tempest in a teapot

Dakota Fanning for Marc Jacobs

image via tumblr.com

This image came up on my tumblr dashboard a few day ago and it really hit a nerve. I had read an article on the Daily Mail about how this ad and one of the Prada campaign shots featuring the beautiful Hailee Steinfeld have been withdrawn from circulation. The reason that this picture (above) made such an impact on me was because it reminds me of reading about how people responded to the publication of Lolita in the mid-fifties. I read Vladimir Nabokov's novel back when I used to be locked in our dining room supposedly studying for the Junior Certificate. Obviously at the tender age of fifteen I was a little more than slightly disturbed. When I picked it up again last year though I developed a adulation for it. I am even tempted to read it again over the Christmas break after the embargo of Juergen Teller's latest perfume campaign with Marc Jacobs. So this ad was banned due to the phallic placement of the perfume bottle on Dakota Fanning's lap. As Fanning is only seventeen and is therefore still a minor it was asserted that the image was sexualising children. Ironically sexualising children and setting them up to be debased is exactly what has happened to the advertisement above. This is not the first time that there has been questions surrounding the exploitation of Dakota Fanning. While putting together this post I came across a strange kind of article called The "Rape" of Dakota Fanning. Having been in the public eye for the majority of her life, I suppose, caused Fanning to grow up perhaps a little too quickly. But then again when I think about the things that my friends and I were talking about - not even mentioning the things that we heard the promiscuous girls were up to - and then to be honest it seems a little unfair to make such a fuss over a perfume bottle. It seems that up until the age of eighteen, it's all like think of the children and then as soon as they become an "adult" there is more sexualisation than you can shake a stick at.

image via google.images.com

Hailee Steinfeld for Miu Miu

image via google.images.com

I do believe that this particular Miu Miu ad being banned is perhaps a little over dramatic. It seems that a number of the complaints that it received was because it apparently depicted teen suicide since Steinfeld is crying and sitting on a railway track (above). Prada retorted that it was an abandoned railway and she was not crying rather simply "looking wistful". It's unusual to hear of a shot from a fashion campaign being banned due to reasons other than sex and weight related issues. 
Of course one of the first things that is called in to question is the fact that here we see a fourteen year old girl as the face of a brand targeted at older women. Personally I don't find anything wrong with that. Being a fan of fifteen year old Tavi Gevinson, who is, in turn, a fan of Miu Miu, has made me realise that there is no age limit on fashion anymore and then there is Suri Cruise who is just in an absolute league of her own (see Suri's burn book for added humour). 
Anywho so do you think that people are perhaps a little overly sensitive these days?

Cheers for reading,


Jane