Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Petra Collins' DISCHARGE: "Intimate" [Semi] Nude Teens


I went to the Capricious gallery in New York's Chinatown to view 21-year-old Petra Collins' Discharge, which was Collins' first solo exhibit.


Per the Village Voice, Collins: "[...] addresses the insecurities and angst of the female teenage experience through her artworks [...] The photographs depict young women in various intimate scenes [...] many of the works deal aggressively with the physical changes of female adolescence."


According to the Capricious' website, Collins has been: "... creating provocative work that deals with female sexuality and teenagehood since the ready age of fifteen."
The gallery relates that Collins is:
  • founder and curator of The Ardorous, an online art collective showcasing work by emerging female artists
  • a staff photographer at Rookie, Tavi Gevinson’s magazine for teenage girls
  • a casting director for Richard Kern [a photographer of nymphets]
  • the writer and director of two films “The Crimson Crusade” and “Pussy Power” - two subversive shorts that focus on reclaiming female sexuality, and
  • the curator of an all-female art show titled Gynolandscape

In addition to photographing nymphets, Collins:

  • began giving lectures on art and female sexuality at educational and art institutions such as York University and The Art Gallery of Ontario
  • was profiled by the New York Times as a cultural influencer
  • has work that has been featured in publications like VICE, Oyster, Vogue Italia, GARAGE, and Purple
  • was named one of Canada’s top 30 artists under 30 by Blouin Artinfo, and
  • is currently working on a book of photography to be printed by Random House in 2015
The fact that the above institutions and personalities support and praise Collins' work is a testament to the extensive allure of nymphets. But her photography does blur the line between art and teen (softcore) pornography.


Discharge by Petra Collins


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Marc Jacobs, Victoria’s Secret & [Semi] Nude Kendall Jenner


Kendall Jenner (18) | Marc Jacobs NYFW (2014)

It's blogging the obvious to write that nymphets are used to sell everything from jeans to perfume. And designer Marc Jacobs, taking advantage of the allure of nymphets, has used famous teens to sell his products. For example, he used 17-year-old Dakota Fanning to sell his Oh Lola (in reference to Lolita) perfume. 

Dakota Fanning (17) | Marc Jacobs' Oh Lola 

And most recently Jacobs used 18-year-old Kendall Jenner during New York Fashion Week to promote his latest fashion line. Claire Knebl of Teen Vogue related that Kendall said: 
"I just recently turned 18, so this [show] is my big kick-off to start and grow my career." 

In addition, Knebl wrote that Kendall's exposed young fountains had the internet buzzing:
Beyond the beauty boldness, she donned a (very!) sheer top—which has the internet buzzing because of how much of her, um, anatomy it exposed—and cropped equestrian-esque trousers.
Kendall Jenner (18) | Victoria’s Secret

But that wasn't the first time that Kendall exposed her teen breasts to the world. Prior to the Marc Jacobs show, Kendall posted a photograph on Instagram, that was taken by Victoria’s Secret photographer Russell James, of her "taut" nipples.

Kendall Jenner (18) | Marc Jacobs NYFW (2014)

Like Marc Jacobs and Victoria’s Secret, Kendall is aware of the allure of a nymphet and is using it to "grow" her career. However, after her youth wanes, don't be surprised if she reports that she was victimized by the modeling and advertising industries.

Lastly, subsequent to Kendall's revealing catwalk, Kylie Jenner, Kendall's sister, received an erect penis cake for her 17th birthday. 

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Why Teens Indulge in Risk-Taking e.g., Teen Girls Gone Wild Videos...



The New York Magazine article The Collateral Damage of a Teenager that was excerpted from Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood reiterated what I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets and on this blog about the history of childhood in America. 

The article states:

Yes, it’s a physiologically distinct phenomenon, too, accompanied by discernible biological changes. But it was “discovered” in the middle of the Progressive Era (in 1904, specifically, by the educator Stanley Hall), which happened to be the same moment the nation was passing myriad laws to protect its young. For the first time, parents were obliged to shelter and support older children, rather than rely on them as wage earners. And what they concluded, after observing these kids for extended periods of time at close range, is that their teenagers were going through a terrible period of “storm and stress.”

