Corporate Pedophilia
September 17th 2007 by Megan Bayliss in Child Abuse
Last February, Caroline Overington of The Australian, wrote Innocent Seduction. An excellent article that offered a balanced argument on the alleged sexualisation and exploitation of children through the marketing and advertising of designer children’s wear, I was saddened to read that giant Australian retailer, David Jones, had entered Litigious Street. Demanding that references to their company be removed from an Australian Institute research paper entitled, Corporate Paedophillia (see Revealing Children’s Fashion), David Jones’ CEO called in the legal guns to support their “reputation for high-quality apparel and corporate decency.”
It would appear that the research report, “Corporate Pedophilia”, upset many fashion brand labels. Add to this, everyday parents who view that the author of Corporate Pedophilia is way off beam. One father was quoted in Overington’s article as saying that, “Parents are doting on their kids. Children are saturated with love and affection and care.”
Such statements are not unusual. Many people see nothing wrong with dressing children in sexualised clothing renamed as “fashion“. Meg over at Dipping into the Blogpond has unwittingly created a very interesting and polarised discussion around a 13 year old Australian Model, Maddison Gabriel. The child’s age was apparently not revealed to fashion/model contest organisers and the awards took place in a public place where alcohol was served. Further, the child was competing against women up to age 27. Surely in sport this would be forbidden? Children and adults do not generally compete against each other. The child won while she was still 12 years of age. This is sounding like corporate pedophilia by default to me.
Saturating children with love, affection, care and fashionable clothing may be the case for many families. Certainly, my children are loved and protected as are the children of the vast majority of people that I am friends with. However, the reality is that much fashion crosses the border into sexualised clothing, that the rates of child sexual assault and exploitation remain high and eighty-five percent of child sexual assault is perpetrated by somebody well known to the child. While it is not the corporate entities that are sexually abusing these children, their marketing and advertising may well become skewed in the minds of a voyeuristic child abuser – a person who has access to innocent children, a person who may well collect and read advertising from their mail box and then carry out their perverted thoughts on the children in the home or innocent children on the internet. Just who is responsible for stopping this?
Discourse is needed around this. It is the responsibility of all of us to stop pedophilia. Child sexual abuse is an emotive topic and the divide between the believers and those unable to believe is wide. Somehow, we’ve got to find a common ground, a place where both parties can understand what the other is saying.
Many years ago I watched a Dave Allen skit on a scantily clad woman rubbing herself all over a car. The skit was a take off, of a car marketing add. Dave’s punch line was, “Buy this car and you’ll be fuc*ed!” That one line has stayed with me for twenty years. It assisted me to become highly sensitive to the use of sex or sexualised behaviour in marketing. Conversely, advertising that talks directly to pedophiles, telling them that what they are doing is wrong, unacceptable but that there is help for them, would also work on me. I would support that corporate entity in their delivery of exceptional corporate responsibility.
If one in three adults have reported in survey that they were sexually abused as children, then this is a high number of potential children’s fashion label buyers, or non buyers. Already I won’t purchase several brands of clothing because the companies openly flaunt sex to sell their product. How many more people are there in the world like me? David Jones may well be concerned that they have been slighted as being non-protective, but it is their reaction that has concerned me to the point that they may well become one of those shops I stop shopping at. They are failing to hear the essence behind the report and have instead personalised it. However, if David Jones displayed corporate responsibility toward ending child sexual abuse, perhaps even donating to treatment programs for sexual offenders, then I would be likely to purchase all of my clothes there. If this was a similar case for the one in three prevalence statistic of people who have claimed sexual abuse then that is a massive increase in potential customers to David Jones or any other fashion label/house.
Please, it is time to end child sexual abuse. To the corporates, we need your help. To everyone else, the corporates that are displaying recognition and action for ending child sexual abuse need our support.
What can we do so that we are all speaking the same language about ending child sexual abuse?
Should we perhaps make our child protection language fashionable and sexy?
Related articles around sexual deviance and the fashion industry:
Revealing Children’s Fashion
Reuters Knife Dolce & Gabbana
Fashion week defends 12yo model choice
Stumble it!
September 17th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I’m proud to work for a company that doesn’t sexualise children in their advertising (we use animals;).
Lisa over at TwoKnives (http://www.twoknives.net/) focuses heavily on child-targeted marketing in a crusade to educate parents about the ploys used by corporations to turn their children into product spokeskids.
My suggestion - a range of kids clothes branded “Just a kid”.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am
lol…I hope your first sentence dosen’t mean you sexualise animals! I know exactly what you mean but when I first read it, I laughed.
What a GREAT name for a kids label. You should copyright or TM that if it’s not already gone.
Will look up twoknives - that sounds very interesting.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Hey Megan, It’s Albert here…hope you are well! You invited me to participate in your series a while back, and I couldn’t think of anything to write…so I highlighted your blog at the end of my most recent post, I hope that makes up for it.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:53 am
I am the father of a 10 year old daughter, and survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I get angry when I see children sexualized in advertising. There should be nothing sexual about a tween girl, and I worry that this type of “fashion” encourages pedophiles’ fantasies.
