by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | September 12, 2020

So we are having a big kerfuffle over the Netflix’s film ‘Cuties’ as though this is without precedent.  Au contraire!  Before ‘Cuties’ we had:

• 1976 film: Jodie Foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute working at a 42nd Street brothel in New York, in the film ‘Taxi Driver‘
• 1978 film: Brooke Shields ‘Pretty Baby‘- soft core child porn
• 1980 film: Brooke Shields ‘The Blue Lagoon‘ – soft core child porn
• 1994 film: Natalie Portman ‘Léon: The Professional‘ – Unusual relationship between Leon and Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl.
• 1997 film ‘Lolita’ based on a 1955 novel written by Vladimir Nabokov of the same name detailing a sexual relationship between a middle-aged man and a 12-year-old girl.
• 1999 film ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ where Leelee Sobieski played a jailbait prostitute, Milich’s daughter.

And many foreign movies push the envelope farther.

• • 1977 Italy and West Germany –  Eva Ionesco in Maladolescenza – child porn
  • 2017 Argentinian film “Desire,” which opens with a scene involving a young girl having her first orgasm.
  • 2020 Austria and Germany – ‘The Trouble With Being Born‘ 10-year-old android and her “Daddy”

Of course this list is only a small part of mainstream’s exploitation of child sexuality.   So can we at least say ‘Cuties’ sexualizing children is nothing new?  Add to this all the kiddie beauty pageants across America sexualizing kids and you can see the sexualization of children is widespread, systemic and nothing new.

And it is historic

As far back as July 1885 The Pall Mall Gazette published “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” written by William Thomas Stead:  a series of newspaper articles on child prostitution in England.   Stead even purchased a 13 year old girl to aid in his research.

More on ‘The Maiden Tribute’ can be found here:  On the matter of William Thomas Stead …

Wikipedia: “Prostitution of children dates to antiquity. Prepubescent boys were commonly prostituted in brothels in ancient Greece and Rome. According to Ronald Flowers, the “most beautiful and highest born Egyptian maidens were forced into prostitution…and they continued as prostitutes until their first menstruation.” Chinese and Indian children were commonly sold by their parents into prostitution. Parents in India sometimes dedicated their female children to the Hindu temples, where they became “devadasis”. Traditionally a high status in society, the devadasis were originally tasked with maintaining and cleaning the temples of the Hindu deity to which they were assigned (usually the goddess Renuka) and learning skills such as music and dancing. However, as the system evolved, their role became that of a temple prostitute, and the girls, who were “dedicated” before puberty, were required to prostitute themselves to upper-class men. The practice has since been outlawed but still exists.”

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