Thylane Blondeau scandal

[Jengerbread88]

Okay, seriously. This makes me sick. Anyone seen these photos of this model?







She's 10.

TEN!

That's just sickening. How young is too young? I mean, I knew that designers were fighting over 13 year olds like Elle Fanning and such... but a TEN year old? Posed THAT seductively? Um, no thanks.

Ugh. What's your opinion? Is she posed too seductively? Or am I just freaking out over nothing?

[AmberK]

um yeah....this is ridiculous. What is she posing for?

[Kjersti]

Look at her shirt in the last photo!!! HOLY COW. Not okay.

[newfiemountiewife]

I guess all of the anorexic models weren't skinny enough, so they had to pull from the children's ranks. It's not my kid, so if her parents think it's ok...that's up to them to decide, isn't it? I mean, the photogs wouldn't take her picture that way without their permission. I wouldn't do it with my kids, I tell you that! Kids grow too fast as it is! But it's all about the money for some people!

[Jengerbread88]

It was a photoshoot for French Vogue.

Yes, it is her parents' decision, not mine, but I feel like there should be something regulating it!

Think about it: If these photos showed up on some 40 year old guy's computer in America, we'd think of it as him having a creepy fetish, being some sort of offender, etc etc. But because they're in French Vogue instead, suddenly it's okay!

: shudders :

[emmasmommy]

Originally Posted by newfiemountiewife

I guess all of the anorexic models weren't skinny enough, so they had to pull from the children's ranks. It's not my kid, so if her parents think it's ok...that's up to them to decide, isn't it? I mean, the photogs wouldn't take her picture that way without their permission. I wouldn't do it with my kids, I tell you that! Kids grow too fast as it is! But it's all about the money for some people!

wss

dirty old men find porn on the internet regardless if someone lets their kids do a racy photoshoot or not. *my* kid won't ever do anything like that while she's under my roof.

[newfiemountiewife]

Originally Posted by emmasmommy

dirty old men find porn on the internet regardless if someone lets their kids do a racy photoshoot or not.

Yep. They do. That's why my DH had to do a tech crime course. *shudders*

[adrianka]

Originally Posted by newfiemountiewife

I guess all of the anorexic models weren't skinny enough, so they had to pull from the children's ranks. It's not my kid, so if her parents think it's ok...that's up to them to decide, isn't it? I mean, the photogs wouldn't take her picture that way without their permission. I wouldn't do it with my kids, I tell you that! Kids grow too fast as it is! But it's all about the money for some people!

And if her parents thought it OK to prostitute herself, it would be OK? There is a limit to what parents can be allowed to make with their kid. I imagine they could get into trouble with social services and their child might be taken away. This is child abuse. Period.

[crecia27]

makes me incredibly sad!!

[Traci Reed]

They actually don't bother me. It is said that the photoshoot was a tongue in cheek commentary on the fashion industry. For example, she's wearing a kiddie white undershirt under the couture in the first pic.

Also, from what I understand, European countries are much more open about nudity than we are (i.e. b00bs on billboards) so it would make sense that this wouldn't be pushing as many envelopes there as here.

[Traci Reed]

Here are some good articles:

Vogue Spread (click through the pics to read the articles)

Thylane

[adrianka]

Originally Posted by Traci Reed

They actually don't bother me. It is said that the photoshoot was a tongue in cheek commentary on the fashion industry. For example, she's wearing a kiddie white undershirt under the couture in the first pic.

Also, from what I understand, European countries are much more open about nudity than we are (i.e. b00bs on billboards) so it would make sense that this wouldn't be pushing as many envelopes there as here.

I'm from Europe, I don't have problem with ADULT nudity whatsoever, and with kiddo nudity if it's just kiddos running around naked and playing (and I'm sometimes highly amused at the prudery in the US), but I find these disgusting. Even if it's sarcasm. But OK, if it's sarcasm, then my previous words were too harsh. Still, blah. But that's what they wanted to achieve I guess.

[Traci Reed]

I guess I don't understand what's abusive and disgusting about them. In almost every photo, you see less skin than if they had on shorts and a T-shirt. None of the posing in the whole article is sexually suggestive except maybe slightly one or two. Yes. Thylane has that sexy look down and yes, it's inappropriate to photograph a child as sexy but I think that's the most inappropriate thing about the spread, truly.

