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Published on: May 26, 2003

Wood, Alexandra. "Constructions of Childhood in Art and Media: Sexualized Innocence ." AgorA: Online Graduate Humanities Journal. (2.2). [] <http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/agora/articles.cfm?ArticleNo=157>.

Constructions of Childhood in Art and Media: Sexualized Innocence
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Alexandra Wood
University of Alberta
agwood@ualberta.ca

The idealized, imagined ideal of childhood is a construct that has been dissected in many genres of art and has been written about by academics in multiple fields of inquiry. This construct includes two distinct and contradictory notions of childhood: the romantic innocent and the desiring nymphet. Moreover, these ideas of childhood are often presented in a visual format to a primarily adult audience (or spectator), such that the child is a passive, voiceless performer for the active, scopopholic gaze of the adult. In these images, the child, and childhood itself, is seen as the unknown (or unremembered) "Other," and it is therefore defined by the viewer as either romantically nostalgic or sexualized. The viewer ostensibly does this in an attempt to define and name the 'Unknown.' Both ways of defining the child are used as vehicles for the adult viewer to know the child and childhood, and in consequence to this knowledge, a way to control the unknown. As this paper will discuss, the voyeuristic viewing of children has been normalized and even sold back to the child as definitive -- and to the adult in the form of nostalgia or yearning for something lost -- through advertising culture and mass media.
This paradigm has surfaced in many different genres of expression, including literature (Wordsworth and Byron), visual art (Collinson, Gainsborough and Carroll), and images in the mass media (advertisements, television and the fashion industry). Furthermore, this conflict is nowhere more obvious than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as both societies maintain a simultaneous duality in their vision of childhood. Images of both the innocent cherub and the sexual nymph are staples of Victorian art as well as current North American mass media. Apart from these specific periods, childhood has been described in many different ways by societies, such as evil and inclined towards "adultery, fornication, impure desires. . . gluttony and more" (Cunningham 49; quoting Ozment 164), as well as the converse: children as "messengers of God" and "childhood [as]. . . the best time of life" (Cunningham 41; emphasis mine). This latter view (Romanticism) inspires our current ideal of childhood: this is to say, a time of pure innocence reflected on by adults with a sense of nostalgia and longing for their own forgotten childhood. Judith Plotz states "childhood, in fact, operates... as an adult imaginary kingdom. As imaginary kingdom, it is almost always figured as a lost garden paradise presided over by a child-redeemer or child-idol" (Plotz 3). Emerson agrees with this and states, "infancy is the perpetual Messiah which comes into the arms of the fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise" (Emerson 54). As one would expect, given that cultural products reflect the historical conditions and moment of their creation, this nostalgia concerning childhood and children can be seen in much of the literature of the nineteenth century. In support, Cunningham mentions Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women, in which "Jo hates to 'think that I've got to grow up'" (Cunningham 76). Cunningham does not mention the context of this quote, however, and it is interesting to note that it is at this moment in the novel that Laurie first declares his love for Jo. Jo's statement is a rejection of both the adult world and of her own encroaching maturity. Cunningham also mentions Jo's mother's comment that "children should be children as long as they can" (Cunningham, 1995, 76), reflecting her own (and the adult reader's) yearning for the apparent uncomplicated nature of childhood. Jo's mother reiterates the importance of childhood and that the ideal is to ward off adulthood in favour of prolonging this innocence of childhood.
Poets such as William Wordsworth and George Gordon, Lord Byron, as well as visual artists, further explore this Romanticisation of childhood exemplified by Alcott's Jo. In Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" childhood is referred to as
a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light. (Wordsworth 54)
Contrastingly, adulthood is seen as a part of life filled with nostalgia and regret:
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality. (Wordsworth 54)
Wordsworth's poems reflect the prevalent tendency towards the idealization of childhood and children, as well as the subsequent yearning of all adults to return to this perfect oasis. As in Alcott's novel, Wordsworth appropriates the voice of the child and navigates through his own imagined and romanticized version of childhood.

