Paedo Media and Accepted Norms

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I’ve come across this old article about Charlotte Church online today and it’s truly disgusting. 🤢

It got me looking into similar articles of the 90s and Noughties and I just can’t believe how we all went along with it and how acceptable it was.

It sent me down an even further rabbit hole, think Brooke Shields posing naked for a magazine at 10! And naked in the films Pretty Baby aged 12 & Blue Lagoon at 14!

AIBU to be shocked at how women went along with this blatant paedophilia for so long?

It's pretty grim isn't it?
Not sure that we went along with it - more like resigned acceptance, I think.
We should call it out every time we see something unacceptable.

Just grim! As a young teen in the 80s I was really shocked & confused at the Mandy Smith/Bill Wyman ‘romance’. The press at the time referring to Mandy & her sister as ‘wild child’ etc. Page 3 girls were often only 16 or 17 too. The culture was awful And the young girls were always to blame for leading men on rather than the men being to blame for being creepy perverts etc.
As a PP said it was resigned acceptance more than anything. Much easier now we social media for people to call it out. As a 14 yr old what could I do? Write a letter to a tabloid that would never be printed? I don’t remember if any famous people commented on such things as they do now either.

I think you’re probably right, though there must have been some people who made waves as things that were acceptable then have now become unacceptable. Gradually.

In the 1970s it was ok to film a naked 12 year old girl, that wouldn’t have happened in a 90s movie. In the same way the article about Charlotte Church would never be published today.

I’m just so surprised this paedophilic behaviour went unchecked and unpunished until very recently. No wonder skeletons are coming out of closets off the back of Russell Brand.

I’m not blaming older generations, because we are all products of our environment but why has it taken so long?!

I’m guilty of playing into/accepting this myself, being a 90s teen who had men in their 30s showing interest, which I entertained, thinking I was grown up.

Sam Fox was 16 posing nude in newspapers in the 80s. I remember the Charlotte Chirch countdown too. Its very strange how society accepted these things back then. Nobody really cared about things that wouldnt be tolerated today. All we can do it learn and do better moving forward.

Ugh, yes i remember talking about the bill wyman wedding as teenagers, we all agreed it was disgusting and wrong. I think he even went on Wogan with his teenaged wife.. I still feel sick when i see bill wyman turn up in the press 🤢

I think an adult tried to explain to me that celebrity kids grow up quicker or are more "worldly" or something, due to the lifestyle, but then he thought about what he was saying and agreed it was wrong.

Lots of us didn’t accept it really.
i remember feeling disgusted at the Charlotte Church thing- poor her.
And the way that the Playboy bunny was marketed to kids for a while. There was bedding and pencil cases with the logo on.
But- what could we do?
I’m not sure how, pre internet, I would have had much of a voice.

Not defending it but young people 'adulted' much earlier back then than nowadays. Today being 19 seems deemed "a child" depending on circumstances.

Is the mobilisation of women connecting on these issues an unexpected upside of social media? Maybe that’s why creepy men have finally become unacceptable?

I image there were countless women disgusted by these exploitative articles prior to social media but who did they have to share that opinion with other than close friends. Who would have listened to a few pockets of disgruntled women?

I’ve inadvertently answered my own question!

Who were the newspaper owners and editors who printed these articles? Who were the ‘journalists’ that wrote them?

100% this.

You were also as old as you looked too.

Many of my 15 year old friends with boyfriends in their 20s+

It wasn't that weird, plus we all had a shitload of internalized mysogyny.

I'd never let my kids do, act or behave how me and my friends did (if I can help it). We were definitely teen adults (although of course highly vulnerable).

It’s only in more recent decades that many things that were very normal have become unacceptable & criticised as paedophilia/ exploitation etc.

I was horrified to realise my maternal great grandparents married in early 1910s when she was 18 & he was 30. GGF was the brother of GGMs SM and had moved in with GGM family. Obviously I don’t know the details from the 1910s but looking at it from a 2020s viewpoint it’s really dodgy. But it was common then & nothing remarkable. Many novels of the 1800s etc have teenage heroines marrying much older men.

I think as society ‘progresses’ (for want of a better word) we gain knowledge & understanding that these things ( sexualising young girls, adult men having relationships with teenagers etc) are wrong. But it’s been a gradual process which is sadly taking far too long. And it also calls for women to take the lead in changing the culture in a world where men still make the rules.

Mandy Smith is a bit before my time, I only learned about who she was via mumsnet but I cannot believe how Bill Wyman was able to get away with that- she was a child. Her mother seemed to facilitate this as well!

Its a telling thing that so many ‘celebrity kids’ have died young or have severe MH issues reportedly due to being sexually abused in that environment. I found Michelle Tractenberg’s death was really sad. She was around my age and reportedly wasn’t allowed to be alone on set with Joss Whedon. These ‘celebrity kids’ were treated like and expected to act like adults but of course they were not.

For some reason it really makes me uncomfortable how Harper Beckham is portrayed in the media. Shes still only 15, but seems to be ‘adultified’ with articles discussing her clothing, hair etc. I don’t know if its the Beckhams that encourage the fancy grown up ‘slip’ dresses or the media portrayal but I just think shes 15, does she really need all this exposure?

‘Who would have listened to a few pockets of disgruntled women?’
Exactly! They would have been dismissed as ugly/old/jealous/ lesbian man haters etc!

In the early seventies the school leaving age was 15 so youngsters were mingling with adults more.

Agreed. A lack of modern medicine meant that life expectancy was lower and marrying younger was normal. Having a baby at 18 when you might not see 50 (or even make it through childbirth) made sense.

Girls in particular were adultified, and also trained to be compliant. As long as everyone behaved in a polite, no fuss way, everything was acceptable. Age gap relationships were the norm, because ‘girls mature more quickly than boys’.

Being attractive in manners as well as appearance was very important for girls, and we were supposed to be simultaneously attractive and not attract men. My mother was very proud of me.

When I was groomed, my mother called me a Lolita. At least, she said everyone else would call me a lolita.

We were supposedly enormously powerful, and men unable to resist us, yet I felt totally powerless and unable to say no.

Doesn't seem that long ago vests and t shirts for girls emblazoned with 'Porn Star' were readily available and being bought by parents

Fairy tale wedding apparently

https://www.crazyaboutmagazines.com/ourshop/prod178852-Hello-magazine-Bill-Wyman-and-Mandy-Smith-wedding-cover-17-June-1989-Issue-56.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Smith

Wymans son had a relationship with her mother!!

Yup, they married too 🤢 all the levels of wrong

In 1970 the average age of a woman at marriage was 21! It's unfathomable how different things were back then.

Mummy and daddy issues in a nutshell.

We think GGM was pregnant with a baby who died when they married too. No doubt she would have been the one who was blamed for that shameful occurrence not the 30 year old man who got her pregnant.

The tabloids were awful for this.

Daily Star