As our culture continues to circle the drain in the global toilet bowl, Cuties, a Netflix movie, is just the latest excrement to be added. Cuties follows tweenage girls as they experiment in the latest prosti-tot fashion in dance, costumes and make-up. Unimaginative filmmakers have always tried to push the envelope. They will justify their kiddie porn for art or provoking discussion. The biggest question is: Where are the parents?

There is truly nothing new under the Sun. In 1933, a director lied to actress Hedy Lamarr to get her to do a nude scene in a movie called Ecstasy. Hedy was 18 years old and the age of consent in the pre-WWII Czechoslovakia was probably 10, but she was appalled and that’s what is important. In 1978, then twelve year old Brooke Shields played a prostitute, and was even served up as a virgin on a silver platter, in the movie Pretty Baby. Her Momager was apparently willing to let her daughter do anything for money. And, that’s where we are going to start with Cuties. Where are the parents?

Cuties is a Sundance award winning film. It follows eleven year old girls in France. At least one of the girls, Amy, is the daughter of a Senegalese-Muslim mother. Amy joins her friends’ dance team and they perform stripper dances, in makeup and skimpy costumes. The writer-director, Maïmouna Doucouré, insisted on working with a “very young” cast and justified her film with this:

“Today, the sexier and the more objectified a woman is, the more value she has in the eyes of social media,” Maïmouna explained in a previous interview with Cineuropa.

Eager to create a film that explores the sexual development of young women, the director and screenwriter interviewed groups of young girls she met on the street. She spent about a year and a half collecting real-life stories before setting out to work on the movie.

“I needed the 2020 version of that youth, so for a year and a half, I stopped groups of young girls in the street, sometimes in schools or when organisations opened their doors to me,” Maïmouna told Cineuropa.

“I recorded them or filmed them when I had their parents’ authorisation, and I gathered their stories to find out where they situated themselves as children, as girls, as future women; how they placed themselves in society with their girlfriends, their families, at school, with social networks,” she added shortly after.

Try to talk to my child and that would be the last thing Doucouré ever did. What were those parents thinking letting this woman talk to their children? I know it’s France, but what the Hell? You can watch a justification video from the Cuties writer/director here. No,Doucouré, children don’t see the dangers. They cannot because they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s what parents are for. You exploited these children. You can watch the promo video for Cuties here.

I also know that in many undeveloped countries, people sell their children all the time. We also know that the U.S. military was told to ignore the Chai Boys used for “bacha bazi” or boy play. In many of the Muslim countries, boys are dressed as hyper-sexualized young girls and sold.

Speaking of which, guess what’s popular here in the United States? Those heavily made-up tween boys are “fierce” on the runway, according to NBC News. Child drag isn’t abuse at all, according to The Advocate.

If you think the Cuties dance team is something outside the norm, you have never seen the show Dance Moms. Also, you haven’t been to a dance competition in the last decade. The dance competition video below is three years old and the girls are age ten. The are dancing to Beyonce’s Countdown:

Those are ten year olds and this is America, not France or Afghanistan. My late Marine Dad would have jerked a knot in my tail if I did that today, let alone when I was ten.

I may be a crotchety, old prig, but Lord help me, children should be children. I don’t remember worrying about how to navigate becoming a woman. I was in dance class from about five minutes after school was over until bed time. Breaking in pointe shoes, taping up my tap shoes, and knitting leg warmers occupied my free time. I probably at some point, on one day, did school homework. And, then there was the neighborhood. We played all summer long and explored creeks and caught salamanders. I wasn’t over-scheduled; I was doing what I wanted. My granddaughter picks out horses hooves, mucks their stalls, and cleans all those leather things involved with horses. She is doing what she loves. My son was in NJROTC in high school. I remember him coming home one night so tired that he laid down on the bottom step of the stairs to his room. He said, “Mom, I am going to make base camp here and try for the summit tomorrow.” Again, doing what he loved and is now his career.

Parents should help their children find their passion and encourage that. If your child wants to wear a skimpy costume and twerk at age ten, you have failed. Parents are the bumpers on the bowling alley of life. Your job is to keep your child out of the gutter, until they can navigate the lane themselves. Children should be age-appropriately aware. They should not be miniature, hyper-sexualized prey for pedophiles. Parents need to grow up. The problem isn’t Netflix or Cuties. Those are just symptoms. The problem is the parents.

Featured Image: Denison Family/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)