figure 1
Both Alcott and Wordsworth mark a general tendency to remove the voice of children from the artwork and to separate the world of the child from that of the adult. Such a barrier can also be seen in the painting "Dreams" 1861, by Frederick Burton (fig. 1), which depicts both the innocence and purity of childhood as well as the secret fantasy world of childhood (as is expressed by the title). By removing the voice of the child, the viewer's understanding of the work is limited to the point of view (and nostalgia) of the creator. In this work, the child's angelic face captures the innocence of the ideally constructed, archetypal child, while the title and the direction of her gaze suggest an unseen world that the adult audience cannot comprehend, and is not invited to. Therefore, the adult audience experiences an increase in the feeling of nostalgia. Similarly, in the work "The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly" by T. Gainsborough (fig. 2), the children represent a world where adults are excluded (except for the painter) and where children are happiest with other children. In the painting "Childhood" (1855) by James Collinson (fig. 3), the children are shown abandoning their schoolwork (the books are carelessly dropped on the ground) and instead choose to either play a game or share secrets with each other. Again, there are no adults in the picture, even though this is clearly taking place in a schoolroom, and the audience is purposefully left out of the child's unheard conversation.

figures 2 and 3
These paintings place the adult audience in a position similar to that of a "peeping tom," as if we are trying to gain access to a world that is no longer ours. This scopopholic gaze renders the child without voice and gives power to the viewer to define both the child and their own experience. As a result, the audience is free to emphasize the carefree nature of childhood and the child's general lack of responsibility. Burton paints his subject dreaming away the day with no thought for responsibility, while Collinson depicts his figures abandoning the world of learning and thought. In his painting, several objects representing adulthood are in the room -- the piano, the globe, and books -- but the children are unconcerned by these objects. The youngest in fact, has chosen a ball as the most important object in the room. Moreover, all three paintings use soft lines, rounded shapes and a blurring of edges to create a dreamlike quality, further emphasizing the separateness of this ideal world from that of the viewer. As in the poetry of Wordsworth, childhood is described by the adult, not the child, and the scene is placed more in the adult imagination than with the real experiences of children. This idealized world is in stark contradiction to the real lives of nineteenth century children, where prostitution was rampant, and labour laws for children were seen as 'radical' political thought.
Another view of childhood can be seen in the work of Lewis Carroll and other poets who reflect this dichotomy of the Victorian period. Specifically, Lewis Carroll's work reflects two opposing images of childhood; while his book Alice in Wonderland clearly depicts a secret child-world full of innocence, imagination and nature, his photographs show another vision of children more in line with the beauty pageants of today (Goldstein 51), with a pedophilic overtone. According to Morten Cohen, Lewis' "view of childhood is Blakean; he too revered the mystic combination of the primitive and the pure, the noble and the divine. These innocents possessed a charm he could not resist" (Cohen 107). This vision is clear in his books, but becomes questionable when one takes into consideration his photographs that "draw the viewer deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze" (Mulvey 66). His photograph of Irene MacDonald (fig. 4) -- while not overtly, sexually suggestive -- replaces the complete innocence of "Alice" with that of a coquettish creature:

figure 4

As with the paintings discussed earlier, Irene is voiceless and is "known" only through Carroll's camera lens rather than her own presentation of self. Our knowledge of Irene then is based on Carroll's own "fetishistic fascination" with her (Mulvey 65). In the photograph, Irene is shown either waking up or falling asleep, which places her in a position of passivity and also innocence, which renders the gaze of the viewer as actively voyeuristic.
In Carroll's four nude photographs of children (fig. 5-8) he places them in nature as gypsies and castaways, presumably to enhance their innocence and the perception of children as otherworldly or separate from society; however, the presence of the camera acts as an unwanted intrusion (or penetration) into their world and this fantasy of a 'pre-fall' innocence. In particular, the photograph of Evelyn Hatch (fig. 8) creates an uneasy cognitive dissonance in the viewer as Carroll attempts to link the innocent 'nature' of children through his choice of background, with his overt referencing to the French Impressionist paintings of "Olympia" (fig. 9) (which are themselves echoes of earlier, more passive, nudes such as "Sleeping Venus" painted by Giorgione [1508-10]).