To me, most of the photos aren't any different than a lot of the "dress up" photos that we see in scrapbooking galleries of little girls wearing mommy's clothes and makeup. The difference being the quality of the hair/makeup/clothes/photography and the medium in which it's presented. To be honest, any pedophile can browse a scrapbooking gallery in the summer and find much better fodder than these photos. To me, it's a "scandal" that's been blown up in the media to be more than it truly is.

I actually really appreciate the message of the spread, how, as a society, we expect women to be both sexy and childlike at the same time. How the fashion industry uses and abuses girls not much older than this (there are 14 year olds in American Apparel ads!)

But that's just me and I'm not the norm most of the time, LOL

[newfiemountiewife]

Pedophiles can and will get pictures from ANYWHERE. They might be on the beach with YOUR kids right now. That crap worries me more than anything else! They can go on any scrapbooking site as Traci mentioned and get more provocative pictures than that, that show more skin than those do!

[Darcy Baldwin]

To me, sexualizing a child is wrong, whether in photographs (and some of those photos are sexually provocative), in jest, in contest, etc. Playing dress up is one thing, this is not dress up.

Looking at the full spread, it did mostly look like a dress-up party..there were a few photos that I found to be a little more aggressive that I'm comfortable with (the lipstick one, the tree one), but the rest were not really that bad to me.

I'm uber-sensitive to the plight of sexual abuse in children, and tend to lean to the cover them all up and keep them 6 approach, this isn't terribly awful to me...but worrisome, yes.

Toddlers & Tiaras on the other hand..that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

[Jengerbread88]

This is why I really like this website. There are differing opinions. Even though I still think the photo shoot was WRONG, overall, I like reading other opinions about it, and I like knowing that perhaps it was meant to shed light on the issue and mock it, rather than encourage/promote it. I like that other people have other information about the article than I might have had.

[MamaBee]

ugh... I'm always shocked by what goes as fashion for the tween's and juniors these days... Is it really appropriate for a 8-10 year old to be in daisy dukes and skimpy top? Yet... this is what is on the racks at my local discount center...

[Davita]

I find the whole thing kind of disturbing. I don't object to all of the pictures but some of them seem inappropriate to me. Not a fan of Toddlers and Tiaras either.

[adrianka]

I don't care whether she is dressed or naked, suggestiveness is not about the lack of clothes. There are naked photos out there that are perfectly innocent, and sometimes a model is fully dressed and the photo is borderline porny in character.

It's all about sexy posing. She is definitely posing sexy. Children should not be put in such a position IMHO. Yes, there are sites out there where creeps can find more suggestive photos, but that doesn't mean that I'm OK with this or that kids should be posing like that because of that. This kind of thing doesn't create pedophiles (they are out there), it just kind of makes pedophile thinking more acceptable (because it's not some dirty illegal thing, but an official "normal" mag) - which is the part that is unacceptable to me. It shouldn't be encouraged, should it?

And yes, I agree beauty pageants are more disturbing than this, and have always found them disgusting and never got why they were actually allowed, because that's child abuse as well (those kids are too young to really know what's going on, so they can't really make a decision and the parents are just totally irresponsible).

Actually, while I'm very much tolerant when it comes to nakedness in general (you're all right Europeans have a different approach here), sometimes I'm truly disgusted by some US kid photographers (and I'm sure not just US, it's just that I had the chance of finding those) who make children pose as adults - some of them make Photoshop actions that I bought, and I'm pretty sure you'd be surprised I found some of the pics slightly disturbing (judging from FB comments where people go aaaaaaw how gorgeous that is), but each time I show some of those to my friends they find them over-the-top as well - must be a different way how we see things, those cultural differences DO exist. :-)

P.S. Abuse, in my view, is not just being violent to kids. Parents are adults and should be responsible for their children. If they allow / make them do suggestive photos, they are abusing their position as the responsible person, because the child of that age can NOT see what's OK and what's not - they basically think in terms of their parent's way of thinking. So that's why I was talking about abuse.