BARELY LEGAL
Juror’s Prize, Second Place - “Branded”. Photowork 2021, Poughkeepsie, New York. USA. 2021
I have been struggling with the sexualization of the female body throughout my life. I have a very young-looking face, and I have never worn makeup. When I was a child, I desperately wanted to appear older. Now that I am older, I am instead often mistaken as being a minor. Complaints about this go unheard by women older than me who insist that it is a good thing. “You won’t be complaining when you’re 40 and look 20.” I am being told to hold on to all facets of my youth. But how am I supposed to do that when all of my youth was spent being desperate to look older? Where does that leave me?
With this project, I aim to get to the root of that issue and explore why the transitional periods between ages are becoming increasingly blurred and ambiguous for women and girls. I have deemed the culprit to be what I refer to as "pedophilic capitalism," which is a system of mass media (advertisements, music videos, film and TV), social media, and pornography that work in a cycle between each other to increasingly normalize the sexualization of young girls and the simultaneous aging-down of older women. The increase of "barely legal" style porn, AKA the genre where 18-year olds are dressed and propped like children to be "de-flowered" by an adult, has obvious parallels to famous celebrities and role-models such as Britney Spears and the Kardashians, which influence children to become sexual at increasingly younger ages. At the same time, it is continuously taboo to age as a woman, and the constant marketing of Botox and anti-aging creams are evidence of such. There are real consequences for this normalization, such as eating disorders, depression and anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and unhealthy sexual habits. I aim to expose this problem that has flown under the radar while being glaringly in front of us for far too long.