WTF: "Kids' lingerie" photos featuring Miley Cyrus' 9-year-old sister on a stripper pole?

Update: the photos are real, but the clothing company involved says there's no lingerie line, and they're not responsible for how the child celebrity linked with their line is accessorized or portrayed. "We just make tutu dresses, tank tops attached to tutus," says the founder. Worth noting: whether or not you call it "kid's lingerie" (gag), the company did link to the "girls on stripper poles" photos directly from their website, and noted the name of the celebrity kids in their garments, which implied endorsement.

The great Chris Rock once said (I'm paraphrasing a bit), you know you've really fckd up as a parent if your daughter ends up on a stripper pole.

The 9 year old sister of Disney megastar Miley Cyrus is reported to be promoting a (man this feels weird to type) lingerie line for children. The highly sexualized photos that appear to to promote that clothing line show children posing around a stripper pole. Related images basically present the kids as cute li'l whores. I just vomited in my keyboard.

Related: in 2009, according to the LA Times, 16-year-old Miley danced around a stripper pole during her Fox Teen Choice Awards performance. Whiskey, tango, foxtrot, people. Seriously.

Most who read this post will (I hope) agree: promotional photos that show scantily clad and made-up little girls flirting at the camera from behind a stripper pole are totally wrong and sad. But, question. Who's to blame? The parents? The agents? The managers? The publicists? The garment company? The studios (I guess Disney, in this case)? All of the above?

Noah Cyrus Lingerie Line (crazydaysandnights.net, Thanks, Souris Hong-Porretta)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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This takes “WRONG” the a new level.
Pantograph

Remember kids: It’s not child pornography when it’s done by a corporation. Just don’t go sending suggestive pictures from your cellphones because that’s a BAD THING.
bklynchris

Rock said “keep your her off the pole”, as the very least a father could do for his daughter. Notice Miley comes poppin’ out of a trashed trailer. It is important to note that poor people buy crap too.

Here in NYC, every time a little girl, including my 7 yo, gets up and starts hanging off the subway stanchion it always provokes hysterical admonitions to stop it. All the men look uncomfortable and all the women completely commiserate. The only ones who have no idea what the big deal is all about is the little girls.

People we even use Rock’s line, “keep her off the pole”. Yeah, that pole is an atavistic flash point.

And I think Xeni’s concern in this regard is NO LESS valid than Corey’s issues with the anti-vaccine movement. It involves the insidious nature of the negligent decisions people make regarding (their) children. And foxtrot NO am I inviting a compare and contrast so just DON’T.
Space Toast

Honestly, the picture looks like four little girls and one of their moms clowning around for the camera. The things that make it uncomfortable are the trendy high-gloss makeup (notice that the mom has about twice as much on), and the stripper pole. Little girls like pretending to be grown up. The makeup is there because makeup is trendy again. (Miss the ’90s yet?) The pole is there because grabbing attention with sexuality is the only real method women seem to have of gaining influence in pop culture right now. The mom didn’t think anything of it, and she’s a role model. I don’t envy anyone growing up in the Hollywood/entertainment industry slipstream.

We have enough women on tv whose hook is, “Hey, look at me…” We need to promote some whose hook is, “Hey, check this out…” I dunno, what’s Bug Girl up to these days?
Anonymous

South Park’s take on Disney these days:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/221275
Mitch

F_king morons. Little girls aren’t supposed to have sex appeal.
Daemon

Doesn’t actually look very much like lingerie.

Agreed on pretty much all other counts though.
shadowfirebird

I followed the link to the actual photos. And saw very little clothing that I wouldn’t let my 9-yr-old daughter wear to a party. I mean, seriously, in no way is most of this underwear in any reasonable sense of the word.

Neither did I see any poses that were in any way sexual — although, okay, that pole is pretty scary.

Seriously, folks, go look at the actual pictures before you comment.
TuesdayWeld

Great. This comes out the week I get yet another flyer about a pedophile moving into the neighborhood. Oh, look, it says his targets are girls around 12 – so I suppose Miley’s sister is safe around this creep since she’s only 9? He’s been restricted from (among other things) “using the internet to view pornographic images, whether adult or child porn”.

Guess he can probably find the photos of Miley’s sister and give the excuse “it’s an ad for Halloween ballerina costumes!” when he’s brought up on charges again, huh? This is just gross. How eager are these girls to let their father pimp them???
JoshP

*warning: novel length comment about some of the psych time I spent with probable pedophiles and the inferences gathered. Sorry about length. Ignore if your attention span is low today.

