In the December 2009 issue of First Things Mary Eberstadt explained how pedophilia chic went out of style. Sadly, not everyone got the message in time. As Jennifer Grant at her.meneutics explains:
The most recent issue of Vogue Paris (or should I say l’issue de janvier/février?) struck a nerve when it hit newsstands, upsetting the very readers who count on the magazine to be provocative. They’re guaranteed it. Vogue Paris’s editor in chief, Carine Roitfeld, once told a British journalist that she tries to include “something every month that is — how you say? — not politically correct. A little bit at the limit. Sex, nudity, a bit rock’n'roll, a sense of humour.”
Wait, I should clarify: Roitfeld is French Vogue’s former editor. Within a few weeks of the December issue’s release, Roitfeld announced that she was leaving the magazine. Some commentators speculate that the Cadeaux, or, for English speakers, “Gifts,” photo spread went too far, even for French Vogue. What, in this unfailingly erotic publication, could be so troubling that it would arouse rumors such as that one?
In “Cadeaux,” the models are very slim — but that’s nothing new. Nor is it earth-shattering that they wear too much makeup or that there is something suggestive in the picture of the model inexplicably holding a toothbrush in her mouth. Aren’t such photos de rigueur for Vogue? It couldn’t be the opulence of the props or that the stiletto-wearing models recline on animal skins. Nor should their blank (yet at the same time, somehow, hostile) expressions raise eyebrows. Non, c’est vrai, all of that is to be expected.
So what could be so bad that it could possibly have cost Roitfeld her job?
I suppose the fact that the models are no older than six or seven years old might have something to do with it.
January 4th, 2011 | 12:43 pm
Wow. That is really, REALLY offensive. And evil.
January 4th, 2011 | 2:59 pm
[...] Joe Carter reported earlier, the now former editor of the French edition of Vogue tries, or tried, to include “something [...]
January 4th, 2011 | 3:16 pm
This past Sunday, January 2, we Lutheran Christians commemorated Wilhelm Loehe, the 19th-century German Lutheran pastor who led quite the mission center out of his tiny parish in Neuendettelsau. Besides establishing a training center for deaconesses, a home for the poor, a home for unwed mothers, a home for the mentally retarded, and hospitals, he also trained missionaries who were sent to North America to minister to German emigrants. Nor did he fear to speak plainly about sin; once he proclaimed from the pulpit (a word these Vogue editors need to hear): “You mothers are bringing your daughters to the ball decorated like whores!”
January 4th, 2011 | 8:52 pm
Give it a year or so. This woman will be praised as a martyr among activists for sexual liberty. At this moment in time, our natural, primal reaction to pedophilia is disgust, as it once was toward homosexuality. That is why we reject it. But as we become desensitized, as the shock wears off, we will have no choice but to embrace it, because the intellectual argument for sexual boundaries was “lost” decades ago.
Rick Santorum was right. Americans mocked him, but he was right. We are living in the midst of a domino-effect, as one taboo after the next is toppled to the ground. The argument for same sex marriage is also the argument for polygamy, bestiality, polyamory, polygamy, and whatever else you want, whenever and wherever you want it.
January 4th, 2011 | 10:29 pm
To my mind the argument for gay marriage is that human beings love God when they love each other. A gay marriage mirrors straight marriage in that it is two people committing to each other, and to each other alone. And for what it’s worth, that was not to Old Testament Biblical model, so let’s be careful with assuming contemporary Christian practice is all that God sanctions.
January 5th, 2011 | 8:43 am
Anthony Mator –
Consenting adults.
‘Disgust’ by itself is not a particularly good indicator, especially since it’s awfully hard to tell what’s “natural” and “primal” and what’s learned. Back when the military was being integrated, quite a number of white soldiers claimed visceral disgust at the prospect of having to live with black soldiers. Consider Leon Kass, bioethicist to President Bush, who’s disgusted by ice cream cones: “Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone — a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.”
Indeed, if you go by how infants behave, the only naturally disgusting thing is the smell of putrefying bodies. All else is learned.
Fortunately, there are principled and intellectual arguments against pedophilia that don’t depend on, “Ewww, gross!”
January 5th, 2011 | 7:51 pm
Ray:
You’re essentially making my point. Disgust alone can’t win…at least not when its opponent is a seemingly reasoned argument. It shouldn’t be the only argument, but for many people, it IS the only one they have, because they’ve bought into the lie that was fed to them by the culture.
January 5th, 2011 | 9:34 pm
Sixty years ago on active military duty when browsing in the base library, I ran across the following lines by Alexander Pope. They contain a great truth, and they have been imprinted indelibly on my mind ever since.
Vice is a thing
Of so frightful a mien,
To be hated
Needs but to be seen.
But seeing oft,
Familiar with its face,
We first endure,
Then pity
Then embrace
January 6th, 2011 | 1:30 pm
[...] Carter wrote earlier this week, about how Vogue has sexualized little girls to the extreme–and served up a platterful of [...]
January 7th, 2011 | 10:40 am
“Consenting adults”.
Okay, so bestiality is out, but incest is okay, and necrophilia is okay as long as you get permission in advance.
But, as soon as we have decided that we have a constitutional right to not be discriminated against based on “sexual identity”, doesn’t that mean the pedophile has just as much right to his “sexual identity” as anyone else?
After all, gay advocates have already argued that the child’s well-being is secondary to the more important “civil rights” question of non-discrimination.
Pedophiles do not choose their desires, any more than gays do. So how does one reconcile the reality – of us wanting to protect our children – against the newly established “right” to have society accommodate our sexual desires, accept our sexual identity, and do whatever has to be done to ensure we have full access to the pleasure-filled sex life we now think we deserve?
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