A short while ago Taylor Lautner turned 18. He of the teen wolf six pack . It's interesting because at that point he was not longer under age in America.
Until then, through all the New Moon publicity, he had been. However it hadn't really been anything that had ever really come up as a concern. Apart from the odd side mention.
Shirltess sex object hunk. Sure, why not.
Consider the difference with Miley Cyrus who's only six months younger but got publicly chastised for posing nude for a photo shoot with Annie Leibowitz (not that it was ever going to be soft porn considering Annie's status as one of the best portrait photographers in the world). She used to be a child star and has a big Disney following they screamed! Hey, so did Taylor. He was Lava Boy. And that was only like three years ago.
And when Miley held onto a pole (I think more for balance than any lewd suggestivity) at an award show performance in quite a subdued way compared to Britney or Christina, they called it pole dancing and condemned her again.
Now tell me, what's the ratio of photos you've seen with Taylor with his shirt on and off. No contest, the six pack wins!
So there was nothing wrong with promoting an underage guy (a boy really) as an object of lust?
Technically it was probably child porn masquerading as marketing.
It seems to me there's a real double standard where an underage guy can be positioned as a sex symbol without concerns when the same doesn't apply to a girl in the same situation.
Or are we reading too much into a world where sexual provocativeness is simply omnipresent. And where age doesn't seem to matter. Fashion models frequently start their careers around 14 or 15. Many a cover of Vogue or similar publication has featured 16 year old cover-girls.
Or is our quest for perfection, with the photoshopped hyper-reality we're getting used to, making us look for younger and younger icons because nowdays what we used to think of as young might be a bit long in the tooth.
We recently watched a tv programme where one of the contests was 25. She looks much older than that, we chirped. Or was it our expectation that was out of line.
Of course it's all a bit reminiscent of Titanic when all those middle-aged women lusted after a very young Leonardo di Caprico. Now that he's a man, they're not screaming for him the same way. Of course when it's role reversal, we're straight into Lolita territory.
When Hugh Hefner made 'the twins' his official girlfriends on Girls of the Playboy Mansion, they were only 18. Part of me went "oh, I'm not sure about that. How old is he?" . Another part of me may have also gone "dumb blondes" and "trailer trash" but that's another topic.
Where do you draw the line and how?
It's just one of those conundrums we're all wrestling with.
Taylor's fifteen minutes are probably nearly up so hopefully the lad can put his shirt back on and grow up in peace.
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