I am really not sure what to think about this story other than “What is this world coming to?” And is there anyway to slow it down?
Russh Australia, a lifestyle and fashion magazine, hired Zippora Seven for a provocative 18-page editorial fashion spread alongside 16-year-old male model Levi Clarke. news.com.au
Seven also is but 16. Depicted taking a bubble bath with this young man who appears as if he’s passed out. And unlike our little Miley Cyrus/Vanity Fair scandal which just finished making the rounds here in the US, this young lady was actually topless. No sheet-like covering being held across her chest. Not even little bubbles hiding her more private areas.
Like Cyrus’ after-the-outrage statement, agents claim the shoot “went too far.” The magazine, on the other hand, does not.
Russh editor Natalie Shukur defended the Seven shoot, which was inspired by supermodel Kate Moss and actor Johnny Depp when they dated.
“We believe Russh readers ‘get it’ in this narrative story,” she said.
“These are beautiful images of two young people in character.”
Indeed.
Fortunately, this magazine is being investigated by the Australian Classification Board because, well, because child pornography is illegal.
This disturbs me deeply. How does an editor of any magazine defend a shoot like this? They are testing the limits of the law, generating publicity and ultimately dollars through the exploitation of young people.
But it is perhaps only the natural “next step” from an industry that seems to do everything it can to make its stars who are “of legal age” look as if they weren’t.
It reminds me of the ten year old girl I saw at the state fair last year wearing a pink playboy bunny baseball cap. Why are we allowing our children to be socialized into that? Is this the “real world” we homeschoolers are accused of isolating our children from? Or is this yet another artificial one, being marketed to us by the “merchants of cool?” (Particularly pay attention to chapter five, the giant feedback loop, and you will see exactly what I am talking about.)
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
I don’t understand this either. What kind of narrative is that! It is not a happy ending.
I’ll come back later to watch the video. It doesn’t appear to be viewing I want my little ones to glimpse.
Ms. Cyrus changed her name to Miley because of her nickname: she sMILE(Y)d all the time.
Miley’s face in the picture (to me) shows distress. She ain’t exactly smiling.
But my comment is for Billy Ray. Just because you wrote an album and sung about a 60ft Jesus doesn’t exempt from being responsible for this shoot. An account must be given.
I guess my point is in society parents not being parents makes it so easy for the ‘merchants of cool.’
Renae, isn’t that a sad testament to marketing? That we are leery of showing a program about marketing techniques used on youth to our children? Yet we are surrounded by these very techniques.
I think it is a bit much for younger children. But probably very important to show older children so they see just what it is that these companies are doing.
I’m old enough to remember similar concerns for Jodie Foster (the movie Taxi Driver) and Brooke Shields (Calvin Klein ads) when they were young girls, and similar criticism of their parents for allowing their professional acting/modeling jobs to present the images they did to the public. Also what a lot of buzz there was about Olivia Hussey in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet filn, naked with Leonard Whiting! (I was just Romeo and Juliet’s age in the play — 14 — and found it all heartbreakingly beautiful and romantic, which inspired me to buy the LP cast recording and memorize long nuanced passages of Shakespeare, rather than to go be an inappropriate child bride!. . .)
So, some questions that come to my mind:
1. When we criticize other parents as is our free speech right, are we careful to be as scrupulously clear that we don’t wish to regulate or criminalize family decision-making we find objectionable, as we believe our critics (notably homeschool critics) should be when they find our families and private choices objectionable?
2. Because we all do collectively influence our common public culture, what ARE the responsible ways if any, to change or at least put protective filters on what other folks are putting into the public drinking water for all families to face somehow?
3. Is it meaningful or just ironic, that Brooke Shields played Miley Cyrus’ mother in some televised episodes of Hannah Montana?
From the article you quoted: “It was her second shoot with Russh this year. She appeared in the March issue topless while riding a horse.
In NZ, Seven is represented by Red11 agency and her mother, Ursula, is heavily involved in her career.
In Australia, she is represented by Priscilla’s Model Management, an agency that has a long-standing reputation for being extremely protective of its models.”
My question is…where were these “agents” and parents? And if she had already done a topless spread for the same magazine, how does it make sense that the agent wouldn’t have “known it was to be a topless shoot…”?
The whole thing smacks of “Oh, we didn’t realize people would be outraged” syndrome.
In the end, it’s the messages these young girls are receiving as to their inherent value as human beings that concerns me the most.
At a time when they should be pursuing an education and dreaming about their futures these girls are being encouraged to sell their bodies (via photographs of) just to pay someone else’s mortgage.
Makes me sick.
At our house, this falls into the category of “They aren’t your friends.” What this means is that the advertising that comes into the house (via mail, internet, whatever) is constantly pointed out to them as advertising. We spent over an hour one day analysing the adjectives and fine print in an offer for animal cards.
I probably can’t do much to change what is marketed or how it is marketed. But I can make sure that my kids recognize it for the two-bit hustle that it is. That they are able to walk away from it the same way that they walk away from the three-card monte dealer on the street corner.
Zayna, I agree. This is the second time? I don’t know if there was any outrage the first time. But this “artistic” magazine should perhaps familiarize itself a little more with the law as it regards minors and nudity.
Sebastian, that is how we deal with it as well. It is marketing…trying to sell us something. Trying to make us believe we have a need and then sell us the solution.
JJRoss, some thoughts–
1. When we criticize other parents as is our free speech right, are we careful to be as scrupulously clear that we don’t wish to regulate or criminalize family decision-making we find objectionable, as we believe our critics (notably homeschool critics) should be when they find our families and private choices objectionable?