I’m gonna weigh in on some stuff noone has touched. It’s about the generalized American schizophrenia.
I’ve always had a thing for banned books and taboo lit. Anne Rampling’s ‘Belinda’ analyses an overtly sexualized young teenager and an older artist. America’s ‘schizophrenia,’ and I know I use the term in it’s popular connotation, worships youth and beauty and still hangs on to a sacredness of innocence or naivete. The best example I can give of this is my seven year old niece. She’s as cute as button. You wouldn’t think she could dissemble her way out of a wet paper bag. But very tactically she will, when I’m on the computer or, worse yet, trying take a nap hop on my lap or plop down next to me, give me a big hug and let out the biggest stinker you’d ever smell. Never underestimate kids.
In my time dealing with psychiatric patients I’ve come across some guys I’m pretty sure were recidivist pedophiles. They weren’t ghouls, they didn’t have horrible sallow skin, leprous hands, claws, or bulbous noses. They weren’t monsters. Mostly they were the most wretched individuals I’ve ever met.
America’s schizophrenia about immorality is never so apparent as with them. We practically worship Mafioso or gangsters, we barely acknowledge graft in public office vs. omg a peccadillo with a prosti-hooker, our own nation not only now condones torture, but continues to condemn people to death.
The pedophiles that I have encountered were not sociopathic. That is to say, they had regular emotion, they felt guilt and horror over their actions. Unfortunately they suffer similiar symptoms as addiction.
Once the pattern has been established, the pedophiles doesn’t start trolling the streets like a shark scooping up moppets in his van. From what I understand it goes in a series of small breaks. Show the child interest. Then the pedophile starts to rationalize. He or her starts to convince him or herself that this is okay, that the child wants this. Start moving in little incremental gaps till the bounds are passed. Then things spin out of control.
Pedophilia is a pathology. One with horrible consequences. Unfortunately, due do America’s schizophrenia, and maybe human nature. When we find something so polarizing to hate. We can hate the hell out of it. Thus… OMFGTHECHILDREN, burn the witches, etc.
I’m not arguing to give kittens to child molesters. The emotional reaction to hate is a very easy out, it is irresponsible. In the end it may cause more suffering.

Oh yes…eye bleach for the above photo sets. “Not only are they prurient, they’re in horrible taste!”
- Anonymous
  
  Enough with the use of the term schizophrenia to describe anything that is not schizophrenia.
  
  Speaking as someone who suffers from schizophrenia, I don’t appreciate it, at all, and even less that you use it in a post about pedophilia.
  
  Pretty hurtful, man.
Anonymous

Q. “Who’s to blame? The parents? The agents?…”

A. The focus groups.
p96

@Blue: agreed; many girls (and some boys) like to wear frilly silly things.

+ Iâ€™m just sickened (link bait) by looking at these (link bait). Oh, I canâ€™t bear this but I must post it (more link bait) on our blog.

Not all poles are â€œstripper polesâ€; see â€œvertical tangoâ€ on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVtTwP1xaaQ
Ugly Canuck

Hmmm …I see a parallel between this and giving little boys toy auto guns, toy knives, shoot-to-kill war games….

Sex is too adult for kids…what of violence?
Or is war ok for kids to play at, while love is not?
fletcher_katherine

@26: I’m with shadowfirebird. The pole a serious misjudgement, but the clothes aren’t all that bad, and the poses aren’t particularly “sexy”. Being charitable, they could be little girls pretending to look what they think is “grown-up.” I’m more concerned about the girl flipping the bird (at least to a British person) in one of the pictures.

I think they thought they weren’t selling sex, but rebellion. Which is very appealing to (some) kids, but the PR department misjudged how far to push it. And (I hope) they guessed wrong that parents would let their kids buy clothes with that image attached! Most 9-year-olds don’t have much disposable income and go shopping with their parents, after all. Hopefully this campaign will go the way of the Etam/A&F thong.

Whose responsibility? Every link in the chain could have said “no” on this one, anywhere from concept to photo negatives to proofs to publication. They all dropped the ball.
chgoliz

One time around 5 years ago I took my children out to a suburban mall. It was hard to find, because once we got off the expressway and through the residential zoning, we found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of miles upon miles of identical (to us) shopping malls, all having similar names which were variations on a theme. Billboards everywhere. Neon lights. We did what we needed to do and got out of there, feeling shell-shocked from the visual over-stimulation. It turned out to be an excellent vaccination: even as teenagers, they have no interested in “shopping” as a desired activity.

I feel for parents who raise their children in such an environment. Once lingerie for 2nd and 3rd graders becomes the new norm, what will the next must-have kiddie consumer item be?
das memsen

Who’s to blame? Seriously? Uh, how about… US?

Anyone who twitters about it, reads up on a blog and chats about it, watches the news broadcast… I mean, come on. The girl is responding to a very obvious social value being thrown her way. We value this shit- whether or not we are outraged or not, we eat it up, and this is our fault, like Michael Jackson’s life and death was our fault. The day we, as a society, stop paying attention to that shit is the day it goes away.

