Professional snowboarder Chloe Kim took the world by storm at only 17 years old when she became the first woman to secure two gold medals at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. Kim became an international icon as she was marketed by companies as “just another teenage girl” with her tweets gushing over Lady Gaga and pizza. She was hailed as both relatable and incredible.
Despite her admirable work, Kim was not devoid of the common event so many underage women in the public eye face: the perverted countdown to their 18th birthday, when sex with them wouldn’t be an illegal fantasy anymore. Despite knowing that Kim was underage at the time of recording, radio host Patrick Connor commented on her appearance in a blatantly sexual manner during one of his radio programs. He even encouraged the audience to track her adulthood.
“She’s fine as hell,” Connor said to a co-host. “If she was 18, you wouldn’t be ashamed to say that she’s a little hot piece of a**. And she is. She is adorable. I’m a huge Chloe Kim fan. Her 18th birthday is the 23rd of April, and the countdown is on baby.”
Connor’s objectification of Kim highlights the normalization of underage sexualization that is rampant on the internet. Many fans of Kim were excited to use her adulthood to their advantage, either by taking and sharing explicit photos of her online or writing scandalous articles.
As underage users congregate on social media sites, underage sexualization has found a new platform. With the rise of social media influencers who are minors, comments on their bodies, clothing choices and lives fill comment sections. 17-year-old internet celebrity Piper Rockelle stands as a stark reminder of the impact of sexualization from a young age.
Since her YouTube channel began when she was 11 years old, Rockelle’s mother, Tiffany Smith, allegedly relied on predators sexualizing Rockelle to help her daughter gain millions of followers. Smith allegedly encouraged 11 minors, who were part of a group working for Rockelle’s YouTube channel, to engage in sexual activities amongst each other and with Smith herself. Smith allegedly conducted verbal or physical abuse against the minors off-camera in order to force them to comply with her desired behavior. Although Smith and Rockelle attempted to countersue for $30 million, saying the mothers’ of the teenagers extorted her. Smith and Rockelle soon dropped their case.
Now only months from her 18th birthday, Rockelle’s pages are filled with comments begging for her to start an OnlyFans on her birthday. Even though these fans have watched Rockelle grow up, their relentless sexualization of her shows the grotesque environment created in that community. Although Rockelle was unaware of what her mother’s actions meant at a young age, today she is subjected to the consequences, as now Rockelle has to deal with a toxic audience who only sees her in a sexual light rather than respecting her as a creator.
Like Rockelle’s mother, upper management within the entertainment industry has learned to push a mature image upon minors to garner attention and turn a profit. In fact, according to Advancing Health Equity, a nonprofit healthcare organization, 10 of the most popular children’s TV shows actually feature an average of 24 instances of child sexualization per episode, mostly targeting females.
Despite children’s TV shows often portraying a veil of innocence, pivoting a pre-established child audience to a more sexualized form of media can lead to increased profits for the producers. Seeing as 58.4% of adolescents have engaged in sexually related online activities, it is becoming vital to decrease the amount of exposure that minors have to sexual content.
Rockelle’s precarious situation serves as a reminder of how we as a community need to be more careful when it comes to the sexualization of minors online. Many of her comments come from other minors with the justification that they, too, are underage. Similar to Rockelle, teenage actors are often featured in TikTok edits to sexual songs, with captions alluding to sexual actions or their
bodies. With the creators and consumers being minors in the situation, it is viewed as more acceptable to sexualize teenagers in such ways, despite the actors participating in the edits speaking out about how uncomfortable it makes them feel. However, the actions of these minors can end up normalizing this behavior for others, leading to the commonality of adults also sexualizing minors and thinking that their behavior is acceptable.
Bandwagoning leads to this too. Phrases like “I’m going to touch you” are all too common at MVHS as people seemingly ignore that it is other minors they are sexualizing and acting suggestively toward. Jokes about consent are uncomfortable and too normalized, considering the heavy consequences behind it.
It doesn’t matter how high the position of power the predator holds or how young a person is when they sexualize minors. The truth is, underage sexualization either being encouraged by adults or within groups of children, is becoming all too common as the entertainment industry looks to profit through any method available and fans adopt relationships bordering on parasocial with celebrities.
As MVHS students continue to throw phrases with sexual undertones around and absorb sexualized messages through the Internet and media, we need to ensure that we understand the levity of such messages. Although it may be presented as a joke or casual humor, it carries the consequences of mainstreaming underage sexualization and normalizing it for adult use.
