I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had many of the same experiences growing up and it’s horrible.
By the time my daughter was born the new trend was leopard print for little girls, a pattern normally associated with provocative or private wear, and I was horrified. I detest the baby pageants and all the sexualization of children… little girls, some as young as three dressed in heels and makeup and even dressing them up as a movie prostitute. ???
One of the theories behind the Jon Benet Ramsey murder was that her mother did it because she saw her daughter as another woman and a threat to her marriage. What?!?!?!? She was 6 years old!! What the hell is going on here?
Why is it that anytime we want to have the “sex talk” and empower kids with education people think they’re not old enough to know certain things… “just let them be kids.” Who’s kids? The ones parading around as hookers or the ones being fetishized and sexualized by adults? Those kids? I don’t think so.
And for the record, no “in my day” we didn’t have the talk about good touching and bad touching and talking to grown ups. And you know what happened? I was molested for 2 years. If kids are old enough to be fondled, they’re old enough to be told that it shouldn’t happen to them. And there sure as hell shouldn’t be comediennes getting laughs over it.
I’ve always had thick thighs and a round butt. As a little black girl growing up in a black community, these attributes were simultaneously a badge of honor, a mark of shame, and food for predators. I remember people telling me how nicely I was shaped when I was as young as five years old. There were times my parents made me change my jeans because they fit me “like a grown woman.” I must’ve been eight years old at most. At 13, I started to understand what was meant by “shape” and to appreciate my curves. I liked the way I looked in tight jeans and shorts until I would leave the house and fully-grown men would honk horns and yell the most disgustingly vile shit from their cars. At 14, a man in my neighborhood who was 22 years old walked up behind me and grabbed my ass…
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Maggie's Art & Musings 
The blogger makes some good points, but I have to ask: Why that headline? “Sexual assault of a toddler” is not as accurate (in the context of the “joke” and the line and the show) as “Sexual assault of a teenager” (which would be more accurate, since that was the age of R Kelly’s victim). But hey, putting the words sexual assault next to the word toddler will probably garner her more traffic and attention.
Also why focus on Amy Poehler (yes she’s the executive producer) instead of the show creator Julie Klausner who is also the lead writer and actress who actually said the line? Doesn’t it make more sense to focus criticism on the person who wrote and said the words rather than someone who executive produced the show (regardless of how hands on Poehler was on approving scripts). Again it makes me think the blogger was most interested in attention and traffic, which I think does a disservice to the valuable content she created.
I thought she made a ton of good points in the article, and I really appreciated her perspective, but I dont understand the writing choices made on the two above points, and I think they undermine the article.
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The headline is the direct response to the joke, that the toddler was now old enough to be abused by R.Kelly, not the abuses that R.Kelly had committed. As to why the original author chose to single out Poehler, I can only speculate. My thinking would be because Amy Poehler is the executive producer and is the one that ultimately decides what will go on the air. It doesn’t matter who wrote it, Poehler is the one responsible for it being aired.
I agree with you, her writing and her perspective are great and a welcome rebuttal.
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