But that’s not going to happen soon, because we loooooove our telecommunications gadgets, and we don’t have better things to communicate with them, apparently. I like reading the interesting posts on boing boing, the ones that have some kind of genuine thing to teach me- but all these celebrity whatever posts are getting more and more annoying, since boing boing clearly loves the good gossip just as much as the rest of the world does. what’s so “wonderful” about this story?
arikol

It’s “all the above” who are responsible, but the ultimate responsibility has to lie with the parents.
They are the ones responsible for the child’s well being.

But a lingerie line for children…..eewwww that is just twisted. Some pedophile creep must have thought that up.
Anonymous

….endorsing kiddy lingerie is much too similar to encouraging child pornography. What has society come to where the words “kid” and “ligerie” can be used simultaneously. Shameful.
Ugly Canuck

This particular stuff is harmless: there’s no crime depicted here.

In general, people ought to get their minds out of the gutter when it come to images of kids.

My point: kids are trying to become adults. There’s no reason at all for them to hurry (but try to tell them that!), or more importantly, for their parents to hurry them up. But people will raise their own kids their own way. I’m not Doctor Spock, nor his modern equivalent. Nor is it any of my business how people raise their kids, unless actual factual crime takes place: and even then, it’s my City’s police and social services whose business it then becomes. As a taxpayer, I don’t want them spending $$ – and interfering with people’s families – unless there really is crime or abuse taking place.

Perhaps the younger people reading this in a hurry may not appreciate this song, but some older ones might.
With appropriate changes, it could even apply to Miss Cyrus…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWPAGxihE2Y
Rindan

What can I say? My OMFGTHECHILDREN nerve has been beaten dead. I honestly don’t give a shit. Is it mildly disturbing that there exist a super extreme minority of little kids getting done up like this? Sure, but there are worse fates in life. I would pick the life of a G rated child stripper over growing up in a south side Chicago ghetto. So, OMFGTHECHILDREN for that kid, but eh, it is just a few of the little buggers and they could have rolled a much worse lot in life.

If there is anything disconcerting about this to me, it has more to do with our culture. It is just sad to think that there are kids grow up idolizing this crap. Instead of playing in the street/forest/whatever doing something mildly life threatening just for some cheap thrills, you have some kids getting dressed up in stripper outfits and practicing smiling like they are dead inside for a camera. Oh fun.

I’m not worried about their morality. Teenagers have been rutting like, well, teenagers, since the dawn of time. Birth control and condoms can solve 95% of the problem associated with that. I am far more worried about their brains and personality rotting away as they mindlessly chase vapid conceptions of success.

So, OMFGTHECHILDREN. Those poor little stupid boring bastards have my pity. Someone’s mommy or daddy needs to toss out the TV and bring out sharp things and fire for the kids to play with, because they are clearly bored as shit.
- strangefriend
  
  Rindan, you rule man.
Anonymous

Seriously, folks. It looks like a scene from a cheap high school musical. There’s nothing sexualized about this at all.

The crappy photographic quality is more disturbing than anything that’s on the picture … go to a beach and you’ll see 9yo girls in bikinis or even (OMG!!!) naked.
DataShade

Heh, one of the things I do at work is report sites that are, appear to be, or could be easily confused for child pornography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who then use software to check for characteristics of minors and flag sites and images to report to legal authorities. Once sites go onto that list, they never, ever come off, and then they’re distributed around the country and possibly the world and blacklisted and tracked and the people hosting or providing DNS for any site on the list are re-reported on a daily basis.

It warms my heart to think I may soon get to bundle up a list of Disney sites to put on the kiddie porn doomlist.
Anonymous

Not really sure where you got this story from, but Oh-La-La Culture has a new clothing line called The Emily Grace Collection (that is Miley Cyrus’s cousin). Noah is in the pictures. The promotion is for Emily’s tutu-dress collection, and has NOTHING to do with lingerie. http://twitter.com/NoieandEmsTour and http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/2846558/img/Anonymous/Emily-Grace-Collection-Launch-Invite.png and http://www.adorableschildren.com/oohlalacosps.html Its actually quite a cute clothing line.
xaxa

I don’t really see what the problem is. Maybe since I’m one the other side of the Atlantic?
PrettyBoyTim

How do you know it’s a stripper’s pole?
Perhaps it’s a fireman’s pole. It’s a bit worrying that all you guys see some eight year old girls mucking about on a floor-mounted pole and you automatically think of strippers.
- Gloria
  
  Well, since we’re disregarding pretty obvious cultural cues anyway, why don’t we ask the now-obvious question, PrettyBoyTim: How do we know that isn’t a BATPOLE?
Anonymous

What about the huge ad campaign for Caprica?
Anonymous

Why the bad feelings toward strippers? They can be role models too.
WalterBillington

Horrible thoughts. B’jesus, these people need a crucifixion or two to get their attention focused on discouraging sexualisation of kids.

