VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

[Dez]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

I don't see why people are flipping out about this, personally. Not my thing, and if my kid got this obsessed, I'd encourage them to take it down a notch.

I wonder, though,how many boys have video of themselves online prancing around dressed like Naruto and co., and yet people are flipping out about her because Western culture can't seem to get it out of their thick heads that in Japan Loli is not as sexualized?

She's 14. She's playing dress-up, and has found an online in-group that gives her attention and makes her feel as though she belongs. Implying that she's been abused in some way seems just as inappropriate to me as saying the same thing about a goth, emo, or hipster kid. All that's going on here is that we're old enough to be experiencing generation gap, especially if this ties in to our personal hobbies as well in some way.

Also...terrifying though it may be, her Japanese sounds better then most of the girls hanging around the Loli shops in Japantown in San Francisco...I was there for the Sakura festival a couple of weeks ago.

As for whether it's racist or not; I think only a Japanese person would be able to call that one fairly or accurately. Especially when ganguro comes into the mix.

[Jembru]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

I don't see why people are flipping out about this, personally. Not my thing, and if my kid got this obsessed, I'd encourage them to take it down a notch.

I wonder, though,how many boys have video of themselves online prancing around dressed like Naruto and co., and yet people are flipping out about her because Western culture can't seem to get it out of their thick heads that in Japan Loli is not as sexualized?

She's 14. She's playing dress-up, and has found an online in-group that gives her attention and makes her feel as though she belongs. Implying that she's been abused in some way seems just as inappropriate to me as saying the same thing about a goth, emo, or hipster kid. All that's going on here is that we're old enough to be experiencing generation gap, especially if this ties in to our personal hobbies as well in some way.

Also...terrifying though it may be, her Japanese sounds better then most of the girls hanging around the Loli shops in Japantown in San Francisco...I was there for the Sakura festival a couple of weeks ago.

As for whether it's racist or not; I think only a Japanese person would be able to call that one fairly or accurately. Especially when ganguro comes into the mix.

Initially, I felt this too. I can't listen to her voice in Japanese because eugh.. so high pitched, which is a shame because I usually like listening to gaijin speaking Japanese. Besides being annoying though, I thought it wasn't such a big deal. My opinion changed though when I saw the 'official music video', check it out if you haven't seen it, but I don't feel it is appropriate to link it. At 14, the way she poses in those vids is really inappropriate.

[Ophidia]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

I don't see why people are flipping out about this, personally.

I personally don't like kids, but I wish them no specific harm, either.

Aside from her looking like my youngest niece, I've always been uncomfortable about children put on sexualized display. The whole toddlers in tiara thing? It just seems wrong. A lot of people think that if you're uncomfortable with the notion of a child dressing or acting provocatively, it means you harbor sexual desire towards them, and in some cases it's probably true, but I know in my case, it's because I know exactly what can happen. Both of my sisters were sexually abused by older male 'friends' and their own father's friends. I was exposed to some uncomfortable stuff when I was a kid, mainly because of having to deal with older unsupervised teenagers.

We all want to believe that we are safe, whatever our age or comfort zone. We want to believe that parents and guardians will keep children safe. All it takes is for this girl to have a falling-out with her 'fans' and she could easily become the next Jessie Slaughter, or worse. With all the focus on cyber-bullying and personal online safety, it seems to me that VenusAngelica's mother is either extremely naive or is helping her daughter look for trouble.

If she was even halfway over 16, I wouldn't be assed about it at all.

[thalassa]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

Honestly, if she wasn't on the internet, and was just running around the mall looking like an underage tart, I wouldn't "care" (I still don't "care", I just think its effed up)--I have an issue with a parent letting their adolescent child make themselves an internet sensation for sounding like a three year old and looking like Natalie Portman in the scene with the priest in V for Vendetta.

[Peri_Dot]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

Some of it seems racist and sexual, so no, I would not let my daughter do this, and I don't think her mother should be allowing it either.

[habbalah]

Re: VenusAngelic: Harmless or Bad Parenting?

I've known too many people like this, though maybe not to this extreme. It makes me a bit uncomfortable that she is out on the internet as she is, being a minor, but I'm hoping she'll grow out of it as she gets older.