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Babies Gone Gaga


BabyGaga.jpgIt’s a trend most of us would love to see come to an end: young children acting out adult roles, prompted by clueless parents who apparently want the 15 minutes of digital fame and fortune only a viral YouTube video can provide.

There have been many such videos, but here are few of the most recent and controversial ones. First up is “Baby Scarface,” in which young kids act out famous scenes from that movie, using “fudge” in place of the word … well, you know. And then they pretend to kill one another with toy machine guns.

Then we have a group of heavily made-up, scantily clad and gyrating 8-year-olds dancing to Beyoncé’s hit “Single Ladies.” They’re fabulous athletes, but the routine is so sexualized that it outraged many adults. The parents, however, defended their choice to allow their children to participate and to wear lingerie.

And, most recently, there’s the “Baby Gaga” parody of Lady Gaga’s song “Telephone.” A 3-year-old acts out some of Gaga’s sultry moves, dancing with adult women who wear next to nothing. The toddler herself wears handcuffs, heavy eye makeup and racy outfits. Her mother told The CBS Morning News, “It’s a spoof on Lady Gaga, and it has to be a little outrageous because Lady Gaga’s videos are outrageous.”

No one in that family, it seems, paused to consider whether there was any need for a toddler to spoof Lady Gaga in the first place.

All of these parents (and many of these kids’ “fans”) say there’s nothing wrong with such videos. After all, they’re so young they won’t remember any of it! And they’re merely having fun dressing up, joking around and being with adults.

But there are serious—and multiple—problems with this mindset.

First, these children are being exposed to adult behavior that they cannot understand. By mimicking it, they’re implicitly being taught that they should grow up more quickly—or worse, that they’re already grown up. Without understanding the beauty of sexuality in its proper context, these kids are already on a path toward desensitization and destructive behavior in that area of their lives.

Second, it’s yet another example of how our culture sends terribly mixed messages. On one hand, we say children should be protected and that pedophilia is an outrage. But then some parents themselves provide pedophiles with ample material to exploit their own children.

As Australian professor Dorothy Scott, Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection, noted, “Commercial forces turn children into consumers. This is bad enough when it compromises health by encouraging them to consume bad food, cigarettes and alcohol. But when commercial forces turn children into sexualized commodities, it corrodes the core of the developing child and makes them more vulnerable to exploitation.”

These children likely won’t lose their innocence over one incident of dancing or acting that gets recorded and posted online. But if their parents continually dismiss the dangers of allowing such behavior—let alone encourage it—their children are already on a tragic path.

There’s nothing good about a tiny girl wearing a bra and gyrating in front of an audience. Or a young boy yelling, “Motherfudger!” and “killing” his buddy. Children imitate behavior as they learn how to interact with others. What happens when Scarface and Lady Gaga are their templates?