Don’t buy this stuff. I’m emailing Disney to call boycott on their goods until there’s a serious written published apology in the national news.
pinehead

Blame it on the culture, not any one person or group of people.

Monetary profit is priority one to most people. Stirring things up and generating a buzz is a big part of the path to profit. So the entertainment industry is forever looking for fresh ways to violate taboos, generate buzz and get the kids excited enough to buy the merchandise.

It’s wrong, but that’s what the marketers want. Wrong is what sells. Unless you’re willing to take on Disney in court over the matter, there isn’t much the people can do. Besides, it would only generate more of that wonderful buzz they’re after, ensuring that the young, anti-establishment kiddies continue to buy the merchandise. The kids don’t know they’re being taken in by a gigantic corporation, and they won’t listen to anyone who tells them so. So what can you do about it?
lcastro

Interested in why and what to do about it, try out “The Lolita Effect” by M. Gigi Durham, PhD. and also “The Triple Bind” by Stephen Hinshaw and Rachel Kranz.

Our kids are nothing but a marketing demographic to these people. Telling our girls that they should dress up like hookers and always be attempting to attract a male glance is damaging to their very sexuality.
Ugly Canuck

hey datashade:

Sounds like the system you’ve described could be easily converted from “child porn” to “forbidden politics”, as a “target”, tout suite if the need should arise, eh?

Interesting, that those systems could be so easily converted and adapted to monitor and contain other types of info, eh?

Well I suppose if “everyone thinks” that something ought to be forbidden, then for the Law to provide that to gaze upon such, without requiring anything more in the way of a proof of an intent to cause harm, becomes a criminal act…then the punishment for such a “criminal gaze” becomes morally acceptable, huh? As does the means to surveille, to prevent the “criminal gaze”.
Ugly Canuck

Icastro: “hookers”?

You mean “sex workers”, instead of that derogatory term, right?
- JSinAZ
  
  You’re joking, right? Seems like applying a derogatory name to a horrible fate like hooking is exactly what’s needed. Unless you are trying to normalize the near-human-slavery conditions that typify prostitution, why would you want to attach a pseudo-professional term like “sex worker”? Child whores are not “Under-age Sex Providing Professionals”.
Halloween Jack

I think that we need to keep our eyes on what’s really important here, which is that Billy Ray Cyrus is the root of all evil.
Ugly Canuck

Oh, and these are advertisements for adults:: they are not “telling the kids” anything.

ALL advertising directed at children is morally unacceptable.
Ugly Canuck

And hey!
Advertising directed at children is morally unacceptable for the same reason that sex with children is morally unacceptable, and the same reason why children cannot hold property in their own names nor enter into contracts enforceable against them.

Because they are children: and thus under the disability of being children. They are incapable of informed consent….so what’s the point of advertising to children, but to mislead the innocent, and to take advantage of ignorance and naivete?
jokel

In any other context those pictures would be euphemistically known as “Child Super Model” images, the “grey area” just a fraction of an inch removed from explicit child porn. Classy move, really.

Who is to blame? It requires a fantastically warped mind set to, on the one hand, stick your children in clothes and positions which are explicitly sexual while, at the same time, probably believing it to be completely innocent since they’re “only little”. This required the parents consent, the agents belief they could get away with, the managers decision that this wouldn’t be damaging, the publicists judgment that viewers wouldn’t be outraged, the garment company who discovered that this was a viable market opportunity and the studios choice to throw their weight behind it.

So, yes: All of the above.
Anonymous

Jesus fuck. Please, someone, get on the email with Mattel and Toys R Us and ask them if these are the images they want associated with their products. Someone tell Disney this is not on.

SRSLY? WTF?

I recommend a good, old fashioned internet pile-on until these jerk-offs smarten up and some creative director loses his (you know it’s a dude) job over this.
Ugly Canuck

Here’s some “child porn” (sic) for you Puritan Victorians & your tender little minds: make that gutter-loving minds: sorry ever-loving minds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El6iQ2_dvlc

ooops sorry did not mean to damage anybody…
Blaatann

Now, I myself am not a psychologist (IANAP?), but I have a close friend who is, and also specializes in sexology. She mostly treats patients convicted of sexual crimes, rapists and/or paedophiles (as part of their sentences). She told me that most of the rest of western psychologists shake their heads at American treatment of (especially) paedophilia as a chronic disorder. From what I remember from this conversation, the European consensus is that paedophilia is much more commonly a symptom, not a disorder in itself. Anyone care to comment?

