Um . . . yuck? Reminds me of Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby (1978) including nude scenes by the then 12 year old actress as a New Orleans prostitute. That was gross. Even worse were the "quality" prints of the full body frontal nudes offered in Penthouse magazine years later, for which they charged some thousands of dollars.

Uggh. Reminds me of an action project I did in my gender and women's studies course last term.

I am all for sexual expression, but that advertising is unbearable. Why do girls have to become sexual women so young? That's messed up.

Also, why is it impossible to go through any magazine, or even internet site, without seeing overly sexualized females? It's not good for the girls of this world.

Makes me wonder: Am I not pretty because I have all my clothes on?

I never would have thought like that when I was a little girl.

Yuck. I remember wearing that scent too. It was so popular amongst my friends. The girl reminds me too much of JonBenet.

Excuse me while I got wash my eyeballs.

I remember when stuff like this was all too prevalent.

My first thought was also of Pretty Baby, A male, and it creeped me out too. Innocence is sexy? Then why does she look like a grown woman?

"I am all for sexual expression, but that advertising is unbearable. Why do girls have to become sexual women so young? That's messed up."

Because once she's a full-grown adult with a sex drive, her vagina's no longer tight and dry enough for some guys. >:(

Don't feel bad - we all wore it back then. It was either that, or Jean Nate After Bath Splash.

But then one day we all realized that it smelled like baby diapers and came to our senses.

BTW, that's the creepiest ad ever.

I wish you'd posted this picture after the jump. It's upsetting. I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

Christ on a cracker, I felt so filthy after looking at the ad. I really cannot tell if it's an oversexed child or a juvenilled-up adult!

I used to have the whole Love's collection. Now I just feel sick.

I thought it was an ad for Jodie Foster's Iris-Style line of makeup-shotguns.

On Canal St. I definitely just saw a pink jumper with the words "I'm Too Sexy for my Diaper."

Speaking of too horrible for words...

On Canal St. I definitely just saw a baby-sized pink jumper with the words "I'm Too Sexy for my Diaper."

Speaking of too horrible for words...

I feel so bad for this girl. Can you imagine what kind of parents she has? I hope the money they got for pimping her out to advertisers burned the skin on their hands.

This ad is a double slam. The child is standing in for a grown woman, and the advertisement is reminding grown women that their whorish ways won't catch them a man...they need to be properly "pure" to do that. But of course the side effect of this is that an actual child is being used to fetishize "innocence," which only serves to actually sexualize the child herself rather than make you think of an adult woman who is properly chaste. This ad is revolting on many levels.

Well, there's one for the people who think that the "prostitot" trend is only ten years old.

CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

That's really all I can say about that.

She she looks just like the dolled up little girls thrust into beauty pageants. Same thing.

Ew, ew, ew!

I agree with this:
Christ on a cracker, I felt so filthy after looking at the ad. I really cannot tell if it's an oversexed child or a juvenilled-up adult!

And ew.

As far as terrible sexual exploitation of children I've seen while on this site, this is minor. The website that "a male" put up a few weeks ago is probably the most awful thing I've ever seen. Pictures of little kids in sexualized positions, in as little clothing as possible. They are child "models," but the pictures amount to pretty much legal child pornography. I can't believe websites can operate that way legally.

wow-I didn't know pedophilia was "in" back then...

I continue to be really sorry about posting those links.

What I find interesting is that this ad is from Tiger Beat. A magazine that (assuming it had the same purpose and demographics in 1972 as it does now) is for

1) teen and pre-teen girls

2) who are "obsessed" with boys.

The model in the ad is not standing in for a grown woman, she is standing in for a teen girl only several years older than herself. And while our culture certainly does infantilize women, it also half-neuters teen girls - they are sexualized, but god forbid they are sexual or have desires of their own.

So, how does one use sex to sell something to teen girls if one cannot be seen as encouraging sexual behavior in teen girls? Especially, god forbid, by acknowledging that they like to look at men and boys. Even in a magazine that is generally bought for the pull-out posters of the pretty boy of the day. (And, whatever one may think of the idea, using sex to sell products to the readers of Tiger Beat is a perfectly logical route to take.)

Well, one fetishizes "innocence" - ie, virginity.

And ends up with something even creepier than what one was trying to avoid in the first place. And yet somehow more acceptable to society. Which is a whole 'nother level of creepy altogether.

I was 12 in 1977. My friends and I dressed like truck-stop hookers--little cut-offs with side slits, satin shorts, tube tops, halter tops, those cheap plastic high heel sandals you could buy at the drug store. We were just imitating what we saw on TV and in movies. We studied magazines like Seventeen, trying to find the secret of being sexy. It was very important to be sexy.

Men wanting to have sex with young girls was not considered predatory--it was just a part of life. The term jailbait was very popular. Men leered at us as soon as we got breast buds, and some did more than look.

A friend of mine looked a lot like Brook Shields, and around the time that Pretty Baby came out, this got her even more attention. When she was thirteen, the county sheriff (a married man in his 40s) had sex with her. He bragged about it, and was never punished.

I was told that men preferred to have sex with virgins because 'popping the cherry' was such a great feeling. Once there was no hymen to break, supposedly, the sex wasn't as good.

There was no recognition of female desire, of even of female agency--sex was something men took, something that they tricked women into doing. Girls were just a collection of body parts to be used. Hearing boys and men talk about females sometimes made me physically ill, the mix of lust and disgust in their voices.

The androgynous boys in Tiger Beat were far more alluring than the budding sexual harassers that surrounded me in school. Their pictures looked me in the eye and smiled, unlike the real boys around me.

Is it any wonder I became a feminist in junior high? I thought things would be better by now, but lately it feels like we're going backwards.