I'm not talking about queer people getting called groomers. I know why that's happening. I'm referring more to a more general fear of pedophilia instead of just repackaged homophobia.

I feel like I'm hearing about it like every other week. For instance, parent bloggers noticing that their engagement skyrockets when they post their kids eating hotdogs or in swimwear. Another example is an increasing trend of people on Pinterest creating walls and albums labelled "hot kids."

I know that elite freaks are all pedos, but is pedophilia an actually growing problem among regular people? It seems to me like when suburbanites freak out about any other thing like BLM or immigrants marching through and razing their communities. Or the crime freakout in the 70s/80s.

Am I being naive and we actually need to be on high alert?

  • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    yeah, once secondary sex characteristics you can do a lot with cameras, lighting, and basic makeup.

    maybe people would be less weird about it if we didn't have decades of airbrushed 14-16 year olds on fashion magazines and 28 year olds playing highschoolers on TV

    • grey_wolf_whenever [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I do think it's an issue that the main representation 18 year olds get in media is the hottest 26 year olds you've ever seen

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      this is exactly the kind of secondary issue getting twisted up about that's overboard. the reeds of culture and art critique does nothing to protect actual people, just massage the egos of people for having the 'correct' amount of puritan opinions about casting & content in high school movies

      real action for movies are stricter child labor laws & stronger unions. the systems that protect anyone on set are the ones that concretely protect children. i'm far more interested in the performers' comfort than interpretation of the final work

      protecting actual children in schools is about giving them dignity & authority, the capacity for someone to abuse power is a proportion to how much they have. teachers and administrations getting to enact their own tiny tyrannies on schools and classrooms is the environment that facilitates abuse, we don't need to be scrying into the minds of abusers and determining whether they were led into it by the casting of some adult in a movie (spoiler: they were not)