Child porn or edgy art?

Tracy~

I think that parents shouldn't force their kids to pose nude, whether someone labels it as "art" or "pornography". Unless you're a consenting adult, it's exploitation either way.

~Ando

I know porn....and i have seen art


this is art....people need to make sure that they do not confuse the two

for years the different artists have used children in various states of dress and it was beautiful and not pornographic in the least.... i think that now this is hot topic because of the awareness of child porn in mainstream media.....my question is how far will this line keep blurring?

The Calvin Klein ads may be intended to arouse consumerism, but they are fairly explicit. Those ads and others like them use the sex appeal of the models to sell products. So, while photos of the young woman in the NYT are not pornographic, if pornography is defined as that which is specifically designed to arouse and satisfy sexual desire- they are still quite provocative.

what would scooby do!

Ando-
I agree with your points, but just a little fact-checking should be done:
The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in any INDUSTRIALIZED nation.

http://www.teenpregnancy.org/whycare/sowhat.asp

There are plenty of third world countries where parents marry their children off at a young age, or who are raped and they are condemned for life because of it.
Other than that, good point!

who really cares about the p.c. answer here. it seems pretty plain to me. to portray children in an explicit poses in states of undress engenders certain ideas as norm. such as other CHILDREN thinking it is cool to dress or undress in this manner. or act in these adult ways. thereby beginning a general decline in society mores at a young age. i hate to sound too conservative for you my liberal family but children should remain as innocent as we can allow as a society, and using highbrow bs excuses like art is pure crap. stealing childrens innocence for nothing more than commercialized industrialized pornart is irresponsible. i could go off even more and start dragging horror movie commercials and how i feel they violate my children and my rights but i digress as usual... lol

you know, i feel as if our society has no bondries to say the least. if that were my child on a magazine or whatever, i'd feel that it would be my responsibility to stop this epidemic of telling the world that we as americans view nudity, especially of a child, as okay. though it may appeal to some as art, a child must be protected by the peering eyes of the public, having a half nude child is not acceptible in public at all.

Lunalovegoodlvr-

Sorry about that misinformation. You are right- the article does specify that the US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the Western world, not the entire world. I have changed my comment accordingly. Thank you for pointing this out.

-Ando

Oh theres nothing wrong with sounding conservative at all.
Yay rightys!!!
Good points guys. Keep it up.


P.S. I'm being totally serious.

Perhaps in bad taste, but hard to say what's porn. If you're a kiddie fiddler, you're going to get off on a little girl's dress flying up in the wind.

And this has nothing to do with teen pregnancy, please. That notable fact of shame is because of poor sex ed that often comes too late in a teen's life anyway.

I think it was in very poor taste when New York Times ran those photos. This country already has enough problems with child molesters and child pornographers. They are sick people and it is disheartening for a main stream publication such as the NY Times to give any legitimacy to minors posing nude. I bet these artists didn't think about all the families who have to deal with the pain of their kids surviving those kinds of abuse. The Michael Devlin case came to mind. He abducted a 12 year old boy and abused him for 4 years, forcing him to make child porn videos. It makes me sick that there are artists who think that there are elements in child porn that is "edgy". I will stop reading the New York Times now.

As for Calvin Klein ads in the past, they didn't use minors. Enough said.

I've seen how many pictures of naked babies in the past? I dont think thats dirty. In fact, the only emotion it elicits in me is my disliking of other peoples children. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put the internet to its best use, which I'm sure we all know IS porn.

I personally believe that there is a BIG difference between artistic nudity and pornography. The realm of art is one that accentuates beauty in what ever way shape or form the artist see the beauty. Pornography is a realm where the pleasures of the flesh are exploited, women made to look like objects so on and so forth. I also feel it is blasphemy towards art to declare that a naked woman or man (regardless to her/his age) expressing the beauty of their nature is pornographic. In my opinion the line between Art and Pornography is crossed when the image or film is created with the intention of exploiting or demonstrating sexual activity.
Can any one think of one human being who is born with cloths on?

I totally agree with you Noblewiseone.

If you look at the picture I posted with my response, the one who looks beautiful is Olive. She is dressed in such a way to make her look pure in the midst of those "she-devils".

I don't object to nudity because as you say, we are all born without any clothes. It's not the nudity that makes people into pedophiles or to become sexually active and promiscuous, it is the repressive sexual forces that do that. Whenever you shame someone about their nudity or their bodies it creates psychological trauma; that is expressed in abnormal behaviors.

Whenever you prohibit something that is natural and good; you pervert it and turn it into something to be exploited.

It is always risky to do so. But if you work in sales dept you must find a way to push your merchanise. Nude kids are the way to go - somebody figured. "You can always say it is art". Not very interesting story anyway.

The pictures of that girl, who is two years older than me, does not look like it is for consumerism.

In Europe this would not have even raised and eyebrow. But in the USA we have been taught to be ashamed of our bodies and hide them.

I agree with your position. That consumerism and achieving the unattainable is the goal. Didn't Brooke Shields go through this? How many years ago was THAT?