It depends. I’m not going to advocate that the law in this case be changed, but that it be upheld. I’m not looking for changing any laws. If we compare this to some prominent homeschooling cases like Banita Jacks for example, I would say that it is not homeschooling which failed but the systems which are already in place. Before we make new laws, we need to make sure that current law doesn’t go far enough. Generally it does.
I don’t want to live in a society where the government knows every time someone underage undresses. But if they do so for cameras and people are profiting off of it, it is pornography and we do have laws which cover that.
2. Because we all do collectively influence our common public culture, what ARE the responsible ways if any, to change or at least put protective filters on what other folks are putting into the public drinking water for all families to face somehow?
That may be its own post. I have some thoughts floating around in my head from another essay I just read.
3. Is it meaningful or just ironic, that Brooke Shields played Miley Cyrus’ mother in some televised episodes of Hannah Montana?
Don’t know enough about either one to know. But it all started with Gone With the Wind.
You don’t go from the highly censored world of Hollywood that existed back then when the image of the stars was protected and they were under contract to “keep up appearances” to today’s Hollywood world overnight.
Any civil society understands that when fences are removed, the protection provided by that fence is also removed.
For example, “Gone With the Wind’s, ‘frankly my dear I don’t give a damn’” broke the fence of civil society, setting the precedence and opening the door of the profanity heard today.
Similarily, it could be said, “Olivia Hussey in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet film, naked with Leonard Whiting,” broke the fence of civil society setting the precedence and opening the door of the nudity today.
Unlike common perception profanity and nudity do not improve, they do not become more modest or disappears. It becaomes more flippant, flagrant, immoral, seedy and perverse.
Taking the most popular teen idol of the time and presenting said idol in these circumstances, leads to other more risky (push the envelope behavior) from others. A neverending spiral downward, I’m afraid.
We have become so callous to this social decline/fence breaking over decades of slowly deteriorating topic matter. It’s as if we’re the frogs in the water having the heat turned up.
Maybe it would be easier to just pass Go and move directly to the website of NAMBLA and accept that behavior.
Why not? It’s the direction we’re going!
LOL Peter, do you mean to sound like all was lost when the Victorians stopped putting those little skirts on the piano legs? Long before GWTW and Zefferelli, America’s gates were wide open to Shakespeare (both in word and depiction) — not to mention Michaelangelo’s David and paintings by Botticelli and Rubens, and the Canterbury Tales and oh, wait, a good many sacred writings too.
(Please forgive the clumsy typos all — Zeffirelli, Michelangelo.)
Theatre is an object lesson in why we just can’t have concerned community members fencing away everything that anyone objects to everyone’s kids seeing, saying, doing or knowing about –
“School Theatre and Citizen Censorship”
My kids dance too, where they’ve learned some lessons about“Nudes and Prudes” in the real world . . .
Skirts on piano legs. Hmm…I was just thinking our piano looked a little risqué.
I’m sure you caught this quote from MTV’s program director, but isn’t it telling and a bit scary?
Yeah. Isn’t it though? Although I disagree slightly. There is enough love. Just turn the stuff off and limit its influence. I really do think that if you cultivate a love and appreciation for that which is good, there is a light shone upon that which is not.
I’m not talking about complete isolation, but making sure that marketers are not spending more time with your child than you are.
How have we came to this? So non-nonchalant about the topic of child exploitation!!!
Simply too explain it away without discernment or rational is mind boggling until I remembered this little gem from the mind of CS Lewi.
—-Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoner. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailer said as he put down the pipkin:
“Our relations with the cow are not delicate-as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.”
Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others; and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:
“Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.”
What do you mean?” said the “jailer, wheeling around upon him.
“YOU ARE TRYING TO PRETEND THAT UNLIKE THINGS ARE LIKE. YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE US THINK THAT MILK IS THE SAME SORT OF THING AS SWEAT OR DUNG.”
“And pray, what difference is there except by custom?”
“ARE YOU A LIAR OR ONLY A FOOL, THAT YOU SEE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THAT WHICH NATURE CASTS OUT AS REFUSE AND THAT WHICH SHE STORES UP AS FOOD?”
“So nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,” said the jailer with a sneer. “In fact a Landlady. No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing,” and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.
“I know nothing about that,” shouted John after him, “I AM TALKING OF WHAT HAPPENS. MILK DOES FEED CALVES AND DUNG DOES NOT.”
Pilgrims Regress, CS Lewis Pg 48-49, Book III, Chapter VIII ‘Parrot Diease’
So which would he shout in capital letters that Shakespeare must be?
Right, Dana. I agree. Love is enough, but there has to be an understanding of what love is. It’s not giving kids stuff to make them happy.
Parents can love their kids and still be clueless about the influence of the media. Many time I think parents must be duped as well. Otherwise, why would they allow their girls to dress like prostitutes?
And it isn’t just public school kids lured in to the rebellion. I’ve seen homeschoolers fall prey to the game, too. I couldn’t understand it, until I realized how much television they watched after they finished their workbooks.
We will continue limiting television, because the “feedback loop” is even in little children’s cartoons. Ack! It is impossible to escape from, but teaching children their value will give them strength. They will know they don’t need anything to make them cool.
…there has to be an understanding of what love is.
Very true. It is easy to get caught up in. I used to think it had to do with working parents who substituted “yes” for the time they couldn’t spend with their children. And it might be part of it. But we all want “more” for our children. We want them to have what we couldn’t have and to have things easier.