LeliaThomas.Com

A 13-Year-Old STILL Isn’t a Playboy Bunny

When I wrote A 13-Year-Old is Not a Playboy Bunny back in January of 2006, I didn’t quite expect to get the some of the outrage against my opinion that young girls should not be encouraged to think a sex symbol related to both soft core and, indirectly, hardcore pornography is cute and fun. After becoming sick of a young girl telling me about her “right” to wear clothing that suggests she’s a sexual object, I closed comments on that entry in April of 2007. It’s worth noting that that entry is the only one on this site that has had comments closed. Today, a little over two years after writing that entry, I want to share with everyone what’s been going on behind the scenes in regard to it.

While my site cannot represent a large proportion of the Internet’s traffic, by any means, it is not really a small site anymore, either, so the fact that much of my traffic in the last two years has come from people trying to find sexual pictures and information about young girls is very disturbing.

2006

In 2006, the search phrase “13 year old porn stars” was the 6th most popular phrase that led to my website. This is significant, considering over 50% of my site’s traffic comes from search engines. Other popular variations included terms about very specifically young girls, Playboy and pornography.

2007

In 2007, the 4th most popular phrase leading to my website was “13 year old sluts.” It and its perverse variants accounted for somewhere between five and seven percent of all my website traffic in 2007. Of nearly 6,000 single keywords that led to my site last year, here were the top three. You can guess how they were used.

• old (included in nearly 4% of all searches to my site)
• year (included in nearly 4% of all searches to my site)
• 13 (included in 2.5% of all searches to my site)

Out of my top 25 keywords, 11 of them were related to the entry written in 2006.

No Coincidence

There’s no coincidence that many of the searches include youthful ages or the keyword “girls” with Playboy. There are people out there not only searching for child pornography but also for young people who wish to see themselves as sexual objects. Obviously young people with such a mindset are more likely to be easier targets. As learned from some of the comments I received on my initial entry about this, though, most of these young girls have bought into the lie about it just being a meaningless, fun logo.

Apparently a lot of parents have bought into it as well, as numerous searches leading to that entry dealt with Playboy clothing and accessories specifically for children. Funny how the world can get outraged over McDonald’s and Coca-Cola logos plastered everywhere, but not be bothered by the gendered children’s clothing that features an iconic symbol for soft core pornography.

Who’s the joke on?

There’s a joke on the Internet that if you want to make it big, you either write or feature things about porn or technology. Looks like you’ll do well in the former if it’s about children. Think about it. There are a lot of sick people out there, as there always have been, who would love to prey on young people, particularly those who enjoy suggesting they are more “mature” than they actually are.

Parents should be very cautious about what they support in their households and should, more importantly, educate their sons and daughters about the dangers of the world and how to view themselves respectfully. No one should be fearful of the world they live in, but we also shouldn’t set ourselves up to be looking for trouble. As proven by the individuals out there who are searching for pre-teen and teen girls in Playboy-style material, allowing young women to treat themselves as eye candy and meat for the taking is maybe not the brightest of ideas.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Matt J

Great post. I find the sexualization of children incredibly disturbing. Pedophilia, I am certain, is developed more widely in a society which treats ever younger girls as sex objects. The content of your search referers is disturbing, but hardly surprising.

Mimzy

Ah, I still recall reading that blog post and being very pleased by it; I agree with this one too. Unfortunately, people who are determined to be perverts will always search for ways to find what they’re looking for; that’s never gonna change. What CAN change is the attitude of society towards people who dress their children like that (and towards teenagers who choose to dress this way themselves).

cooper

It used to amaze me these horrid things about people, no longer.

I have a very small site but it gets a fair amount of traffic for the type of blog it is, volumes of searches which revolve around posts I had written in the past about rape.

Searches for “Fun with rape”, “funny rape” or “hilarious rape”, and “rape fantasy” are all too common. If I cold get through one day without seeing such a search I’d be happy.

You’re right. There are sick people out there and the fact that young men have access to porn at such an early age, even soft porn, just makes it potentially sicker.

You ‘ll enjoy (sarcastic ) this If you haven’t already seen it.

http://feministing.com/archives/008881.html

I am not clear on where the reasoning of parents has gone. I believe many mothers live vicariously through their children, not giving any thought to the age of the child, they fall into this habit of letting them do what is popular in order to make them popular.

Lelia

That’s horrible, cooper. And you’re right, the access to this stuff is bad, but that’s never going to change. What I propose is more a targeting of certain content. I knew about the cartoon thing that you linked to–hadn’t seen that page, per se, but I knew about them doing that. That would be the sort of content to target, though.

The obvious thing is that Playboy is using rather childish cartoons (read: with a male, teenage audience in mind), which sometimes even depict underage (or even child-aged) individuals, to lure young people in. I think that’s an obvious tactic to try to get youths comfortable and relaxed about what they’re looking at. “There’s a cartoon here by this naked ‘whore’. See? It’s tame!” We can’t make Playboy illegal, because you cannot stop the want for such a thing, nor do much about the women who ultimately choose to be in the medium, but you can stop things like obvious lures to young audiences.

As for parents’ reasoning…God, who knows. The only thing I can figure is that more and more families consist of two (or one) parents that work full-time. To me, it doesn’t matter who is available more, mom or dad, but someone needs to be. I think parents allow teenagers to act and dress in some of the ways they do because (1) they don’t have enough time to participate in their lives and guide them or (2) they have enough time, but quite frankly do not care.

Lelia

To clarify: I’m a ditz, and I’d opened two different tabs and thought cooper was linking to the same thing I knew about. I was looking at the wrong tab, in other words. Anyway, what I was yammering on about was here.

Peter Stewart

I agree and read the old post too. Parents are the teachers and kids follow their lead.

I was a kindergarten teacher in Taiwan for five years. The little girls (3-6) who came to school were dressed up like they are so pretty, but if I saw that length of skirt on a teenager, I’d be shocked (and seeing it on these kids was too). End-of-semester performances often involve them dressing up in super-short skirts that were designed to entice, not appropriate for youngsters. The same applies to all their little TV stars on the kiddy shows. They wear skirts so short I wonder if it’s for the kids or their fathers. No-one blinks an eyelid at this anymore. My parents mentioned how at one time it was considered inappropriate to see a mannequin in a store window without clothing.

And about parenting…

I believe that a lot of trouble comes from parents making up for lost time with their kids. Typical parents dropped kids off at school at 8:00 in the morning and some only went home at 18:30. They were then showered with gifts even though they would hit and kick their own parents, and then given McDonalds for dinner every night to make them “happy”. The parents were no longer parents, but just slaves to their kids.

Just because a lot, maybe even a majority of people don’t mind, we need to think again about what our kids clothing is really saying. Society just follows along, good or bad, as parents it is our job to guide our kids and lead them. True love can be painful, but is a parents responsibility.

Liken it to pushing someone out of the way of a car. They’ll probably hurt when they fall down, but they’d be thankful that you did. Same for loving and disciplining kids.

Have I gone completely off topic? Well, I think your thought on this matter are very well though out.

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