The story of Danielle Bregoli who became an overnight excitement after a memorable Tv appearance indicates just how easily society sexualizes girls
Danielle Bregoli, the money me ousside daughter, appeared on Instagram Live on Sunday, mugging for her iPhone camera. She pursed her lips and flicked her tongue, gazing steadily at her viewers, who promoted her to twerk, demonstrate tits, and blow me, girl.
Cleavage, someone commented, referring to the image of Bregolis breasts spilling out of her low-cut tank top. We require a threesome, another commenter remarked. Is this Brazzers? person asked, signifying the heavily trafficked porn site. Bregoli, who is 13, has shot to fame on a normalizing wave of the sexualization of children online. She represents a disturbing new trend: an underage daughter who is treated like a porn starring on social media.
Cash me ousside, how bow dah ?, Bregolis catchy catch-phrase, arose out of her appearance last September on The Dr Phil Show. Out-of-control teens are a Dr. Phil convention, and Bregoli was billed as a doozy, a car-stealing, knife-wielding, twerking 13 -year-old, portrait having physical altercations with mom, Barbara Ann Peskowitz. When audience members giggled at the girls blackfaced bravado( her white-girl rendition of being from the streets has sparked a number of outraged think pieces ), she challenged them to take it outside. An Internet meme was born, and a social media career for a Boynton Beach, Florida, daughter from modest circumstances.
Bregoli now has more than eight million followers on Instagram, where she can be seen doing endorsements for the inevitable Fit Tea( a weight loss tea regularly pedaled by the Instafamous ). Reportedly she has a reality show in the works, and her mom has hired a manager. But what accounts for Bregolis soaring appeal, in contrast to the countless other out-of-control teens Dr. Phil has brought on television to admonish over the years?
The answer becomes clear in a YouTube video posted in February which has gotten over three million views. It indicates Bregoli lying on a bed, wearing simply a bra and sweatpants, slapping her behind and suggestively panting: Ass so fat, how bow dah? Then shes twerking, then placing a bottle in between her breasts.
Some of the unprintable comments on this video gleefully celebrate pedophilia. Some of the commenters react to this in abhorrence, while others justify enjoying the 13 -year-old Bregolis sexualized showing: Understand, Im 14, so like I have no pedophile problem in here, I can smash, or have sex. Waiting for the sexuality tape, person observes.
Unfortunately Bregoli is no outlier when it is necessary to social media culture. Being hot is a #goal, sometimes for very young girls. Her videos and selfies may tend toward the extreme on the spectrum, but are similar in kind to those that exist all over the Internet.
Such postings are sometimes solicited by predators, such as the Australian boy who was arrested this month for allegedly securing explicit images of children by posing as the vocalist Justin Bieber, applying mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Skype. And sometimes such images are freely self-generated as a route to get attention, because being sexually provocative is often what is rewarded on social media.
If you post a scene winning the math honor, people will laugh at you, but if you post a scene in a bikini youll get like a hundred likes, a girl I spoke to in Los Angeles summed it up. And social media is an issue of the likes, and the number of views and followers followers daughters often dont even know.
Many daughters are as troubled by the sexualization of daughters on social media as their parents would be, if they were fully aware. And some daughters have told me that posting provocative photos is their feminism, because they are sex-positive. Thats what Kim Kardashian says, after all, when she posts a nude selfie its feminism.
And many daughters look up to Kim as a role model in the digital age. Shes a successful businesswomen, the arguing moves look how rich and famous her sexuality tape and nude selfies have constructed her, and look how many Instagram followers she has( over 95 million ). And now daughters can develop FOMO over the life of Cash Me Ousside Girl.
Meanwhile, sexualization hurts daughters. The landmark 2007 American Psychological Association report on the sexualization of daughters outline the linkages between sexualization and a host of problems, from anxiety to depression to eating disorders to low self-esteem. Not to mention the fact that sexualized posts by children often border on child porn, and there is a problem with the proliferation of child porn all over the world.
What should be done about children posting sexualized photographs and videos of themselves? What fall within the competence of social media companies? And how should the law react? Until society catches up with this new technology, parents are the first line of defense. Its day for parents everywhere to take control of their out-of-control teens, for their own well-being and protection.
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