Mermaids - sinister photo

[IrishMumInLondon2020]

What are they trying to do here with the photo of ‘Jennie’ and her friend on the bed? Makes me extremely uncomfortable.
mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/mermaids-tales/

It looks as if that picture could be a staged meet and greet at an event.

I agree, but wtf is a meet and greet event doing using a cute and fluffy child styled adult's bedroom?

It's almost worse and there's so much intended infantilising fetish. Purposefully and publicly.

Not only celebrate art but you will probably get deleted for using the G word here

There is a whole thing around drag - I’ve seen social media with little boys wanting to be a queen (not a woman but a sassy, queen). Very odd.

That’s truly chilling. And when you have Virgin Media using ‘Cheryl Hole’ in Twitter adverts (may also be elsewhere but I’ve only seen it on Twitter) it’s part of a normalisation of drag in our society so this this step with Jennie doesn’t seem so glaring.
But why is it the case that major brands can parody women, using names that are offensive terms about the female anatomy?
It’s all shocking.
Starbucks and Virgin Media. When it’s all this insidious how on earth are people going to fight for safe guarding?

@WarriorN

It looks as if that picture could be a staged meet and greet at an event.

I agree, but wtf is a meet and greet event doing using a cute and fluffy child styled adult's bedroom?

It's almost worse and there's so much intended infantilising fetish. Purposefully and publicly.

That's true, and a whole other matter. I don't understand these people who let their pre-teen kids watch Drag Race, never mind go along to drag events.

@BraveBananaBadge

It looks as if that picture could be a staged meet and greet at an event.

The boy who chose his new name by social media poll was a depressing insight into what that could all be about.

It is a meet and greet, the guy she’s sitting with is a drag performer ‘Scaredy Kat’ (he was on season 1 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK) and the ‘bedroom’ is a stage set up not an actual bedroom.

That's from February 2020. It was when Mermaids and Starbucks announced a cross-promotion funding/branding campaign:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008871/Starbucks-rapped-100-000-controversial-transgender-charity.html

Still better than the photo of the ‘drag child’ meeting and greeting with a naked Queen. Yes buck naked.

It's not normal for a charity to promote their sponsors like this, using the children to advertise their sponsor so overtly.
I can understand other charities such as Save the Children use children in the advertising for themselves, but I can't remember any examples of a charity using their clients to advertise a third party for their own financial gain.

Generally they use child models.

A discussion from the time:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3821776-mermaids-sponsored-by-starbucks

Those children are being exploited. Not just that one. All of them.

When they grow up - what then? The parents need a kick up the bum for exposing them.

Why are trans kids seemingly not entitled to the same levels of safeguarding as other children. Its horrifying

This. They deserve the same safeguarding as everyone else, and it feels like they are not getting it because they are trans.

So Jennie is a natal boy who presents as a girl but then dresses up as - I don’t know what? - A drag queen? A baby doll caricature? Both of which seem to have unpleasant sexual or adult undertones. And Jennie is 11. 11 years old.

Just vile. I really can’t understand how it’s come to this

Social media. ‘Culture’ created on tik tok by teens in mums garage.

Thought so @Justwalkyourfineassoutthedoor, couldn't remember the name.

@adviceseekingnamechanger

Amazing how all these trans children coincidentally feel really validated by... Starbucks. What gross,manipulative advertising. And a totally inappropriate photo to boot.

Yeah, just look at how often all these narratives revolve around shopping and buying. Kid wants the “girl” clothes on a shopping trip, kid feels “validated” by a corporate brand. The quite literal buy-in of all of the whole ideology to corporate consumerism and capitalism goes completely unquestioned.

Whatever happened to the ideology we used to have, the one where you teach your child to feel “valid” (god I hate that usage, you validate tickets not people) in him or herself as a human person with intrinsic value and selfhood, not because they are getting a shallow self-construction of “identity” reflected back at them by other people/consumer society?

@toffeebutterpopcorn

When they grow up - what then? The parents need a kick up the bum for exposing them.

Exactly.

11!

The people organizing the meet and greet knew kids would be there. That cutesy bedroom as a prop is deliberate.

And Mermaids don’t see it!!!!

When ds was small (and very cute) he modelled for a kids activity book (so sweeeet).

I can’t imagine his reaction if I was to whip out the book in front of his pals. And he is just making a flipping pancake!

Can you imagine if I’d dressed him up as tinkerbelle and sat him next to a drag Queen?

FUCKING HELL!!

What were Starbucks playing at?