As a typical male, I’m here to tell all those moms who choose this path, the ones who choose to have their 8 month old daughter’s ears pierced; She’ll draw enough attention to herself when she and all her peers turn 14 without all that ‘prep-work’ you’re doing. Teach her the self-confidence to be whatever she wants to be. That age in which boys are recognized as being ‘icky’ is the best time to teach them that boys are not better than girls, no matter what popular society has been saying for centuries…

Nothing I’ve talked about had to do with banning anything or penal anything.

What is ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ is often NOT a clear line, as this discussion has clearly shown. The further away you are from the line, the more clearly you can spot the differences.

What is legal and illegal should be clearly defined – but I haven’t even mentioned legality.

re: “I see that the kids involved in Winnipeg are from 12 to 16 in age, not six.”

Yes, but there are many places where children that young are put to work in the sex trade.

Things that once reliably produced shocked screams now elicit only yawns. Crucifix in urine? Been there, done that. After we get numb to this what’ll they need to resort to next, working the models over with a baseball bat before the shoot? Or maybe Joel Peter Witkin has a future in fashion?

And don’t get me started on shoes. Did anyone else notice that several of the photos in the spread included a shot of the shoes…all adult sizes in order to show a 5-6″ spiked heel. There are a lot of terrible shoes for girls (causing spine, foot and/or posture problems), but they’re for much shorter feet so the heels can’t be that high. And then, plumping and glossing their lips to make them appear aroused and full of blood…it’s all been covered before by so many feminists that I won’t continue on with the details.

One of my daughters is small for her age and only in middle school but already too big for women’s size 00 and 0 (except for arm length, which is too long). She’s about 80 pounds and 5’0″. How many adult women are naturally that emaciated?

It’s all a crock. Fashion isn’t really about helping women look good. The designers and the rest of the industry are laughing at women, all the way to the bank.

What shocked two decades ago does not shock today. So in order to -Épater la bourgeoisie- one must do more.

When society becomes accustomed to images such as this, explicit sexual images of children will be the inevitable next step.

Don’t believe me? Thirty years ago, could you put an ad on prime time TV which discussed “erections lasting more than four hours?”

To get it out of the way, exploiting children is bad, mmkay? Understood? Okay, good.

Ethical and moral issues aside, if this is an ad, it’s extremely successful, because here we are, talking about it.

More than that, I have to wonder why I seem to be reacting differently than most of the commenters here; I generally skip the pictures until I’ve read the lede on a BB post if only because BoingBoing is a wonderful place and frequently presents me stuff that I don’t understand what the crap I’m looking at right away, so I was primed with the information that the model in the photo at the top of the post is six, but I felt an unease and revulsion because of the disconnect between the trappings of a tarted-up fashion model and the body proportions of the person on my screen. I looked in her face, and, like stuhfoo, thought she looked so old. After looking at her a bit more, I’m almost certain that her face has been heavily photoshopped (although probably no moreso than her of-age sisters normally featured in spots like this) specifically to look old.

I’m not so sure that I want to give an advertisement the benefit of the doubt that this was done purely out of a marketing move to get people to talk about it by being so far into a controversial uncanny valley, but please don’t be so quick to forget all of the facts and possibilities just because child sexuality is implied. If this is intended to be exploitive, fuck ‘em with a steamshovel. But I don’t think that it’s fair (or logical, helpful, or useful) to dismiss every possibility but that one simply because a minor is somehow involved.

I do appreciate that until there’s some official statement from Vogue or someone else involved it’s going to be an entirely subjective situation so there’s going to be a lot of valid speculation, but seriously, guys, trotting out the “FOR TEH CHILDRUNZ” banner out in front of everything else is just giving them exactly what they want, regardless of their motives.

TL;DR: Y’all are posting in a troll advertising campaign.

Shouldn’t be illegal, but so Totally Not Cool as to alter one’s opinions of the folks involved.

What could be worse? Well, telling girls that they’re dressed “like whores”, for one, which I find offensive from the points of view of both the models and actual sex workers.

But I cannot see why clothes and poses in any way could prove whether a woman (or child) is more likely to agree to have sex for money. Such attitudes are, to me, just as disturbing as the images shown.

I thought that this is something we strived against at BB: the demonizing of a particular subject with irrationality and bias ad hominem.

Kind of like the sublimation of the denial of the toxicity of car exhaust via the transference of cigarette smoking into the realm of ethical transgression.

Hey! You stole my masters thesis, dick!

As for exploitation, I agree that children should not be forced to do things like this if they don’t want to. But do we have any reason to think that these girls didn’t want to? If we forbid children from doing these things out of fear of exploiting them, aren’t we just forcing our opinions on them in the other direction? Sorry kid, you can’t act. That would be exploiting you. How about just asking the kid? If I hear that these girls were forced to do this photo shoot against their will, then I’ll be outraged. Until then…well…I don’t read Vogue. And I don’t find these photos all that interesting except in how they make people react.

As others have pointed out above, Vogue (France, Italy or whatever) is hardly aimed at heterosexual men, let alone the very small subset of them who are attracted to under-age girls, the only people I have ever known who read it are either gay men or heterosexual women, mostly within the fashion industry at that.

Because the target market for this cover spread is not pedophiles, this content is condonable? Really? And what about the daughters of women who flip through this issue? Will they not want to emulate this look? Beyond that, there is a larger sexualization of children that has been going on for a while in media of dressing girls up in slutty outfits. But this imagery portrays women not just in the clothes, but using poses and suggestive expressions which present the girl as an adult, sexual woman. If the editor’s intent was to present a satire of this trend, I don’t think Vogue is a right venue for that.

[...]
Finally, since you claim to appreciate fashion, at least until this “event”, pray tell us how this is any more offensive than the standard fare of semi-naked and undernourished 14-year-olds?

The difference is: these girls are SIX. Not fourteen. SIX. They are not of a sexual age, but are being presented as such. Six is what…first grade? It’s a whole different level of fucked up.

I have French familiy. You’re right. But my point precisely is what is seen as sexy in the U.S., Canada and Northern Europe is only regarded as “beautiful” in France. They would think accusations that this has anything to do with pedophilia are “ridiculous”, just as they think Crazy Horse and Moulin Rouge and general toplessness is artful and not pornographic.

Is it victimization for someone to have their photo taken, be paid, and have that photo be distributed to customers who may or may not be upstanding citizens? No, but somehow putting children into this equation makes the parents and publishers into slave-drivers and transforms the customers into pedophiles.

Honestly, I just want the weird bee bottle from the last page. That thing looks awesome.