So far, her track-record is excellent, no return business..
Deidzoeb

The other related photos are worse, but that photo of the girls around the pole looks like they’re wearing tutus or more clothing than they’d have for a dance class or dance clothing promotion. The pole is definitely weird though, unless there’s a maypole or basketball hoop cropped out of the top of the picture.
- El Mariachi
  
  The pole is definitely weird though, unless there’s a maypole or basketball hoop cropped out of the top of the picture.
  Funny you should use a maypole as an example of something less weird than a stripper pole, since the maypole is pretty explicitly a pagan phallic symbol. Interesting that no one has a problem with young girls dancing around them.
  - Deidzoeb
    
    the maypole is pretty explicitly a pagan phallic symbol
    
    True, but at least the maypole has been secularized. It’s not like the thing is as anatomically correct as those phalluses in Japanese fertility festivals.
Wooly Mammoth

I just don’t see it. The pole is the only thing questionable in all of this. Tutus? Pajamas? Beachwear?

There’s nothing sexually suggestive about any of this. I have two young girls, and I’m sensitive to the portrayal of women (especially girls) in the media. Women and girls do get sexualized and it’s good to call those instances out.

But this? Because you can see their legs, or what? I guess no more swimwear modelling! Someone on the Internet might think SEX!
Yamara

Ugly C: If all ads directed at kids are morally unacceptable, then let Datashare have a shot at shutting Disney down. Sounds like you’re for blanket surveillance in one post, and against it in another. Unless you imagine taking a moral stance without enforcement to be uncontradictory.

Look folks, every civilization needs to have a dividing line between the pre-adult and the adult. There’s a learning curve, and age-appropriateness is a measurable metric when seen in this light. This is even beginning to show up in AI studies.

Mind you, that dividing line can be in stages, and the sexually active stage can be set by a culture pretty damn low by modern legal standards. The early-teen age of consent that existed in some US states into the twentieth century was merely a medieval holdover, when it was the norm.

Sexuality isn’t the only thing that can separate the child from the adult, not in humans and their cultures. But a civilization that can’t differentiate them will dissolve because it becomes unrecognizable and uninheritable: adultified infants and infantalized adults. Never forget, happy mutants, wrongness cuts both ways.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  I ain’t stoppin’ them from trying.
  
  There was a debate about “ads for kids” at the beginning of the TV age – since children can’t read a lot of newspapers – guess which side won in the USA?
  
  Back OT: I’m not going to try to distinguish between various types of child exploitation and abuse by degrees: I abhor all exploitation of children by adults. For any end – other than for the child’s own benefit, strictly defined – but then it – ( think child actors/singers/models, yes?) would not BE exploitation, at all.
  
  As to these particular ads: This ain’t kiddie porn.
  Kiddie porn ought to be destroyed wherever found.
  And all distribution and of course and especially its production ought be criminal.
  But it already is that.
  
  The “ruckus” over these particular ads is a matter of taste & style, no more.
  
  Due to my suspicious nature, I see much of the “kiddie porn” public/internet brou-ha-ha as a kind of trojan horse, to get people to pay for the widecast monitoring of their internet use by agents of the State: using the Public’s own tax dollars (or ISP fees) for enforcement /surveillance of highly questionable efficiency in preventing the activities aimed at, all at a very high cost to our pocketbooks, and to our rights of privacy. (N.B.: But IF the evidence shows that they are efficient at reducing the evil at which those measures were aimed , then I’d change my tune somewhat!)
  
  Of equal concern to me is that these monitoring/censorship techniques will be turned by the State to its own political interests (eg to prevent monitor & shape dissent): that the data, and the techniques used in harvesting that data, could be used for other types of information as well (for at a basic physical level, child porn on the net is all just bits & bytes, like any other info on the Nets).
Anonymous

I totally agree with everything that’s been said regarding how awful the sexualization of young girls is. I’ve seen some pretty awful stuff but I gotta admit that this isn’t the worst I’ve seen BY FAR. I’ve seen outfits in the kids section my local Walmart that worry me more than the pictures I’ve seen of Noah and her pals.

But since when did every metal pole become a stripper pole?

I don’t know is anyone else remembers the industrial look of the 80′s but it was full of randomly placed metal poles than no one ever gave a second glance at.

Except for the existence of a single cylindrical metal support, that picture bears no resemblance to any strip show -I’ve- ever seen. If they were hanging off the pole by their legs or in a suggestive manner I might buy it but sometimes a pole is just a pole.
Ito Kagehisa

You axed: Who’s to blame? The parents? The agents? The managers? The publicists? The garment company? The studios (I guess Disney, in this case)? All of the above?

#1 the parents

#2 all of us who see happy kids around a festivus pole and immediately think of erotic dancers. Our culture has warped us horribly, and we are willing participants in this.
Anonymous

No offence guys, but when I look at this picture it seems fine to me. Some play, much like when I was kid. A little dress-up.
The ones that interpret it sexualy, is you guys…
And like with Tifany Gore, it mostly says something about you.

This sexual existence when its all that you see and the way it paints your world…well…its kinda animalistic…
Sorry again, I really mean no offence. :/
idontwant2liveinoprahsworld

Ugh. Don’t give these people any more money.
dculberson

Oh, my achy breaky eyes.
Anonymous

You’re right, it does feel dirty….I hope the FBI doesn’t find this on my computer some day.
SKORPIO

Way to pimp out your kids, Bubba.

Anyone else regret Bill Hicks never living long enough to launch his TV show “Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus”?
Ito Kagehisa

Is it OK if it’s not rich kids doing it?

How about if it’s REALLY little kids?

How about if it’s “bring your kid to work day?”

http://www.parentfail.com/pole-dancing

I really do want answers to these questions.
Anonymous

So those commonly found poles on playgrounds everywhere are now “stripper” poles? Don’t get me wrong…the fact that we are all so hyper sensitive to such possibilities speaks volumes about how we are framing “childhood” for our children. Parents assume that the products and media “made for kids” is actually “good for kids”. The Cyrus adults are no more foolish than the status quo necessitates. The reigns have long since been handed over to Disney…no questions asked.
blueelm

The little girls look normal and healthy really, it’s just the pole that is out of place. But maybe we should ask why it is that little girls would aspire to dance around a pole? How depressing.

And what a wakeup call they’ll have in that profession, and also in how people will treat them. Then again maybe they could make it into the low levels of celebrity and it’d be great.

To a small child there’s no difference between pole dancing and ballet, and frankly the difference mainly comes in the way that people get treated.

Why do we want to have a whole generation half of whom think they’re only reason for existing is to be wanted for sex? I have no idea. I remember feeling the pull of this when I was a child though. A friend and I were playing dress-up, probably looking like ridiculous little kids and she walked slowly down the stairs saying “am I sexy though” which was kind of the first in a long series of WTF moments for me.

But am I sexy? Hell no, you’re 8. But sexy is what real women are, sex objects, and little girls want to grow up to be loved and valued which means they want to be sex objects. They have no idea that means they can’t be anything else.

Oh and then they ask me why I don’t want children :P
- IronEdithKidd
  
  “But sexy is what real women are, sex objects, and little girls want to grow up to be loved and valued which means they want to be sex objects. They have no idea that means they can’t be anything else.”
  
  Parent fail. Monumental. No little girl should ever grow up believing that her only option for validation is through sexuality. That borders on abuse in my book.
leighj

RE: Miley on stripper pole in 2009 TCA? It was the umbrella pole on an ice cream cart…

RE: The image above should NOT be taken as an potential ad/photoshoot for kids lingerie but rather some photos from TCA

So in many ways this stuff is brought to you by none other than Viacom the people that bring us MTV and Nickelodeon.

Do I want exploitation of kids? Nope, did I find the photos of Miley nude a bit much yes? But this is almost a witch hunt paranoia. These pics were out back in August 2009 so WTF people you wait months to report?

Pic = Old News and Not Relevant
Info in Story = Incorrect

It’s called FACT checking people. This story has RUINED a simple company wanting to make fun clothes for kids.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/35223748
siliconsunset

Corporate America, FUCK YEAH. Exploiting our children to make a motherfuckin’ dollar!
John Napsterista

There will always be moral panic from older generations about what the younger generation is wearing, and the attendant hand-wringing about how it portends societyâ€™s general decay. Itâ€™s as sure a bet as political corruption (who reading this didnâ€™t get shit from their parents for inappropriate fashion choices when they were kids? Ripped jeans, piercings, Manic Panic??). The only novel twist here is that the scorn is being heaped not on the kids themselves, but on the parents and corporations who allow or enable them to dress in this manner. The shocked reactions, as evinced here, simply ensure that these fashions will be regarded as successful by young people who, like all young people since the beginning of recorded modern western times, seek to shock oldsters with their style of dress. The more interesting question is, if this is what tweens are wearing today, what will their offspring have to wear in 30 years to successfully enrage them?
- Cowicide
  
  There will always be moral panic from older generations about what the younger generation is wearing, and the attendant hand-wringing about how it portends societyâ€™s general decay.
  
  In the year 2011, infants shall wear lingerie and it shall be normal in the distant year of 2012. Beyond 2012, future generations of sperm shall eventually wear stylish lingerie right in front of the aghast older generations.
  
  Also in the future, snuff films shall be not only legalized but deemed appropriate for all viewing audiences including puppies and kittens.
  
  All this old fashioned fretting of today will seem very uncool and very unhip in the future.
Antinous / Moderator

Well she’s not going to get famous by sitting at home doing her math homework. You gotta get a gimmick…
sally599

When I was little and in ballet I vaguely remember dancing using a pole as a prop, albeit it had a horse attached to look like a carousel still when you don’t have partner there is always a bar on the wall the only difference here is that people are applying their own gutter-soaked minds instead of finding the utility of some kind of bar in dance in general.
Darren Garrison

Seeing children exploited like this hurts my heart. My achy, breaky heart.
ROSSINDETROIT

They have a cute dog! Hi Puppy!!
agraham999

This from the same people who were OUTRAGE…OUTRAGED I say…when Miley was in the infamous Vanity Fair cover photo of her bare back…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/27/miley-cyrus-topless-in-va_n_98836.html

Then there were all her sexy camera phone poses…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/21/miley-cyrus-bra-flashing_n_97866.html

And her young sister singing misogynistic rap songs…

http://musicblips.dailyradar.com/video/noah-cyrus-singing-dancing-to-smack-that-akon/

Billy Ray…parent of the year…maybe next year he’ll win pimp of the year…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnME92JU9zc
manicbassman

Xeni, please get this thing straight in your head… Miley did NOT dance round a stripper pole at the awards, she was on top of an ice cream cart clinging on to avoid falling off… creative selection & cropping of the photographs made it so much worse looking than it was.
- TheGZeus
  
  That’s all well and good, but I think that’s secondary to her 9YO SISTER ON AN ACTUAL STRIPPER POLE IN HER UNDERWEAR!!!!!!!!!!
  
  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
  *jumps out the window, remember’s this is the basement, runs to the woods to bury self alive*
- Anonymous
  
  She was dancing in a sexual manner on the pole and squatting…get a clue! She and record company knew how to make headlines….sick effing world…..blahhhhhhh!
13tales

Jeebus fucking H-C, I want to burn something.

I mean seriously – on what planet, in what dimension, was this considered a good idea?
igpajo

That’s not a Stripper pole! That’s a Fitness pole!
http://www.fitnesspoledancing.com/

Seriously though, that’s seriously f’d up!! Feel like it needs a Unicorn chaser.
TheGZeus

I seriously considered abandoning ‘civilisation’ for a while after I saw this.
I’m considering it a bit less seriously now.

This just might be the worst thing to ever be sold…

Ok, so comic books are illegal, but THIS isn’t????

Somehow small tits are illegal in Australia??

What’s happening??

Everyone wants to sell you stuff to give you a boner for the wrong reason, but not for you to have the boner once you have it, especially if you’re an Australian who doesn’t like implants, or…
I can’t keep track of all the real and fake sexual thought crimes that are being reported this month…
Waterlilygirl

Let’s not forget that the ‘perfect’ parenting of letting minor daughter Miley date someone who was 20 when she was 15? Not surprising that the Cyrus’s would go forth and continue to wh*re out their daughters.
2k

So, like, her parents and family are all like; “Yeah! Woo!”
and shouting about how good this is for her.
The gap between behaviour and the narrative employed to maintain ego is no longer *just* a yawning chasm.
Anonymous

I guess Billy Ray wants to buy a new pick up and maybe add on an extension to the double wide.

Seriously, that’s bad, but there are companies out there that sell kids clothes who’s ads make American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch look down right wholesome. Gotta love how we cry “protect the children!” and exploit them at the same time.
Anonymous

Remember, this is the same little girl who wore a short-short skirt and leather thigh-high boots for halloween.

I can never, ever unsee that. :O(

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/miley-cyrus-sister-slammed-for-wearing-dominatrix-halloween-costume-20092910
ROSSINDETROIT

You’re right. We should have a chaser. Better take a look at this.
Anonymous

This is fked up. Then again have you seen that TLC show with very very young girls doing beauty contests?! And no one involved parents and producers alike seem to see anything wrong! It’s absolutely horrific! … and now little girls on a stripper pole, no one seems to see a connection?
Shay Guy

Is it time to build an inside-out house yet?
- Michael Smith
  
  13,
  
  I want to be allowed out of the asylum too.
Gisburne

In ‘we see you in the UK too’ news, the girl in the picture giving the two-finger salute should know that in Britain that pretty much means exactly the same as showing the middle finger. In other words, ‘I’m a pre-teen lingerie stripper – f*** you!’
mjfgates

The lame part is, when it fails they’ll blame Cyrus for not being a good enough spokesmodel. “If only she’d been willing to work it a little harder…”
spine_injury

This happens every few years. Watch a week of MTV sometime and perhaps you’ll be less shocked. This stuff is only marketed because the bean-counters have the numbers to back it up.
Anonymous

Its a false rumor that someone posted that has been picked up as news outlets such as Boing Boing as factual news. Miley Cyrus’s COUSIN, not sister, Emily Grace Reed, is promoting a new clothing line of dresses, skirts and blouses. Noah does appear in some of the publicity photos, but there is no underwear line. The “underwear” pictures that you posted are children’s nightclothes, and are unrelated to the current clothing line.

http://www.gossipcop.com/noah-cyrus-not-starting-lingerie-line-for-kids/

And

http://twitter.com/Oohlalacouture

and

http://twitter.com/NoieandEmsTour
Zadaz

Is it some kind of pedophilia theme month on BoingBoing? Because that’s even more creepy than it sounds.
Cowicide

Now just give her a gun, have her scream “fuck!” and “cnt!” while she’s brutally killing villains and you’ve got yourself a movie.

