How do you know when a teenage girl singer is now all grown up?

What are the tell-tale signs that she has left  the foolishness of her immature girly days behind and become a real woman?

Her coming-of-age is easy to detect.

She will launch a sexy new look and a song that tells us how hot she is. She will tell us she is unique and different and breaking all the rules. In reality, she’s following the same script as others before her. It’s part of the music machine. Strip off, writhe around on the floor, do a photo shoot for a lad’s mag and tell the world: I’m a big girl now.

The music clip that goes with her metamorphosis usually involves one or all of the following elements:

Sex, poles, fetishised clothing, lingerie, some black leather and killer heels for good measure, lots of groping and grinding against men – and women of course, because ‘bi’ is just so in right now  and our big girl doesn’t want to be locked in to any rigid form of sexuality. There will be intimations of group sex, including simulated oral and anal acts and her newly outed breasts (proving she’s a woman) will be groped.

Ah, our little girl is all grown up.

Gabriella Cilmi, 18, cast off her unique, authentic style for sexualised coming-of-age same old same old with her clip for ‘On a Mission’.  She informs us: “I’m on fire, there’s no competition” and that she’s a woman and nothing can stop her, in various breast accentuating moves.

Nikki Webster, 22, tried desperately to cast off her pig tails and Olympic swings with a group grope fest  for ‘Devilicious’, a video so cringe worthy I just can’t bring myself to host it here. This one image is bad enough  [confession: artistic licence taken with speech bubble].

It all feels to try-hard: truckloads of makeup, bleach blond hair extensions and hotpants. No matter how hard she tries, she still looks like the under-age kid who snuck out the window to go the rave party with her big brother and his mates. I know she wants to grow up, but it is unbearable hearing her tell us she “tastes so delicious”.

Seventeen year old Disney star Miley Cyrus has gotten into the act now. Of course she did that photo shoot with the post-coital feel,  flirted with poles at the Teen Choice Awards last August . But now, in a $US25,000 silver scale corset, she’s taking her new sexual personal to a new level with her latest video clip for her new song ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ released Tuesday on the E! Network.

According to Celebrity Mania:

On her new sexy side of her in “Can’t Be Tamed” music video, Miley Cyrus said that it isn’t about the new her but more about putting a story to the track. “The video isn’t about being sexy or about who can wear less clothes. It’s about explaining the song and living the lyrics… I don’t want to be in a cage. I want to be free and do what I love,” she explained…

Miley further shared about what she expects from the clip, stating “The reason I loved doing this video is because I wanted it to be something different for a female artist.” She added, “It’s not a new Miley; it’s just a new part of me.”

I’m not sure how many female artists she’s seen lately, but if this is “different” I wonder how she defines “same”?

The lyrics to the Britneyesque song are so try-hard they are embarrassing. And the girl-in-cage-needs-to-get-out-and-be-herself-theme – this is original?

For those who don’t know me, I can get a bit crazy
Have to get my way, 24 hours a day
‘Cause I’m hot like that
Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention
Like I’m under inspection, I always get the 10s
‘Cause I’m built like that—

(Chorus)
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be saved
I can’t be blamed, I can’t, can’t
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be changed
I can’t be saved, I can’t be (can’t be)
I can’t be tamed—

I wanna fly I wanna drive I wanna go
I wanna be a part of something I don’t know
And if you try to hold me back I might explode
Baby by now you should know

The real tragedy is that this conformity to the dictates and predetermined scripts of the music industry are presented as pushing boundaries and original. It seems girls who start out with a unique style are put in a giant homogenising machine where they come out looking and acting and singing the same. While making out they are just so different  and empowered.

As one 14-year-old I know (I can neither confirm nor deny if this child belongs to me) said “as Miley gets older and more into the celeb life, she gets faker”.

Speaking of  the death of originality,  what’s with the Gagafication of  Christina Aguilera?

My friend Tania has helpfully provided this post modern literary criticism:

I actually believe this is an entirely new form of media, transcending cultural, psychosocial and stereotypical sexual boundaries, invoking the spirit of post-feminist icons, subverting the ironic post-modernist dilemma of the liberated female versus the subjugated, boudoir-bound male and poking fun at the latent homo-erotic tendencies of nanny-state do-gooder fundamentalist agitators…

Yawn.