figures 5-7

In these paintings, Olympia represents a well-known Parisian prostitute painted by several impressionist artists. Olympia is always in a reclining position, looking directly at the viewer: in a sense returning the intruding gaze. By returning the viewers' gaze, Olympia is acknowledging the sexual nature of the gaze and is attempting to co-opt its power; in a sense, she is creating agency for herself.

figure 8

Manet's "Olympia" painting was criticized at the time for being too overt and it is likely that Carroll was aware of this work. Few of Carroll's subjects look directly into the camera, and by referencing the work of Manet, he is suggesting that Evelyn Hatch is both aware of the viewer's thoughts as well as her role as the performer and fetishistic object.

figure 9
These attempts by Carroll to reconcile opposing images of childhood are further exemplified in the poems of Lord Byron. In "If I Were a Careless Child," Byron describes his desire to gain back his youth and his dissatisfaction with adulthood. His ideal child "[dwells] in Highland caves, [roams] through the dusky wild, [and bounds] o'er the dark blue waves" while his adult self longs to "rove through scenes [his] youth hath known before" (3). Contrastingly, in his poem "Elegy on Thyrza" ("To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead"), Byron refers to a 'love' affair he had with a boy, though whether or not this particular relationship was physically consummated is unknown. In the poem, Byron gives the object of his affection a dominant role in the relationship, and Byron himself is in the position of the jilted lover, left behind, writing "what I loved, and long must love," is gone (n.pag). This echoes Carroll's sexualizing of Evelyn Hatch and contradicts Byron's earlier assertion that childhood was innocent and carefree. Although this type of pedophilic relationship was not uncommon in his time, it contradicts the ideal of childhood innocence, as in Carroll's writings, as well as Byron's own description of careless and carefree childhood. The sexualized innocent suggests that the relationship was consensual and, like Carroll, it seems that Byron is acknowledging his vision of children as fetishistic objects. If my assertion that art objects reflect the material and social conditions of their production still stands, it is then telling to note that during the nineteenth century, child prostitution was rampant, with the majority of prostitutes being between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two (Cody n.pag). British law did not begin to address the issue until 1875, when the age of consent was raised from age twelve to thirteen, and then again in 1885 to 16. In fact, it was not until 1889 that children were given the "same protection from abuse [as was] granted to animals under the earlier cruelty-to-animals legislation" (Kline 47). These laws were not widely accepted and brought "resistance from brothel owners and the police" (Goldstein 51).
Despite this troubling reality, the romantic vision of childhood took root and firmly positioned itself in advertising culture directed at both adults and children. Stephen Kline states "the neo-medieval art of the period gave vivid expression to the new sensibility of innocence and unassailable purity that grounded the Victorian perspective on childhood, and also lent itself to products" (Kline 52). The innocence of childhood softened the edges of this new capitalist endeavor and the advertising "[symbolized] not only the end to the rigidities of the past but also the promise of a gentler purer future" (Kline 53). John Millais's painting "Little Miss Muffet" (1886) (fig. 10) was used in the Illustrated London News to sell paint, while his painting "Bubbles" (1886) (fig. 11) was used to sell Pears' soap. Both of the advertisements play on the 'clean innocence' of youth and the wonder and imagination now so associated with childhood (it is tempting to suggest that such early cultural figurations could be partly behind our current linking of mystic wonder with the child). The bar of soap and the company name were added to the painting and "the academician's picture was thus subtly transformed from a vehicle for enjoying the wonder children experience before the frailest natural phenomenon to a prosaic means of identifying the source of the soap bubbles - namely, the bar of Pears' soap" (Casteras 195).