Hat tip to Hit Girl.

AMERICA MUST BE ENTERTAINED
(So we don’t have to think about our lousy privatized health care system)
nanite2000

I just saw the photo. It is of a 9-year old girl wearing lingerie and striking a ‘sexy’ pose.

I, and everyone else who has seen this photo, are now technically criminals and should report to the nearest sex offenders register.

It doesn’t even matter if it was faked does it? Since we already know that even cartoons of children in sexual situations is illegal.

How is this any different?
Anonymous

Millenia ago, when I was young, children in underwear or swimwear or naked were considered ‘cute’ — before pedo-fear tyranny.

Also, there was no such thing as child beauty pageants where little girls were painted up like hookers.

I really don’t know what happened to western civilisation in the interim.
- CheshireKitty
  
  @20, Wrong! Harlan Ellison commented on “Our Little Miss” pageants in “The Glass Teat”, which came out in 1970.
zikzak

Are we upset about these images because they are harmful to children seeing them? Or because they harmed children in their making? Or because they provide gratification to pedophiles seeing them? Or because they encourage adults to have pedophilic tendencies? Or because the creators are unfairly profiting off the innocence of children?

I mean, I’m definitely upset, and clearly so are y’all but I’m not sure why. This is part of the problem with the culture around child pornography: the taboo is detached from any analysis of causality – we mostly hear “that’s just wrong”, end of thought.

It is wrong, for sure. But I don’t think it’s “just” wrong. There are specific reasons people feel it’s wrong. Some of those reasons are good, and some of them are pretty misguided themselves. It’s worthwhile to consider our reasons even if we all agree the images “ain’t right”.
Zergonapal

I’ll take F for a $100 Xeni.
Somewhere along the line someone should have pointed out just how bad an idea this was.
Anonymous

Archie: “I blame society…”
Otto: “That’s bullshit…”
Archi: “Arghhhhh…”
rose bush

i see NO difference between this and kids in beauty pagents. the parents are absolutely 100% responsible and at fault in each and every case. there is NO need for a young child to have their hair dyed. to wear contacts to change the color of their eyes. to wear makeup to hang on stripper poles and to dress in hoochie clothing. take a look at this: http://contexts.org/socimages/?s=baby+tee+shirts (a BABY tee shirt with nipple tassles)

there are always going to be adults who want to see children in inappropriate forms. that doesn’t mean WE, as a society should allow it to happen. we can bitch and moan all we want. are any of you going to do anything? well i for one am going to (at the very least) write to the ‘lingerie’ company just as i did to the manufacturer of the nipple tassle (FOR BABIES) tees. hey, it’s a start
- Ferwynne
  
  There are a lot of parents who should be bound, gagged, and dumped off a boat in shark infested water. The list grows on a daily basis.
zio_donnie

i wonder what demographic are they targeting with this kind of ad?
- VICTOR JIMENEZ
  
  Hummmmmmm… 4chan maybe?
- Suds
  
  Fans of this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18gDUzL2mLQ
Cowicide

Anyway…

I have two ideas:

1) We have a draft with no rich kid exemptions. Send rich kids to war.
2) The CEO’s of companies that exploit children like this, should have to make THEIR children wear lingerie and shit.

Do those 2 things & I think things will change around here in the USA real quickly.
Anonymous

The whole system is to blame. “We can do everything we want, until we get sued. Or not”. The American Dream.
JohnCJ

A few days ago, we had a discussion about how capitalism can’t account for kiddie porn. I argued kiddie porn is the result of mental illness and not simply capitalism filling the demand.

I was totally, in every way, wrong.

People can and will exploit children for money. Especially corporations. I think I threw up a bit in my mouth.
Anonymous

Easy!
ALL OF THE ABOVE!

They all would have had a hand in the production of this image
at some point somebody (and it could have been any of them) should have said this is wrong

In occupational Health and safety it is not only the person who causes a dangerous situation that is blamed but everybody who saw it and failed to correct it

In this instance it is not only the person who came up with the idea in the first place but everybody who failed to correct it thereafter
Blue

“Highly sexualized photos”?

Really? I don’t know about you but they don’t seem sexualized at all to me. And ‘lingerie’? People get it on in bed in ra-ra skirts? I must be out of the loop.

Serioulsy, if you think these images are in any way sexual (aside from the mild sex-association of the pole) go look at some porn. Even just adult lingerie models in Anne Summers or Victoria’s Secret or something, and then take another look.

Thery’re just kids getting dressed up.