And that “storm and stress” can have dire consequences for the parents and the children. As for the children, the article states:

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that adolescents might be more disposed toward risk. Human beings need incentives to leave the family nest. Leaving home is dangerous. But here’s a historical point to consider: Maybe adolescents would be less inclined to jump off roofs and other manners of silliness if they had more positive and interesting ways to express their risk-­taking selves. That was the argument the anthropologist Margaret Mead made in the sixties: The sheltered lives of modern adolescents were robbing them of an improvisational “as-if” period during which they could safely experiment with who they’d ultimately become. (Without romanticizing life in the past, the historian Steven Mintz notes that Eli Whitney opened his own nail factory before going to Yale at 16, and Herman Melville dropped out of school at 12 to work “in his uncle’s bank, as a clerk in a hat store, as a teacher, a farm laborer, and a cabin boy on a whaling ship—all before the age of 20.”)

As for the parents:

For parents, however, the picture is a good deal more complicated. In 1994, Steinberg published Crossing Paths, one of the few extensive accounts of how parents weather the transition of their firstborns into puberty, based on a longitudinal study he conducted of more than 200 families. Forty percent of his sample suffered a decline in mental health once their first child entered adolescence. Respondents reported feelings of rejection and low self-worth; a decline in their sex lives; increases in physical symptoms of distress.

Thus, the invention of childhood has caused negative consequences for parents and their children. Parents experience a decline in mental health and children indulge in risk-taking like making (Middle School) Girls Gone Wild YouTube videos.

Famous Ephebophile: Artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens



Nabokov wrote in Lolita, "A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girls Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist ..."

And that is exactly what 53-year-old artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens did when he "pointed out" 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. 

The Flemish Baroque painter and the nymphet had four sons and seven daughters. 

Visit Rubens' Artsy page to read his bio, view over 40 of his paintings, read exclusive articles and get current exhibition listings. 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

12-Year Old Thylane Blondeau: The New [Nude Teen] Kate Moss/Brooke Shields


Thylane Blondeau for Jalouse


12-year-old French model Thylane Blondeau is on the cover of the April 2014 issue of Jalouse - a French fashion and culture magazine. Her photograph is conservative by secular standards; however, the hashtag #BORN 2001 and the words LA NOUVELLE KATE MOSS on the cover are controversial. The hashtag confirms the fact that Blondeau is a pre-teen model and that she's following in the footsteps of supermodel Kate Moss.

I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets about how 18-year-old Kate Moss appeared nude in a Calvin Klein Obsession for Men magazine advertisement and how she related in a Vanity Fair interview that when she was 16-years-old she was told by a representative of Face magazine that if she didn't get nude, "[...] we’re not going to book you again." Thus, the fact that Jalouse is using Blondeau's pre-teen age as a selling point and that she is expected to follow in the footsteps of Kate Moss is revealing. 

18-year-old Kate Moss

Furthermore, Blondeau's behind the scenes Twitter picture is additionally revealing. Blondeau's pose in the picture is exactly like the pose 15-year-old Brooke Shields held in a 1981 Calvin Klein commercial. This is what I wrote about the commercial in The Allure of Nymphets:

In one commercial, the camera panned up her maroon cowboy boots, then up the right leg of her Calvin Klein skinny jeans, then slowly across her crotch before finally stopping at her young face. With her crotch still within view, due to her legs being spread completely open, Brooke looked seductively into the camera and said, “You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Thereby, letting the viewers know that her fifteen-year-old crotch, which I would imagine the viewers could not take their eyes off of, was sans panties.


Thylane Blondeau's Twitter Picture

Lastly, Thylane Blondeau's recent pictures in Jalouse are considered by some to be tame in comparison to her pictures that were published in a 2011 issue of Vogue. The photographs caused a major stir, because despite the fact that Blondeau was only 10-years-old, she had on make-up, adult clothes, jewelry, and stilettos.


Interestingly, when one is reminded that childhood is a relatively recent invention, Blondeau's pictures may not seem as controversial. And clearly, Jalouse, Face, Calvin KleinMarc Jacobs Marie Claire and Vogue realize how powerful the allure of nymphets is and has chosen to capitalize on the allure of nymphets. 


Saturday, April 5, 2014

Shakespeare's OTHELLO: The White [Teen] Nymphet & Old Black General

Desdemona and Othello

In The Allure of Nymphets I shared the following sonnet from William Shakespeare, which is about a disappointing love affair with a young girl. The sonnet extols the wonders of youth:

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth like full of sport, age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I adore thee...


In addition, Shakespeare extols the wonders of youth in Othello via an age-discrepant marriage between Othello, a North African general of the armies of Venice, and Desdemona, the "exquisitely beautiful" young daughter of Brabantio - a Venetian senator. 

Shakespeare doesn't give the exact ages of Othello and Desdemona, but Othello is described by Iago, the villain of the play, as an "[...] old black ram [...]" while Desdemona is described as a "[...] little white lamb [...] [with] beautiful skin, whiter than snow and smooth as the finest marble."

Othello and Desdemona feared that, due to Othello's race and age, they wouldn't get the blessing of her father; thus, they eloped. Roderigo, a young jealous admirer of Desdemona informed her father, "[...] but in the wee hours of the morning your daughter left your house [...] to go into the rough embrace of a lustful Moor." (I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets that young men and older women are understandably the most opposed to ephebophiles and teleiophiles.)

Thus, it was assumed that Othello seduced Desdemona. It was unconscionable that she wanted to get married. Desdemona's father even suggested that Othello used magic, trickery and/or drugs to seduce Desdemona. He said, "Are there magic spells that can lead young virgins astray? It's obvious to everyone that you you've tricked her, drugged her, or kidnapped her."

Interestingly, Othello is reminder that looks are not nearly as unimportant to nymphets as they are to ephebophiles. Even Brabantio made that mistake. He asked, "And you want me to believe that despite her young age and proper upbringing she fell in love with a man she'd be afraid to look at?" Iago opined, "To keep things hot, she'll need someone with a handsome face, someone close to her in age, someone who looks and acts like her." But Brabantio and Iago failed to understand that it was Othello's high self-confidence, high self-esteem, and power (i.e., self-control) that attracted Desdemona.

After Desdemona convinced her father that it was her idea to marry Othello, he was forced to give the age-gap marriage his blessing; however, that didn't prevent Iago and Roderigo from doing everything within their power to end the May-December marriage.

Note: I used the No Fear Shakespeare translation of Othello.




SARA (1997): A Polish Teen's Unrequited Love for Older Man


Here's the plot summary posted on IMDb for Sara (1997):
The forty-something Leon [Boguslaw Linda] who used to be with special forces is now an alcoholic after his wife left him. He gets a call to meet a mobster who's looking for a bodyguard. When he arrives the mobster refuses to hire him because he can tell he's an alcoholic, but when he saves his life a few minutes later, the gangster is very appreciative and gives Leon the job. 
He's not hired to protect the gangster, but the gangster's 16-year-old daughter, Sara [Agnieszka Wlodarczyk]. At first she is annoyed by him and is rebellious and won't cooperate with him, but when he saves her life and takes a bullet for her, she falls in love with him. She makes advances towards him telling him she wants him to be her man. 
Naturally, he refuses her at first because he knows her father would kill him. Eventually he gives in and they become secret lovers. They're in love but how long can they continue their relationship before her father finds out? And what will he do when he finds out?

In The Allure of Nymphets, I wrote about what makes a nympholept attractive to nymphets. This Polish film is another example of one of the ways in which a(n) (older) man can increase a teen's attraction, which is by resisting her initial advances. For example, 40-year-old Leon repeatedly rejected 16-year-old Sara's advances until she literally begged him to take her: 
"Please. I'll never do anything stupid. I'll only listen to you [...] I love you. I'll be with you forever. I'll have your children"

Leon even tried to dissuade Sara by pointing out his grey hair, but after Sarah tried to rub her fingers through Leon's grey, she asked:
"Why can't a 40-year-old man love a 16-year-old girl?"
Leon must not have read Steele's Date Young Women For Men Over 35, where Steele writes that young women are attracted to gray hair. 

Interestingly, Leon's father responded to Sara's question with a question of his own:
"And why can't a man in his 60s love a 12-year-old girl?"

Ultimately, Leon couldn't resist the allure of a nymphet, and after scolding Sara for skipping school, he would take her back to his place for age-gap sex. 

In contrast, Sara's other bodyguard was too needy, and unsurprisingly, Sara rejected his advances. He confessed:
"I know everything about you. I know how tall you are, how much you weigh, what your shoe size is, and your bra [size] [...] I even know when you have your period.
Lastly, Agnieszka Wlodarczyk was 16 when Sara was filmed. The age of consent in Poland is 15; however, Agnieszka's multiple nude scenes were (literally, but not figuratively) non-sexual.