How do you explain smutty pictures of your children's favourite characters?

[Guyliner]

Dd is 8 and into superheroes. When she googles her favourite female characters she's often confronted with fan art from men way way old enough to know better. How do you explain the hyper sexualisation to your children when you see it to children or do you ignore it?

I've started saying it's from men who think women should look a certain way all the time but hope I'm not making it worse by being honest. She's not stupid and that there is a marked difference between the female and male character representation is obvious.

I once took her to a comic book store when she was 5 and the only 2 posters of Wonder Woman and Super Girl were of them engaged in sex acts.

So am adult character that’s always been sexualised has to be toned down because you can’t sort your internet search settings?

You have a responsibility to be aware of what’s in and around the programmes your kids are watching and I honestly don’t know how you can have a child into Harley Quinn and not know Suicide Squad and not have seen the highly sexualised images.

*an

Before you jump on me for spag even though I’ve explained disability.

I miss being able to discuss feminism on the FWR board. They used to complain it was too academic. Now you don't even have to read what the OP. ah well. I'm going to get some work done. Enjoy.

My daughter is the same age and if she ever asks for colouring pages or whatever, I usually tell her we will look later. I will then have a look at the pages and make sure they are appropriate and then call her over to look together. If by some chance I did see a pic like the ones you described and she asked me, I would probably just say 'that's a silly one' and if she asked me why it was drawn like that I would just say people like drawing in different styles.

Try changing your search engine- our school recommended kidrex should be less of that kind of thing via a children’s search engine. (I hope.😬) I think the whole comic book thing is a very male driven area. We’ve been given posters for the kids before with comic book characters and I binned them. Even the ones for kids were way out of line in the pic of the women. I don’t want my sons being exposed to that every day in their own room. We don’t let them use youtube or kids tube either.

I really don't understand this thread.

Whether OP Googles images with her child or not, whether she lets her watch HQ or not, whether she's with her at all times or not, her daughter is going to see sexualised images of women (and indeed real life women).

All she wanted advice on was what to to say to her daughter and instead everyone's focused on the couple of very specific examples she's given.

This could have been a really useful thread but it's been totally derailed by people missing the bloody point.

Because in this instance it's completely avoidable

I think the Pp who said a lot of the sexy fan art is drawn by women has a good point.

The op hasn’t done even basic googling herself to get aware of the background of the character.

She thinks she should be able to let an 8 year old free range round the internet to get colouring pictures.

Why does feminism mean we don’t have to take responsibility for our own kids and their internet safety?

Whether OP Googles images with her child or not, whether she lets her watch HQ or not, whether she's with her at all times or not, her daughter is going to see sexualised images of women (and indeed real life women).

Exactly.

My DD (similar age) has remarked on how female music performers’ bodies are more visible than their male counterparts.

I don’t know what explanation to offer either.

The programme that your dd watches is an adult programme that is toned down for kids to get them hooked on DC Comics at a younger age. The sexy Harley Quinn stuff predates the kids programme. The character was in an abusive and violent relationship with The Joker so not a kid-friendly character at all.

Even using keywords like "dc kids", I'd expect Google images to throw up pics of the standard sexy HQ. (Sorry!)

Regardless of this case I think that sadly parents need to be aware that there are people that enjoy sexualising innocent things and so extra caution is needed when using the internet.

I’m not sure why there needs to be pornographic images of Winnie the Pooh, or Disney princesses or My Little Pony but there is a lot of it out there. I think some people get an extra kick out of perverting something made for children.

To the posters that are asking why they've made her into a kids superhero...
The full DC superheroes kids is a show aimed at kids, they've used all the heroes including super girl, Wonder Woman and I think cat woman is in it too. I think it's quite similar to teen titans. The Harley depicted in that show shows her as a young school girl and not as the original Harley, just like the other characters.

Original Harley is everything those searches are bringing up. She was and is foremost an older teen/adult "hero" she's batshit crazy.

If OP didn't know any of the origins of Harley before hand then I can see where the shock has come from. It's not your fault OP chalk it up to experience. I'm sure others have experienced a fail on google search before

All male superhero characters are unrealistically muscular, could promote negative body image in young males?

Well as a pp said Harley quinn is in a weird dysfunctional relationship with the joker she really isn't a super hero

We have our kids watch the music videos for blurred lines and Anaconda and have them discuss what they see and what messages it sends out. Like I mentioned earlier though this is with 15/16 year olds. How we broach this with much younger children is really hard. How can you discuss sexualisation without discussing sex and desire?

Sorry - trying to rerail OP’s thread after I misunderstood and went on a tangent.

@Passmethecrisps NO worries, you didn't really miss the point and your posts have all been interesting and informative. Certain other posters decided to do the usual thing though of deliberately missing the point and all other posts where I clarified the point. But I'm sure it's all an honest miscommunication

I think this thread is probably a lost cause now :)

You need to tighten the criteria on your search engine. Maybe switch to DuckDuckGo and set the search criteria at the top of the page as ‘uk’ and ‘strict’

@BackOnceAgainWithABurnerEmail Thanks, that's been established but wasn't really the point of the thread!

Passmethecrisps

See

You are sounding a bit silly now OP.

Just as an aside to Bankofenglandfiver because of this:

By the way. I’m disabled. I have arthritis in my hands. And dyslexia. I’m typing - slowly - on an old iPad with a cracked screen, and the pictures didn’t load until just there now after I posted my last comment.

Have you ever tried using the microphone function? It's quicker, and doesn't require typing anything. Although, you must check before you post, as it can create some interesting interpretations.

You can tell it to do punctuation too.

Can't they have a non related horse fetish?

?

What is wrong with humans?

Harley was created for Batman the Animated Series - a kid’s show. She wore a jester costume.