You can't move these days without hearing some vested interest banging on about 'sexualisation' and how our children are being robbed of their innocence - an innocence older generations enjoyed unimpeded - by an unholy illuminati of pornographers, TV broadcasters, magazine publishers, high street shops, clothing companies and advertisers, who have one aim in life - to corrupt the mind of the kids, introducing them to a word of porn, sexual experimentation and promiscuity.
It is, of course, nonsense. While the internet has certainly made adult material more widely available than it ever was before (and has been doing so for over a decade), there is no actual evidence to show that kids are being bombarded with sexual imagery. Sure, teenage kids will seek out porn, just as they did decades ago, and while the stuff they find might be meatier than the stuff (British) kids came across (no pun intended) in the 1970's and 80's, there's no evidence that it is doing them any harm. In fact, one reason that hardcore was effectively legalised in the UK in 2000 was because our censors couldn't provide such evidence.
However, both right wing and left wing rabble rousers are using this media-driven hysteria and their snappy little buzzword to press for new laws - laws that will affect adults, not kids. With Reg Bailey, the not-at-all biased head of the Christian organisation The Mother's Union, currently compiling a report for the government (following one for Labour by TV pop psychologist and non-expert Linda Papadopolous), fueled by extremist organisations like Safermedia (who believe a non-revealing photo of a naked pregnant woman embraced by her husband to be 'porn') and self-serving newspaper columnists and lunatic MPs who believe that owning a Playboy branded pencil case is the first step to a career as a prostitute or that the sight of a naked man or woman is somehow inherently corrupting, we are facing the prospect of new laws - these may or may not include mandatory internet blocking, a 'toughening up' on the TV watershed (to stop 'raunchy' dance routines on TV shows like The X factor for instance), a ban on lingerie advertising ('Some of those huge poster advertisements for bras and knickers leave precious little to the imagination and they are there for all our children to see' screamed a source, suggesting the sight of a woman - or man - in underwear will immediately corrupt any ten year old seeing it) and even the idea of a ban on gay kissing on daytime TV - the only one of these idiotic ideas to have met any protest.
The internet aside, there is less upfront sexuality on the high street and on mainstream TV now than there used to be. Back in the 1970s, sex was everywhere. All the popular tabloids had topless women on page 3 / 5 / 7, as well as using any excuse to splash more nudity across their pages; naked girls appeared on book covers, LP sleeves, magazine covers, film posters, wall posters and mainstream advertising. Home video releases featured nudity on the cover. Sexy playing cards and naughty novelties were widely available in holiday resorts across the UK. T-shirt sellers offered a selection of rude and suggestive designs that could be instantly printed. Carry On films and other comedies featured teasing nudity and double entendres galore under the 'A' (PG) certificate, and these films would play, uncut, on daytime TV, where nudity certainly wasn't forbidden - your writer saw his first full-frontal nude on ITV at 3.30 in the afternoon during a documentary about a theatre show. And when people complain about Christina Aguilera's raunchy dance routines, they somehow forget the peak time antics of Hot Gossip and Pan's People.
So this blog exists as a reminder that the past was not a Puritan paradise, with photo and video evidence - alongside exposure of the latest nonsense to be spouted in favour of controls over 'sexualisation'. Please feel free to link to us, and pass this evidence-based blog on to those who would try to restrict your freedoms. And if you have examples of our sex-obsessed past, or news on the efforts of lunatics to restrict your current freedoms while hiding behind a child-shield (reading these reports always makes me think of Martin Sheen at the end of The Dead Zone), pass them on.
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