figures 10 and 11
Both paintings contain the symbols of childhood innocence including "white frills for daughters and immaculate collars for the sons [which] were signs not only of spiritual and social elevation, but also of sexual innocence" (Drotner 79). Kline posits that "childhood was increasingly characterized by specific behavioural traits" (53), so these symbols of childhood and their loaded meanings were quickly transferred to magazines for young boys and girls as the accepted norm for childhood, prompting the mimicking of the imagined by the real. In the September 1841 issue of The Child's Companion (fig. 12) the figure of the youth is shown with his pressed collar praying, a sure remedy against evil (Drotner 41), while the image from Aunt Judy's Magazine (1866) shows, again, a world without adults and a warning against the evils of the adult world (fig. 13). The sister is "deploring her brother's wish to become a soldier facing injuries and death" (Drotner 82). The symbols in these advertisements are the same as those in the paintings of Borton, Collinson and Gainsborough, but are instead being used as a marketing tool, both for a product and a way of conceiving of the world. They relate a product with a sense of nostalgia for the adult viewer in the case of the soap advertisement and as a medium of instruction in normative behaviours for the child viewer in the case of the magazines. In the nineteenth century, this romantic vision of childhood was the dominant image in advertising, while in the twentieth century both the child as innocent and as sexual nymphet are used interchangeably in both advertising and other forms of mass media.

figure 12 and 13
In contrast to the Victorian conflicts (or hypocrisies) outlined above, Ellen Key believed that the twentieth century would be the "century of the child" (Cunningham 163; quoting Key 45), and in many respects she was ostensibly correct. The twentieth century saw children imbued with increasing rights, schooling became compulsory, and infant mortality became virtually non-existent (Cunningham 165). Additionally, Cunningham mentions the increased interest in child psychology, intelligence testing and other various methods to categorize children (Cunningham 168). Nonetheless, with the advent of television, advertisers began to recognize children as an important marketing group, and toys and clothing were designed and marketed specifically for children. Cunningham asserts: "in the second half of the twentieth century [there] has been a sense of an erosion or even disappearance of childhood. . . mostly related to the power of the media and. . . the forces turning children into consumers" (Cunningham 164). While this is fairly indisputable, another development has occurred over the twentieth century, and it is telling as a juxtaposition to the Victorian period as outlined above; the child has become an object to be consumed by an adult audience obsessed with childhood and youth. As in the nineteenth century "Pears Soap" advertisement, childhood and children are used in the marketing of everything from "Baby Gap, which offers parents the perfect look for childhood, to "Hallmark Cards" selling 'cutesy' images of children.
Hallmark cards use many different symbols to evoke nostalgia and memory in the viewer, carrying on the Victorian tradition of the innocent (while concurantly engaging in sudo-adult behaviour). In the genre, these cards are tepia stained to suggest an earlier time of simplicity (associated with childhood), and as with the paintings of Burton, the edges are fuzzy to suggest that we are 'peeping' into a separate world somewhere in the imagination or idealization. These kinds of anonymous genre paintings appeal in the same way as Victorian images, in that they are also black and white images and they present us with a stolen moment in a child's existence. As with television programs such as "Leave it to Beaver" and "Little House on the Prairie," these images deliver children and the sentimental notion of childhood as a packaged product to sell to the adult viewer who, over the last century, has been taught to idealize childhood and to lament his or her lost youth. Contrastingly, the plethora of 'Lolita' like images of children in mass culture -- such as child pop stars, the child-like models of Calvin Klein fashions, and child beauty pageants -- promote the sexualized child in the same way that Carroll's photographs did in the nineteenth century.

figure 14

The abundance of images of nymphets and 'barely-legals' in visual culture seems to promote this scopopholic fetishism towards children (or 'tweens' as they are now sold to us). The apparent contradiction between the idealized childhood and the sexualized child, has created a new wave of young Lolitas and nymphets including pop star Britney Spears, who first appeared to audiences dressed as a school girl wearing her uniform. The uniform, however, was turned into a seductive version of the traditional skirt and sweater, playing on the fine line between child and adult. Her popularity seems to be divided equally between marketable 'tween' audiences as well as middle aged men, as can be assumed from her pose on the front cover of "Rolling Stone Magazine" (fig. 14) and by interviews in which she mentions her fan mail. The innuendo is clear and not entirely subtle, and almost links child sexuality with American patriotism along with mother and apple pie.

Dominique Swain has likewise built a career on the popularity of the nymphet, beginning with her role in the new version of the infamous film "Lolita" when she was only fourteen and wearing braces (Goldstein 51). In the same vein, Brooke Shields began her modeling career in 1980 with her Calvin Klein campaign "Nothing can get between me and my Calvins," which also began Klein's predilection for young, waif-like (child-like) models (Tucker 141).

This is echoed in Klein's waif campaign of the 1990's and his use of Kate Moss as his current 'ingenue.' In 1995 Kate Moss, herself only nineteen years old, became the perfect:

incantation of the child-woman: the waif [fig. 15]. Her large mascaraed eyes connote the face of a child, while her engorged red lips suggest readiness for penetration. Her boyish body heightens the illusion of the fuckable child. (Goldstein 51)

figure 15

Since these advertisements made their debut, the waif has been a signature figure on the Paris runways and in magazines, suggesting an insatiable obsession by an audience that is also quite willing to sell this image to their children. Just as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan were sold to children, the Calvin Klein advertisements were published in teen targeted magazines as well as adult oriented publications (Tucker 142). Recent films such as "Cruel Intentions" further this confusion of the adult and teen market, such that adult voyeurism is marketed to an audience that is expected to mimic this new social conceptualization of the child and begin a new feedback loop. Specifically, "Cruel Intentions" even includes a 'love story,' as a subplot, that involves an adult (teacher) with a youth (cello prodigy), which the film endorses for its targeted teen market.

Recently, some magazines have become even less subtle in selling the idea of the sexualized child, including the March 2002 issue of GQ, on the front cover of which is Katy Holmes (the star of "Dawson's Creek") who has just passed the 'age of majority.' This transition is made obvious to the viewer by the problematic title of the article: "She's a big girl now." She has become one the 'barely legals' that at one time were only found in the deep recesses of the porn industry, and which are now blazoned on the front covers of supermarket magazines, ironically beside the "Kinder-Surprise" chocolates. The titular reference to the commercials for "Huggies Pull-ups" is also unmistakable, and it is in fact a direct quote from their television jingle. The combination of a nude Katy with the reference to her youth and to the diapers commercial is practically an endorsement for pedophilia. Similarly, child beauty pageants promote the fetishisation of very young children "adorned with lipstick, mascara, false eyelashes, bleached hair, high heels and satin-and-rhinestone gowns and professionally coached. . . showgirl postures and movements [which] parody adult sexuality" (Davidson 63). While some camps of thought denounce these preschool and preteen pageants for what they are, media and parents alike actively encourage teen pageants such as the media-hyped "Miss Teen U.S.A.". The business of teen modeling schools is an even bigger market than the pageants themselves and 'teach' children the poses needed to 'make it big,' which usually include Lewis-Carroll-like postures (taking the child back to the Victorian prostitute's bed chamber) and Calvin-Klein-like nymphet-ness (big eyes and pouty lips).
As is the case of the Hallmark cards, beauty pageants, and even most art before the nineteenth century, children are being taught to act as adults rather than children; however, since the act of defining childhood has been the domain of adulthood, neither the idealized child nor the sexually experienced child are the actual voiced experiences of children. Instead, their voices have consistently been co-opted and silenced, as in the Byron poem. Even the voices of pop and media stars are, if not silenced, effectively contained by trivializing what they do have to say. People magazine and USA Today have obsessed about the love interest (or lack thereof) of Britney Spears, firmly establishing her as immature and without words of 'value.' It is even easy to imagine an article on Spears without her own words appearing in it, instead replaced by media adjectives and marketing. I am even tempted, though hesitant, to extrapolate that the excess of television programs and movies that focus on sexual abuse or sexual relationships starring teen characters or actors ("Cruel Intentions," soap operas, and "Law and Order") satisfy both notions of childhood (ideal innocence and sexuality), so that the audience can continue to see them as innocent victims yet at the same time indulge in scopopholic gazing into the world of children. By denying their voice, or agency, adult audiences can continue to consume children and even attempt to co-opt childhood itself. These apparently contradictory notions of childhood are in fact similar, in that they are purely adult constructions that serve as a vehicle for the adult fetishisation of both children and of our own lost childhood. As with the literal meaning of 'nostalgia' (a pain associated with home, which is of course not remembered but imagined), this adult construction of the child assuages the adult's imaginatively-created pain of lost childhood with an equally imaginary archetype of what childhood even was.

