Upscale designer Balenciaga didn’t care about sexualizing kids, but the rest of us should | Guest Opinion

The care that society gives to the most vulnerable is not just a biblical litmus test of moral aptitude, but also a good way to measure collective empathy and the emotional well-being of this and the next generation.

Around mid-November, Balenciaga, a high-end brand in a multi-billion-dollar fashion industry, released a bizarre marketing ad of a young child holding a large Balenciaga bag that is a teddy bear dressed in provocative clothing that includes a stud collar, a harness and fishnet stockings. It raises the question: Why is one of Hollywood’s hottest brands sexualizing a kid? And does anyone care about that?

Another photo shoot that Balenciaga did with Adidas appeared to feature a handbag resting on pages of a 2008 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Williams, which upheld federal laws that criminalized distributing child pornography.

Left Coast silent

While conservative commentators have condemned the child-porn-promoting advertisements, Hollywood, where so many of the brand’s big promoters are, has remained mum. Kim Kardashian, one of Balenciaga’s biggest allies, tweeted that she’d reached out to understand how the brand created such a demoralizing ad but sounded like she wanted to give the company another chance before cutting ties with the brand.

Kardashian is more influential than most of us would like her to be. That the mother of four would use her platform in such a neutral way and fail to condemn the brand is disappointing.

Balenciaga apologized for the ad and said it “strongly condemns child abuse.”

“It was never our intent to include it in the narrative,” the company wrote on Instagram. “This was a wrong choice by Balenciaga, combined with our failure in assessing and validating images,” the fashion label added. “The responsibility for this lies with Balenciaga alone.”

That mea culpa is hard to take at face value: An ad like this isn’t like an offhand comment via voicemail or a tweet quickly typed in a moment of anger. Ads for couture brands involve weeks and months of planning, purchasing materials, staging, hours of photography, then several hours — and sets of eyes — involved in editing, approving and publishing the advertisement.

It’s a safe bet that anywhere from 20 to 200 people were involved in planning, executing and approving an ad featuring an allusion to child abuse and the glorification of child pornography by a billion-dollar brand.

Shouldn’t be normal

The attitude toward innocent children displayed in the advertisement — one of disdain, abuse and toxicity — is spreading. It is not uncommon to see the sexualization of children in easily accessible entertainment. In 2020, Netflix aired “Cuties,” a movie about kids who dance. But these weren’t kids doing “The Nutcracker” in cute ballet slippers. These were kids thrusting their hips, wearing lipstick and being overtly sexual — small children! — on purpose for a film that anyone with access to Netflix could view.

The sexualization of children is a regular theme in many small but toxic pockets of society. The abuse of children in both the Catholic Church and now among select churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention is more heinous than a Netflix show, but is often overlooked because it’s not shoved in people’s faces. Still, it’s severely damaging to kids’ lives and it begins when normalization of abuse and toxicity and access collide. Human-trafficking prosecutions increased 84% from 2011 to 2020. There are now so many online avenues to trick and lure teenagers into meeting dangerous adults.

But this is also why conservatives — and even apolitical folks — get nervous, upset even, about drag shows or drag reading hour at the library aimed at kids. Some people might scoff and claim people are overreacting, but the overt, normalization of the sexualization of children is wrong and can be a pathway to abuse. Whether it’s a drag queen gyrating at a bar for kids behind a sign that reads, “This [expletive] won’t lick itself” or attention given to Desmond Napoles, the stage name for a teenager who’s been dancing and dressing in drag since he was a small child, the message is that children should be seen as sexual beings, even when they’re very young. This is abusive and wrong.

Some will say Balenciaga is just a couture brand most regular people don’t care about and were it not for the internet, none of us would know their porn-like advertisement even existed. But if one of the most expensive, reputable, brands in the world is actively promoting child pornography, under the guise of ignorance marketing, where else is this being normalized near you?

The way society protects vulnerable children — or doesn’t — is a gauge of its health. By the looks of it, things are not well.

Nicole Russell is an opinion writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram