Not Forever wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 1:36 am
Maybe I'm the dumb one, but I just can't see the sexualization in those images—neither of the adult nor, even less so, of the child. Is having bare knees considered sexualization now? Have we gone back to a time when showing ankles is considered pornography?
Are they getting scandalized because the creator of this ad understands the concept of 'growth'?
Do these people realize that prostitutes were all once children?
It seemed to me that the adult is being sexualized and the claim is that milk is responsible for her blossoming into an attractive woman (so the adult is being presented as more attractive than the child). If anything, it's almost 'pedophobic' in taking for granted that everyone is a teleiophile.
I could probably mention this somewhere else but for a long time I took for granted that societal attitudes about pedophiles and pedosexuality would eventually evolve (I still have some hope in that regard even though I doubt much will change in the lives of Gen Z people) but one thing that complicates my assumption of inevitable progress is that the stigma seems to have worsened over the decades. This is a really minor nothing point and has nothing to do with pedophilia (or 'hebephilia') although it's related to the age gap stigma but I was thinking about Star Wars yesterday (I kept thinking about how Solo calls Luke 'kid' but wants to date Leia who's the same age as him); from what I've just quickly searched Han Solo is apparently 32 in A New Hope and Luke/Leia are 19 (I assumed Han Solo was in his 30s, maybe even late 30s, and even though his age might not have been clear when the trilogy first came out, before the S.W universe was really expanded on, Luke is clearly college-aged because he was talking about wanting to go off with his friend instead of staying on the farm which I thought was supposed to parallel older teenagers in our world leaving the nest and going off to college. Harrison Ford himself was apparently 34 when A New Hope came out and Carry Fisher was 19 during filming) and the age gap relationship between Solo and Leia is a non-issue (people pay more attention to Leia kissing Luke not knowing he was her brother). I can think of more examples (of age gap flirting or sexual tension that would 'shock' modern sensibilities) in older movies, even though there was a taboo it doesn't seem to have been as strong.
Elvis apparently started dating his 14-year-old cousin when he was 24 (I've found mixed info. about this online, as to whether or not the relationship was romantic from the start, but he eventually married her so I don't think it's unlikely). Jerry Lee Lewis apparently married his 13-year-old cousin in 1957 which was considered very scandalous but I'm assuming legal. In Fright Night the vampire looks as if he's in his 30s and he seduces a teenage girl. In Seven Minutes In Heaven one of the characters, a 15-year-old girl, tries to seduce a man who looks as though he's in his 30s who lets her stay at his apartment, he turns her down for actual sex (he still talks with her about it) but caves when she asks him for a kiss. I thought he was going to kiss her on the forehead, no, he kisses her on the mouth. I'm assuming David Bowie was around 39 in Labyrinth and Jennifer Connely was apparently 14 during actual filming, even though that might have been rooted more in a teen girl has harmless crush on a rockstar/older male fantasy than a serious two-way interest (if that makes any sense at all, some people interpret the whole movie as a fantasy which I don't like, even a dream would be better than that), I don't know, in the novelization he kisses her and I remember it being presented as disturbing and exploitative.
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