I was watching the movie Little Miss Sunshine the other night, and the story line is based on the young girl, Olive, attending a beauty pageant. For the talent portion of the pageant, she dances to the song “Super Freak.” Her dance moves would be referred to as provocative. The reactions from the audience and judges clearly supported the idea of the misplaced scale that Rubin identifies. Her moves are suggestive and gain more attention than the other girls’ performances in a negative light because of her forming sexuality as a child. The judges tell her father to get her off the stage. After the family ends up on the stage dancing all together, they are told that she can never be entered into another beauty pageant in the state of California ever again. This truly acknowledges the fact that children are not recognized of having any form of sexuality in our country. The fact that she was engaging in a performance like that needs to be stopped and silenced in order to not taint the child or the viewers.
Not only is childhood innocence in need of protecting in this instances but particularly the girl’s sexuality. She needs to remain protected. Fields addresses the way in which education reiterates this idea. Through abstinence-only education, the powerful few have been able to deprive children from this knowledge. However, even comprehensive sex education still place female sexuality at a disadvantage in a way that does not occur for male sexuality. We have been socialized to see females as innocent and virgins in even a greater extent than we do children. We often think of the ways we need to protect the children, but specifically the girls. However, research shows that by educating children and recognizing them as sexual subjects, the problems we are trying to protect them from becomes less of an actual problem. This societal shift needs to occur away from un-educating and silencing to making children aware of their sexuality in a way to give personal power and agency.
THINKING SEX 