As my daughter heads for her teen years and sees her peers dressing this way, I have to walk a fine line between letting her make some independent choices, and making sure she is safe. We have kept Barbie and Bratz and other negative images out of our home for the most part, but it is impossible, and unhealthy, to completely shelter her. Parents face serious difficulties in a culture that is sexualizing a significant portion of advertising messages today.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Hi Quint
I share your anger. It’s not even like the advertisers are unaware of what they are doing. Sex and sexy sells and that’s all there is to it. As a group of people bombarded with sexy images we have internalized that’s it’s okay to dress our kids like that - it’s not really sexy because everyone does it!!!
Good for you for keeping the Barbie and Bratz deformities out of your daughter’s life. I give my kids vitamins to keep them healthy - why would I introduce unhealthy germs like Barbie and Bratz to disfigure the way my girl children see themselves.
Having said that: one of my girls loved Barbie. Go figure! I obviously failed in my parenting somewhere. It’s the power of marketing and mind persuasion. It is strong.
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 am
Interesting point of voting with your wallet. I agree with you about not buying products that are unethical. Where is the line between ethical (or acceptable) and unethical (unacceptable)? Or in this case overly sexual and just say ‘fashion model acting in a flirtatious behaviour’.
However the other issue of tween and under 18yy as models is disturbing, particularly in advertising fashion. Not just any fashion but ADULT fashion. These unethical fashion companies are exploiting not only their workers (and sweat shop factory workers) but consumers also. Educate yourself on subliminal advertising.
Check out http://programmingthenation.com/ if you think subliminal advertising is some harmless prank. Yes it is true that the infamous cinema tachiscope ‘experiment’ was a fake to promote the inventor’s new product, but there exists an amazing array of subliminal messaging in print advertising and radio.
It’d be relevant to read your words on whether there is a link between the sexaulisation of consumerism and this broadening of the boundaries and status quo. Remember the mini-skirts or bikini when they first came out? Now they’re the norm, the status quo. Who knows maybe our advertising will get cruder and more directly sexual like it is in Europe (on TV, radio and not just print). The culture is more ‘open’ and ‘casual’ in Europe, every beach is a nude beach practically. Brazil, another image-obessesed nation is like that.
Disclosure: I have an interest in this issue as I advise a modest-children’s clothing company on operational developments. This company works creatively and strategically to keep up with the buzz and attention of being ‘hip’ ‘fun’ and ’stylish’ that other fashion labels just blatantly abuse the modest conventions.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Hi Adam
good points. Sexualisation of consumerism, broadening of boundaries and the changing status quo - you have given me some delicious food for fodder here.
As you know, the culture around nudity and a country’s propensity toward liberal thinking and acting is different to a culture of child abuse. Nudists don’t necessarily abuse kids, gays don’t necessarily abuse kids, mini skirts don’t cause rape, etc. Unfortunately, far too many normal looking decent upright law abiding citizens who condemn liberal thinking and speech parallele their “good” behaviour with going home and sexually abusing their children.
Re “hip, fun and stylish”: I would LOVE to see being a kid become hip again, rather than the fight to become more adult. I would spend big dollars on clothing my kids in kid clothes (clothes that aid a culture of valuing children), but I will not spend a penny on clothing that cheapens and sexualises my children.
Where is the line indeed. It can be somewhat subjective. I think it’s more of a culture though - a mind culture that makes all decisions around the safety and welfare of children rather than looking like the ultimate cool kid (or parent). I know the line when I’m faced with it. Exploitation stinks so I often spell it before I even see it.
Thanks for your comment and the link to the subliminal site. Advertising is an area that I do want to know more about.
Good luck with your business. Please don’t forget the value of being a kid in all your advertising.
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
FYI for those interested in this issue - ABC’s Difference Of Opinion will be focussing on this matter on Thurs 27 Sept (9:25pm).
From the website:
Coming Up: Sex Sells - but at what cost to our kids?
Are we sexualising kids and young women through ads, magazines, video clips and popular culture? It’s claimed eating disorders and body dissatisfaction amongst young women are now at plague proportions. Popular culture is being blamed for these developments, but is the issue more complex, and indeed worth getting worried about? Are we overreacting to a cultural shift and being naïve about young teens ability to see past the sexy ads and billboards and decide what’s right from wrong?
Meg, I think the only time we’ve come close to sexualising our animals was when we pixelated the monkey’s privates to promote online security
(note to self - context check before clicking submit!)
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Context is fine my friend. I’m against abuse, not having a sense of humour.
Your post about your sister was amazing. I stumbled it for you and am about to add you to my blog list.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Here’s an example;take the world famous Virgin logo.If you turn it slighty to the left so that where the underline and tail of the g form an X,you’ll also notice the V forms a slightly hidden S and the i,r and part of the g form a broken capital E,spelling the word SEX.
So you have Sex/Virgin in one word.Very clever Mr.Branson.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
It’s interesting to contrast your comments on this issue, with those of the wide media concerning comments by the infamous Mufti who supposedly talked about women dressed attractively being a bit like bait for rape.
At what point do you believe that the predator is responsible, and at what point is it the clothing’s fault?