Works Cited

Auerbach, Jeffrey. "Victorian Ideal." California State University Northridge. 21 March 2002.

Broughton, Trev. "The Crux of the Cute." Times Literary Supplement 29 Oct. 1993: 9.

Byron, Lord George Gordon. George Gordon, Lord Byron: Selected Poems. Ed. Stephen Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1993.

---. "Elegy on Thyrza." English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. Vol. XLI. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1914. Bartleby.com, 2001. .

Casteras, Susan P. Images of Victorian Womanhood in England. London: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987.

Cody, David. "Child Labor." The Victorian Web. Jan 2002. Ed. George P. Landow. National University of Singapore. 21 March 2002. .

Cohen, Morten N. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

"Cover." GQ: Gentleman's Quarterly March 2002. .

Cruel Intentions. Dir. Roger Kumble. Perf. Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Columbia/Tristar Studios. 1999.

Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. London: Longman Group Limited, 1995.

Drotner, Kirsten. English Children and their Magazines, 1751-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Davidson, Mark. "Is the Media to Blame for child sex Victims." USA Today Magazine Sep. 1997: 60-64.

Goldstein, Richard. "Nymph mania." Village Voice 17 June 1997: 48-54.

Kline, Stephen. Out of the Garden. London: Verso, 1993.

Manet, Edouard. "Olympia." Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 21 March 2002.

Millais, John Everet. "Little Miss Muffett." Allposters.com. 21 March 2002.

---. "Bubbles." AllPosters.com. 21 march 2002.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 57-68.

"National Gallery of Canada - Provenance Research Project." National Gallery of Canada. 21 March 2002.

Ozment, S. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA: Sheridan, 1983.

Plotz, Judith. Romanticism and the Vocation of Childhood. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Schonberger, Arno and Halldor Soehner. The Rococo Age. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1960.

Selinger, Mark. "Cover." Rolling Stone Magazine 25 May 2000.

"Thomas Gainsborough: Modern Genius." The Guardian Unlimited. Guardian Unlimited Art Galleries. 21 March 2002.

Toccafondi, David. "Calvin Klein Ads." University of Pennsylvania. 21 March 2002

Tucker, Lauren R. "The Framing of Calvin Klein: A Frame Analysis of Media Discourse about the August 1995 Calvin Klein Jeans Advertising Campaign." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15 (1998): 141-157.

Wordsworth, William. William Wordsworth: Favourite Poems. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1992.

Figures

1. Burton's "Dreams" (Auerbach).

2. Gainsborough's "The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly" ("Thomas Gainsborough").

3. Collinson's "Childhood" ("National Gallery").

4. Photograph of Irene MacDonald (Cohen 155).

5. Photograph of Beatrice Hatch (Cohen 166).

6. Photograph of Evelyn Hatch "as a gypsy sitting by a brook" (Cohen 166).

7. Photograph of Annie and Frances Henderson "as castaways" (Cohen 167).

8. Photograph of Evelyn Hatch (Bakewell 254-255).

9. Manet's "Olympia" (Manet).

10. Millais' "Little Miss Muffett" (Millais, "Little Miss").

11. Millais' "Bubbles" (Millais, "Bubble").

12. Image from The Child's Companion (Drotner 41).

13. Image from Aunt Judy's Magazine (Drotner 82).

14. Britney Spears on the cover of Rolling Stone (Selinger).

15. Kate Moss in a Calvin Klein advertisement (Toccafondi).

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