just the cost of doin’ business?

It always seems to arouse the public ire when publicity depicts the sexualization of children, especially in the most flagrant of cases. However, the problem is so deeply rooted, its almost exceptional that the egregious cases are relatively minimalized. Looking for the pure presence as a counterweight to the artificial prostituted beings of man’s search for the sexual goddess of the profane product of epitomizing the power pop culture, the anonymous depersonalized objects, fantasies of the male psyche. The kind of corporate paedophilia is an extension of, and confirmation of, the relationship between capitalism and the art world which provides the source material….

[Kitsch] is perhaps most clearly visible where love poetry changes into pornography … perverting the infinite goal of love … into a series of finite sex acts….. Whoever produces kitsch … is not to be evaluated by esthetic measures but is ethically depraved; he is a criminal who wills radical evil. Hermann Broch, Evil in the Value System of Art, 1933

Manet. al masqué à l'opéra Date 1873 Technique/matériaux huile sur toile Read More:http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Edouard_Manet_093.jpg

This is a media culture where images of lovely children circulate widely, part of the sex trade business, sex tourism and puppy farm eroticism to satisfy the West. The occasional  witch hunts  and sensational reporting are misleading, since they only serve to camouflage the widespread dissemination of these images in respectable mainstream media, which in essence are normalized versions of the really bad examples. But it acts as cultural soundtrack, that sets the tone and temp without drawing too much attention. Its a representation of a hyper-ritualized evolution within the parameters of the uncontroversial, a sort of soft-core that may be more pernicious through the seduction process.

---The Internet campaign for the company Jours Après Lunes features girls in lace-trimmed bras and panties, some wearing pearls and sporting Brigitte Bardot-inspired hairdos. One girl is reclining in a lounge chair and another strikes a coquettish pose in front of a mirror. Ads for a line of lingerie for tweens show older girls hugging teddy bears while dressed in skimpy underwear.--- Read More:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/young-children/children-trends/french-lingerie-line-for-four--to-12-year-olds-decried-as-creepy/article2134540/

But in terms of origins, the sexualization of children and in general the reinforcing of misogyny in the modern sense springs from the fine art world of Picasso and Matisse. The flattening, compressing and distorting were violent; Matisse’s serpentine sculptures and the rest of fine arts of distinguishing, rupturing, anatomical accuracy from psychological authenticity is a reflection of perversity and cruelty. This self-serving draining of the physical description and emotional energy and dynamism into mere depersonalized toys of the male psyche. This is modern mass media: men using women to express their feelings which implies emotional domination of the subject, the woman, who exists only for their creative purposes. Feeling is abstract. It is the sterile, cold, modernist rationality that dominates commodity culture.


---Graham’s nudes are aristocrats of the body, the picture of perfect health and physical fitness. Some are upright, stationary, and perfectly balanced, others are seated or flat on their backs, sometimes in rapid cinematic motion, sometimes stretching, as though to show off the suppleness of their remarkable bodies. However much she changes position, Graham’s nude is a "constant semiotic" of his male consciousness. She’s the center of his consciousness, but so centered in herself that she seems indifferent to it. Poised above him on a pedestal or column, she remains out of reach, conveying dignity and independence, self-possession and character, a person inhabiting a body not an anonymous body, the depersonalized plaything of the male psyche.--- Read More:http://www.artnet.de/magazine/goddess-or-gynecology/

ADDENDUM:

Sexual well-being is an important part of healthy development and overall well-being, yet evidence suggests that the sexualization of girls has negative consequences in terms of girls’ ability to develop healthy sexuality. Self-objectification has been linked directly with diminished sexual health among adolescent girls (e.g., as measured by decreased condom use and diminished sexual assertiveness; Impett, Schooler & Tolman, 2006). Frequent exposure to narrow ideals of attractiveness is associated with unrealistic and/or negative expectations concerning sexuality. Negative effects (e.g., shame) that emerge during adolescence may lead to sexual problems in adulthood (Brotto, Heiman & Tolman, in press)….

---In stark contrast, Graham reintegrates what became separated in the course of modern art: the expression of feeling and the reality of the body. Observation and expression descriptive clarity and assertive passion have never been as esthetically opposed as modernism insisted they were. Graham reconciles them, restoring credibility to realistic description with no sacrifice of expressive purpose. He is a master of "post-modern" mimesis, subtly equilibrating the demands of "inner necessity" and objectivity the personal and the public in a figurative art that is as cognitively precise as it is emotionally insinuating.--- Read More:http://www.artnet.de/magazine/goddess-or-gynecology/

…Frequent exposure to media images that sexualize girls and women affects how girls conceptualize femininity and sexuality. Girls and young women who more frequently consume or engage with mainstream media content offer stronger endorsement of sex


stereotypes that depict women as sexual objects (Ward, 2002; Ward & Rivadeneyra, 1999; Zurbriggen & Morgan, 2006). They also place appearance and physical attractiveness at the center of women’s value.Read More:http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report.aspx

---Modernism begins with Courbet’s realism, which involved "the pursuit of ugliness," suggesting that Newman’s paintings, for some the climax of modern painting, are absolutely ugly. Graham breaks away from this whole line of thinking, affirming beauty, to the extent of finding it in the seemingly ugliest part of the female body, at least to the male anxious about it. He does so by re-uniting what Courbet separated: the female genital from the female body. He does something more subtle: he subsumes the female genital in a beautiful female body classically beautiful however empirically the case so that it becomes endowed with beauty, an attribute of beauty, the proverbially "something strange in the proportions of beauty" that brings it to life, and, more subtly, gives it projective power and animates it.--- Read More:http://www.artnet.de/magazine/goddess-or-gynecology/

First, perversion is the result of an essential interplay between hostility and sexual desire…. Second, people with perversions feel (are made to feel) an unending sense of being dirty, sinful, secretive, abnormal and a threat to those finer, unperverse citizens who are supposed to make up the majority of society. Third, the word itself reflects the need of individuals in society to keep from recognizing their own perverse tendencies by providing scapegoats who liberate the rest of us in that they serve as the objects of our own unacceptable and projected perverse tendencies.
Robert Stoller, Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred, 1975 Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/kuspit/kuspit6-10-02.aspa

---This week, clothing retailer American Eagle raised eyebrows after marketing a push-up bra for young teenage girls. Last month, 13-year-old Elle Fanning was named the new face of the Marc Jacobs fashion line, and in May, 14-year-old Haille Steinfeld became the face of Miu Miu, a fashion house known for its sensual and provocative clothing. Ms. Racco said that by putting the young girls in adult-like poses, the Jours Après Lunes campaign crosses “that fine line between art and sexual exploitation.” Jours Après Lunes creator Sophie Morin defended her company and described it as a “family brand.” She said she was trying to create a “chic” new line of underwear for girls, and did not intend to sexualize them. “There is no vulgar connotation,” she told the Lingerie Trade website. “The materials are totally opaque, there is no transparency, no lace. … There is no bra in my collection.”--- Read More:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/young-children/children-trends/french-lingerie-line-for-four--to-12-year-olds-decried-as-creepy/article2134540/

Read More:http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eca_ctte/sexualisation_of_children/submissions/sub156.pdf

Read More:http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/05/07/david-jones-drops-corporate-paedophilia-case-against-think-tank/

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