Hot cup of Milo, anyone?

Today, another example of  how rape is not named as rape.

The Australian reports today on a 51-year-old Hobart man found  guilty of  prostituting a 12-year-old girl. Men were charged $100 for half an hour, with $50 extra for ‘no condom’. One man used her to make pornography. The report states that 120 men were alleged  “to have had sex with the girl…” between August and September last year.

“Had sex with”?

No, they didn’t have sex with her. They raped her. One hundred and twenty men raped a child for six weeks. One perpetrator used her to make child sexual assault images. Now she has sexually transmitted diseases. And unspeakable trauma.

I’ve written about this before. It’s time to update the language and name these acts for what they are.

Caroline Overington writes in The Australian today that the Family Court has ordered two girls aged 8 and 10 to have sleepovers with their child sex offender father. As long as there’s a lock on the bedroom door. This man has filmed child pornography and created links to child porn sites. He also previously invited one of his daughters into his bed.  In my opinion, this man has forfeited any right to have his daughters stay over. The 10-year-old sobbed that she didn’t want to stay with him. Too bad. And what about during the day, after the girls have unlocked the door that kept their father out of their room the night before? The Judge said the risk of sexual abuse was “diminished when they are awake and alert, and when the children are together”. So these very young girls have to be alert and vigilant about possible attack, and look out for each other? Who could possibly think that is a good environment for children?  This ruling must be re-examined.

On the weekend – on the eve of International Women’s Day – I wrote about a Facebook slut page, arguing it enabled cyber bullying, stalking and harassment. On the page, photos were posted of girls and women who were labelled ’sluts’. One was 10-years-old. Another had been bashed (she deserved it, she was a slut). A later image showed a woman bound, with her head decapitated. Many were just smiling young women at home or having fun with girlfriends. And so it went on, image after image of girls and women branded with this virtual scarlet letter.

The piece got a run in On Line Opinion today.

It appears that Facebook has responded to criticism. The site has been removed. Thanks to all who reported it.

 Of course, that’s not the last of the bullies. Dannielle Miller from Enlighten Education blogged on bullying and social networking sites this week. You can read her piece here. 

 My friend Anita had her own experience with on-line abusers this week, who demanded their entitlement to child pornography. Anita set up a Facebook site to find 3 billion people willing to add their voice to a global campaign against child porn. The site was inundated with comments by men extolling the pleasures of child rape and posting links to child porn. (She has removed them). Please support Anita’s efforts against the production of and demand for child sexual assault images and sign up.  

Below is a comment on my original blog  by Merryn Smith. It’s so good I wanted to give it more prominence.  

“I think the problem with social networking sites and a great deal of internet is that people assume that it merely reflects socio/cultural reality. Actually it produces reality, as does all discourse. So it’s easy to reduce the meanings generated by groups like these as mere ‘words’. Hence men (and a small proportion of young naive girls) always call forth the freedom of speech argument to conceal one of purposes of this type of ‘othering’ discourse. Women are the largest group that are targeted as the ‘other’ inhuman ‘thing’ through this type of ancient discursive act. But of course ethnic groups and the working classes are also kept in place through these ‘othering’ discourses. This is of course about power. The power to dehumanise comes hand in hand with physical acts of violence. But we know that young women suffer terribly high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in our cultures. Yes these groups reflect that, but they also produce a cultural climate and language that condones, encourages and applauds the dehumanisation of half of the worlds population. Of course these groups hide behind notions of freedom and the separation of bodily acts and psychological acts, or body and mind, body and speech. But of course these young men and boys (mostly) are passing through their right of passage-their right to dehumanise woman and girls. This is how men bond. It is through the ‘othering’ process that makes them feel that they belong. We need to fight this by creating spaces for young women where they can ‘go’, real and virtual, where they are not used as a symbol of male belonging and bonding. We need to create spaces where woman and girls (especially girls) can create their own embodied and disembodied world realities. But it aint easy. Happy Women’s Day…”

 

A young woman known as Amy is seeking payment from consumers of pornographic videos and pictures that depicted her abuse.  >more

I hope she -and others like her – extract millions from the men who fuel the demand for  the creation of child sexual assault images.