The Horror of Katseye

Katseye to Only Fans: Girls learn how to pose, dance, hold their face in a very conformist way that is inspired by the pornography industry. The people around those girls who are imitating this standardised 'sexy' style then possibly start to see them differently. They are seen and treated sometimes as older than they are. They get the idea that this is a way to get validation and praise and be noticed. Looking/acting grown-up and alluring. Then, when they are a bit older they might start posting photos of themselves looking hot and sexy on Instagram and the like or doing sexy dances on TikTok. It's a fun thing to do with your friends. It is socially acceptable. By the time they get to eighteen the short hop over to Only Fans hardly seems like a big deal. Trail of crumbs.

Yes, Katseye videos are like many other videos. You are hard pushed to find girl singers who are not hypersexualised and pornified.

I am referring to 1 minute 13 seconds into the video for Pinky Up.

You can't beat a good old fashioned cliché as a way of shutting down discussion.

40 seconds into the video of Pinky Up
"I wanna get high before we're in the ground"
58 seconds into the video for Hootie Fruttie
She is putting a TicTac in her mouth in a way suggestive of 'taking a pill'

And I am most definitely not trying in any way to add to any awful comments directed to the girls in Katseye themselves. Geffen and Hybe Records have created this group and as I said have groomed the members of Katseye.

This product is sold to children of six, seven, eight, nine and ten. They are in BBC Tops of the Pops Magazine for 9 year olds. Who is defending that it is good for a seven year old girl to be learning these dance moves and expressions?

This band is marketed to children. That is the horror. That makes girls less safe in the world ... the culture is grooming children.

Again, I object to this music/ these videos being marketed to children. I object to girls being sold these conformist ideas about what it means to be a woman or to impersonate a woman. This is how you become a girl or a woman: You dress like this and you act like that and make sure your face holds the continual expression of 'I am ready for your sexual advances'. It is all about the male gaze.

I have given this a lot of thought over the last two years as the girls in my daughter's class get sucked into the world of Katseye. They come into school on World Book Day dressed as Katseye, they stick stickers in the Katseye Sis Soft is Strong book, they teach each other the dances in the playground and the teachers put on the music for them to dance to. The girls in school who are liking, listening and watching Katseye are, as I've said, ages 6,7,8,9, 10 and 11.
This is not a subject that I have plucked out of the internet. It is the day-to-day world of children. I think it is reasonable to be upset about children being choreographed by a porn industry aesthetic. Studying how to be pornified.

Because I've put some time into this I am able to confidently have short conversations with my children about the things like advertising that we cannot stop them coming across. It has taken some time and effort to get to that point of being able to have easy short chats about this with them.

It is horrific that we are allowing this predatory industry (the porn industry) into children's lives through the culture. This is what is forming them.

And the children I worry the most about are those who are in households and life situations where they are vulnerable. Unfortunately there are many of those children.

I think all the examples you have mentioned are bad for children. Sexualising children is bad. Katseye just happens to be the example of the moment.

I'm not saying that every child who comes across Katseye will end up on Only Fans but that it is presenting an idea of girlhood, womanhood that is a pollution of those things.

Many girls who were fans of Little Mix will now be on Only Fans because there are large numbers of girls on Only Fans. Lots of people think that is fine. I am not one of them.

I had a quick look at a Little Mix video. It has S&M garb and also bottoms out which has become very mainstream today. It is also mainstream for boys to expect anal sex from girls which is all from the porn industry. The porn industry also normalises violence: Jack Harlow's popular song, Lovin' on Me was a good example. "I'll choke you but I'm no killer baby". Strangulation which is common in porn is now in popular culture.

I think this is bad for children and young people.

Love a Katsu Curry. Our last attempt was crispy delicious chicken but sadly the sauce was far too sweet.

I'm talking about a form of 'cultural grooming'. Perhaps I should say that Katseye (the product) are teaching children how to objectify themselves.
This is the definition of objectification by the Australian Group, Collective Shout.

Sexual objectification occurs when a person (most often a woman) is treated as a body or series of body parts for others’ use and consumption, when her physical attributes and sexual capabilities are regarded as representative of her whole self or seen as determining her worth.
Objectifying representations of women include depictions of women without heads or faces, reduced to a single body part, portrayed as interchangeable, as a stand-in for an object or defined by their sexual availability.
When women are treated as sexual objects and their value is based on their physical attractiveness and sexuality to the exclusion of other characteristics, skills and attributes, this is harmful. It leads to sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination and men’s violence against women. It reinforces women’s status as second-class citizens, as existing for men’s sexual use and enjoyment, rather than fully human.
The harms of sexually objectifying portrayals of women are well established. A reviewof twenty years of research, from 109 publications containing 135 studies found:
“consistent evidence that…everyday exposure to this content is directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women…exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.” We have long argued the objectification of women should be regarded as a discriminatory practice, a form of sexual harassment threatening the health, well-being and status of women and girls.