Damn I'm really late on this aren't I.. ok uhh I think that if the parents sign off on it, and the girl wants to do it so be it whatever, do what pleases you. But I don't think that the girl parents force her into doing things like this, or she's being threatned in either way so carry on little child lol, and it looks more like art don't you think =/

well its how a person looks at it! well yes she is topless but its not so that it is pornographic. there are magazines that show more skin than that. and yes she is young but if she enjoys being a model than she has all the right to do it. in personal opinon it looks more like art. now of age "sex" and "nudity" shouldnt be such a hush hush thing! we see it at least once a day! we people say "sex sells" there is nothing wrong with it. yes this is a young girl but come on why should we critize that. art is art and porngraphy is porngraphy there is no fine line between that. you know what not to cross and the photographer and model didnt cross any line! people just need to grow up and understand the time and what looks good and not! so what i say is art not porn!

I think we all shouldn't care that much about stupid models in stupid fashion magazines. Period.

I agree with jubal. Whether you think the pictures are pornographic or not, the fact of the matter is, a child has been exploited to make this art. I don't think "edgy" is the word I'd choose for a large commercial interest like New York Times. Vulturous is what I'd use.

Of course there is nothing wrong with nakedness. What 2 people do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business. Provided that it's not an adult with a minor. (sick!) What I object to is corporations selling under-aged nudity for commercial gain. It makes you wonder, besides edgy artists, who else are these pictures of naked minors being marketed to?

please let me clarify my position. nudity good.
child exploitation bad.
sexually provocative pictures utilizing minors as the model encourages and normalizes a type of social disease that should be faced in therapy not by the media as a sales gimmick.
to view an advertisement to sell a product as "art " is laughable. i have children. i can see the beauty of their perfect god given forms. but i would not post naked pictures of them in provocative poses for the world to enjoy, because that would be irresponsible, and would encourage pedophiles etc to feel it was ok and normal to sexually desire children, and that they didn't need counseling. that is exploitation and socially irresponsible.

phoenix_fire999 brings up an interesting point about who exactly are they marketing to, especially if the nudity itself isn't stimulating the sales within its purported target market. I think that is an interesting question that merits some discussion.

Child porn implies sexual acts performed by adults on little children, or little children in most explicit poses. At seventeen years of age, a young woman hardly qualifies as a child, and these photos are, at most, simply erotica.

I don't know how it can arouse sexual desire or consumerism. I'd never want to be as thin as that girl is...

the sexualization of children is okay as long as its suppose to make you want something, as long as that something isn't sex with a child.
So that girl was 17? a few more months and she could be making hardcore pornography with 75 year old men free for anyone to see as long as they have crossed that imaginary mile post.
I doubt that she was dragged kicking and screaming into that photo shoot.

Alright, I am pretty sure I'll get flak for this, but keep in mind that the comment is made in the spirit of sarcastic humor.

So what's the policy about either catholic priests or Micheal Jackson getting into this?

Love the shots. Love nyt for that. People who have a problem with this sex need to go to walmart or nascar. Models are skinny, often dumb and usually like coke. End of story.

I have, very unfortunately, been exposed to child porn in the course of an investigation I was doing for a previous job. This is nowhere even close to child porn. Was it sexualized, as they said on the pod? Yes, and guess what...most 17 year olds are pretty sexual. At least those I knew back when I was 17 were. Maybe kids are getting more innocent (yeah right).

As for being used, there's always the possibility of that, and that would be wrong. But it's also important to realize that she may have been totally ok with the photo shoot. It may have just been yet another day on set for her. Models often have to change clothes in less-than-private situations and in front of strangers because of time constraints or general logistics of a shoot, so the whole modesty factor may have gone out the window a long time ago for her.

I wonder if anyone has bothered to ask the model what she thinks? I'd love to hear what she has to say about the whole thing, because the bottom line is really whether it was damaging to her.

Begining with, I completely agree with the facts and moral issuses that are obviously revelent in your post. I think it is one's own "right of passage" to discover one's ideas of what they rationalize as right and wrong. I also belive this is a required understanding of persons' to achieve any compass of their own personal morality. BUT...art is art, good, bad, colorfull, animated, right, wrong, gross, cheap, expensive, neuvo riche, etc... The list of anothers judgment one an abstract image is what art is supposed to do. To be honest, I have the same disgust, but if I ever belived that response to an image was worth governing I would also have to believe that someone somewhere will constantly bound the idea of human expression. We have freedom of expression in this country, and I feel that politically correcting that freedom is unjust...regardless of any one's own taste, disgust, or plain ignorance. I feel that this has sparked a certain topic now because it is a real piece that was meant to do exactly that.

i missed the part at the beginning when originally watching this that said she was 17. i thought she was 12.
i still feel the same way but not as strongly. i would view her more as a consenting adult. but legaly that is not the case.i would think photos of this nature to be more along the lines of bad taste than a crime. i still feel they and there ilk contribute to social problems (like ads where adults are made to look like underage children in provocative poses) but probably no more or less immoral than strippers or centerfolds who happen to be "a few months to young" legally.