Balenciaga apologises for bondage bear advert involving child

Here is the very popular, "progressive" left wing channel The Young Turks completely minimising it and finding a way to blame the right for the hoo hah.

But from the other wing of the left, here's commentator/comedian Jimmy Dore, who formerly was involved with the Young Turks, struggling to find anything funny to say about it. (There's no love lost between him and them - he thinks they've abandoned any left-wing values and principles for some unaccountable reason).

Looking at the stats, TYT have more subscribers, but Dore gets more views - by a factor of two on that video. I guess TYT has been around longer, so has a pile of legacy subscribers no longer watching.

Brand Ambassador Kim Kardashian has spoken. Fuck me, doesn’t the woman have enough money? Surely she can just cut them loose. What is this wishy washy crap?

twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/1597017102665142272?s=61&t=6Ll6KxJ027nwNCXVBx6x_A

Thanks for the link to the Spiked article. The anger is palpable. As it should be.

It's the push to normalisation of the idea of sex with children.

Whoever from Balenciaga, and all down the line, signed off on this and the other dodgy campaigns - they either encouraged; or knew but did not argue. Or they honestly didn't see the problems with posing little girls with bondage bears.

Whichever; they are all just promoting child sex abuse. The word "paedophilia" doesn't cover it. It is child sex abuse.

"Paedo chic" is so descriptive of this. Back to 1970s 1980s PIE.

@MoirasSaggyBundles that quote "children play with child soldiers". I can't articulate clearly how much that false equivalency annoys me but it's NOT THE SAME THING.

It's good to see this article by Brendan O'Neill in Spiked

"Balenciaga and the rise of paedo chic"
"Adults need to stop dragging kids into their sexual fantasies"
Explains what the document in the photo is about:
" ... a printout of something to do with Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition, the 2002 US Supreme Court ruling that struck down a section of the Child Pornography Prevention Act and ruled that fake child porn is protected speech. Wow.

This needs an explanation, surely? It cannot be a coincidence...
In another way, though, it makes messed-up sense that no one in this fashion chain of command stopped to wonder if this might all be a bit strange. Because the sad fact is that paedo chic is everywhere right now. In a world saturated with images of kids in adult clothing, and when children bop along to pop and rap tunes that are sexually explicit, and when it is not uncommon to see kids petting men-as-pups at Pride marches or laughing along with drag queens in skimpy outfits, why would anyone bat an eyelid at a pic of a girl on a bed with a kinky bear?

Paedo chic is one of the most worrying trends of our time. We seem to be witnessing a surge in the paedophilic sensibility. ...

We’ve seen the rise of child drag queens. ..
There seems to have been an erasure of the boundary between adults and children, meaning kids are increasingly dragged – no pun intended – into worlds that were once for grown-ups....

Further afield, on the wackier outskirts of identity politics, sympathetic talk of ‘minor-attracted persons’ is becoming more and more widespread. ...

‘Destigmatising paedophilia’ is both a horrifying idea and one that makes sense in this chaotic era of moral cowardice and non-judgementalism. ... Don’t question anyone’s gender identity, we’re instructed, even when it’s a palpably mad gender identity...
www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/27/balenciaga-and-the-rise-of-paedo-chic/

The US has polarized now between "groomers" and the Right.

Ignoring that, these photographs are repulsive; they are predatory. They play with that power adults have over children as a means of making money.

It makes you wonder who buys their products. Luxury as moral degeneration must be quite lucrative for them to even designed these bears and considered the setting.

There's pretty much nothing on MSM other than a very neutral reporting of the BDSM bear/court document. Not really any coverage of all the other weird stuff. It is being discussed a lot by alternative media like the Daily Wire and by a lot of YT commentators.

Here is the very popular, "progressive" left wing channel The Young Turks completely minimising it and finding a way to blame the right for the hoo hah.

Where is the outrage over this beyond Mumsnet? I despair.

Did anyone spot the strategically placed magazine ?

I think these sort of shoots have a director, so the photographer wouldn't be able to dictate how the kids look. But yes, if. he had any decency and guts, he'd have refused to take part in it.

Eve if you're not holding the photographer entirely responsible (and I'm not), he could have said he was uncomfortable. He would have had to tell the children to look sad. Or scared. Or whatever expression they're supposed to be making.

He may be being used as a scapegoat but he isn't a blameless bystander either.

It's not just the bears, it's the rest of it. Wine? Open windows, teeny leather boots, dog leads, blindfolds, straps, gaffer tape??

You would have to be blind.

Social services spend a lot of time and money intervening to protect children from situations their parents were perfectly happy to put them in, and saw nothing wrong with. Parenting classes possibly needed there.

Happy. Not badly.

I'm also guilty of this "the children are badly parenting" sometimes .

These photos are absolutely unsettling and grim. What kind of parent can't see that?

A really worrying one.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11468557/amp/Father-British-child-model-posed-bondage-themed-Balenciaga-campaign-defends-photoshoot.html British father of one of the child models doesn't see a problem with it. Sick

The Bowerbird.

Ok, I completely misread that! Poor guy. I thought he was saying we should be equally able to access guns and porn, and was displaying his gun collection as evidence!

He likes displays of stuff, doesn't he? There's a bird he reminds me of, that displays its treasures for potential mates to inspect.

Thought that was a badly-worded comment in favour of increased gun restrictions - that Americans don’t want to sexualise children bit are quite happy for them to shoot each other.

Has to be taken in the context of right-wing American conservative pearl clutching about teenage girls’ virginity and clothing (daddy promise rings, girls being sent home from the prom for showing their shoulders), and complete equanimity about 15 year old boys having unfettered access to a garage full of assault rifles. I agree it makes no sense in the UK, but we don’t really have either problem here.

The photographer doesn't walk away from this blameless though, given that tweet about porn and guns. I can't remember the wording but seemed to suggest restricting either was unreasonable.

The supreme court ruling is about "virtual" (I assume cgi or similar) being protected first amendment rights.

So clearly not accidental.

No three year old should have had any frame of reference to understand that any of the props in that shoot and the disgusting bears were nefarious. The adults in the room should have been making the decision for them that their participation was inappropriate because of the surroundings they were placed in. This was a complete failure in parenting.

Seems like some parents need reminding that the "I'm alright, Jack" attitude can only be taken by competent adults...
Children don't always know when things are borderline unacceptable. You have to teach it to them...