explaining they had not
‘fully considered’ the consequences of the images (in Vänskä 2011). Whether this is true or
not is unimportant. After the scandal, the sales of CK children’s underwear rose considerably.
The three afore-mentioned examples are representative of the ways in which children’s
exploitation and premature sexualization by commercial businesses has become a
common feature of public debate at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are
also representative of a gender imbalance: the majority of these debates concentrate
on little girls, both in the media and in the research literature. It is argued that the overt
presentation of girls’ sexuality joins the commercial interests of individualism and capital-
ism and creates illusions of sexual freedom and free choice. Sexualized representations of
girls are seen to disguise sexism, teach girls to police themselves, and to offer a limited and
commodified vision of sexuality (for example, Walkerdine, Helen, and Melody 2001; Gill
2003, 100–106).2
Boys, their representations and their clothing, on the other hand, are usually framed
within discourses of free speech and choice. Boys are recognized as capable agents
who can produce speech acts; and moral panics on boys conventionally centre on
crime and violence. I have suggested (Vänskä 2011) that the debate around the Calvin
Klein advertising campaign is therefore paradigmatic: it suggests a change in how boys
and their bodies are understood as sexually vulnerable.3
The examples beg the question: what are the debates really about?
One answer seems to lie in an assumption that images and clothes have the potential to
harm children – especially girls – and that children and sexuality should not intersect. This
 PORN STUDIES 455

line of argument has its roots in radical feminism and the so-called anti-pornography fem-
inism of the 1980s which claimed that pornographic images harm women and girls
(Vänskä Forthcoming a). In other words, the argument suggests images and clothes gen-
erate real actions. Of course, this kind of causality is impossible to prove. It remains unclear
who is the victim. Is it the child who wears the pink bikini? Or is it the child who poses in a
fashion photograph? Or is it some other child somewhere else? If so, who and where?
Instead of focusing on the assumed relationship between garments, images and children,
I suggest a shift of focus. We should ask what purposes the debate and moral panics serve,
and whose moral values are at stake. It seems to me that at the heart of these debates and
panics lies an anxiety about the erosion of the norms and values of white middle-class het-
erosexual propriety. The worry is therefore not only gendered, it is also ethnic and class
specific, feeding the anxieties of the white middle class. As the Calvin Klein debate indicates,
they are also about preserving the ‘right’ kinds of sexuality. The CK boy with his ‘bulging
penis’ signified the wrong kind of boyhood: a sexual one, which always hints at homosexu-
ality. The briefs that were miniature copies of adult male briefs accentuated this, especially as
the company has a reputation for visualizing and celebrating the male body as well as
having an established and loyal gay customer base (Sender 2004).
The problem with these panics is that they never define what the concepts of porno-
graphy, paedophilia or sexualization mean. In fact, those terms do not even appear as con-
cepts or as interpretations but are treated as facts or as actions that have happened to the
children involved. Pornography, paedophilia and sexualization always refer to certain
types of clothes and images, and are juxtaposed with representations and garments
defined as asexual or, to put it another way: innocent.
However, innocence is far from asexual. It is a disguise that hides its significance as a
sign of accepted sexuality – that of white middle-class heterosexuality. Innocence is, there-
fore, a heteronormative concept (Vänskä Forthcoming a).
When it comes to children, pornography, paedophilia and sexualization are concepts in
which class, race and non-normative sexuality intersect and become visible. These are also con-
cepts that tend to accompany images and garments which knowingly push the boundaries of
the white middle-class imagination about what constitutes ‘proper childhood’.

Notes
1. See the photographs online: http://trendland.com/cadeaux-by-sharif-hamza-for-vogue-paris/
(accessed January 23, 2015).
2. There are also contra-arguments: some feminists argue that, for example, girls’ G-string under-
wear and belly-button shirts are a sign of girls’ independence, sexual power and strength, and
that the popular transformation of feminist body politics to a lifestyle issue of displaying and
enjoying one’s sexuality is a problem caused not by girls, but by exploitative men. See, for
example, Kehily (1999), McRobbie (2004) and Attwood (2006, 77–94).
3. This is supported by, for example, a recent debate in Finnish social media about a little boy
who wanted to wear pink dresses (Vänskä Forthcoming b).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
456 A. VÄNSKÄ

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