Free the bush, save the world?

*This article was written sometime in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic and lockdown.*

My heart continually breaks for the state of our world, not for myself, but for our children. It’s evident something is terrifyingly wrong; unspeakable things are happening, and many of us are aching to do something, anything, to make the world safer for our kids. It’s hard to trust a solution will arise from a culture allowing memes to be considered reputable sources for scholarly articles.

Do you know which industry is the most significant contributor to child sex trafficking? I imagine this comes as no surprise, porn remains the greatest threat to children being kidnapped, raped, tortured, and sacrificed by wealthy men and women in the name of power and youthful vibrancy.

Arguably pornography is almost as old as sex itself. In every historical period, men and rarer cases, women would frequent brothels and whore houses to partake in all the forbidden devilish pleasures the world could offer. Brothels attracted another type of patron, voyeurs– those who only sought to watch the sex around them, to later depict it in their erotic art and literature. Thus, porn is born. By definition alone, the word pornography is of Greek origin, ‘porni’ meaning prostitute and ‘graphein,’ to write.

At the turn of the millennium, we began to see the sex of the gods depicted on the temples of many Eastern religions, and sexual instruction guides for the married, i.e., Kama Sutra, began to surface. Artistry changed as we ventured into the study of the human body, which one cannot study in any capacity without studying sex.

Men soon realized, even in study, the female form is quite arousing, making nude paintings popular selling items along the ports and trade roads, where men would frequently go years without seeing their wives.

In the 18th century, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the printing press birthed the world of Western pornography as we know it. The sudden boom in pornographic literature- better known as erotica- and art, led to a correlating boom in pornography shops. In fact, in the mid-1800s, during the reign of Queen Victoria, more than 50 pornographic shops could be found in London, on the ironically named, Holywell Street.

Rampant technological advancements in the 19th century took us into the uncharted territories of photography and filmography. In 1871 sexual imagery rose on the totem pole as the number one way to sell us our vices.

Pearl Cigarettes was a pioneer in sexualizing ad campaigns by featuring a naked lady on their package and a unique, pinup-style trading card found inside each box. I’m sure it’s not hard to imagine by 1920, pornographic imagery was widely available across every socioeconomic platform.

The society we have built on ‘sex sells’ has positioned us upon a dangerous and slippery slope of rapidly evolving marketing strategies to sell us sex in new ways, challenging our morality. Picture this example from a 1950s ad for Chase & Sanborn coffee; a black and white cartoon, the husband is in a dining chair, the wife bent over his knee, his arm raised as if preparing to spank her for not buying the right coffee. Sure, it seems more sexist than sexual. Let me ask you this; where, in nature, do men spank? Men spank their children. When we allow one loose association– treating our wives like our children, –do we then open the door to other things, darker things?

Around these same periods, we allowed the sexualization of paternal endearments like ‘Daddy’ by normalizing the sexual relationships of women who are 18-24 years old with men who are 45-95 years old; this is called a ‘Sugar Daddy.’

Big Daddy was a common term used in the oil fields referring to the Big Boss, the top dog. It didn’t take long for sexualized versions of ‘Daddy’ to show up in ad marketing and porn; everybody wants to be the boss, right? I have to ask, where in nature do you hear a man being called Daddy? His children call him Daddy.

In the 70s, Love’s Baby Soft launched this ad campaign; depicted is a young woman, who looks childlike, with phallic-shaped, pink shampoo bottles, the caption reads “Loves Baby Soft: Innocence is sexier than you think.”

Roughly the same time we allowed innocence to be sexualized, a new hairstyle emerged for women; it wasn’t a style for your head like the beehive, but one marketed for you to wear with the brand new bikinis that were all the rage. Yes, I’m talking about the still, wildly popular Brazilian wax or the removal of all your pubic hair.

My generation, those born after 1985, came of age in the world of the internet. Imagine my surprise when I asked Jeeves to show me ‘naked butts,’ which resulted in a whole lot of body pictures that didn’t look like mine. None of the women seemed to have any hair in the places I did. I felt too ashamed to turn to my mother to ask what was normal. Instead, I trusted the internet, assuming I was the strange one. Who could love a hairy monster?

To heal the young girl in me who has a wound from learning about sex on the internet, I must ask, where in nature do we find hairless vaginas? Little girls have hairless vaginas.

I’ll leave you with a final thought; numerous studies, like this one, have been conducted on perception and reality, consider this; Do your perceptions become your reality? Is it possible we are where we are because we have allowed the sexualization of children to be placed in our field of vision and sold to us under the guise of materialism?

In these moments I am reminded of a prayerful song I learned as a child;

Be careful little eyes what you see.

Be careful little ears what you hear.

Be careful little mouth what you say.

For the Father up above, He is looking down with love.

I don’t have the solution to end child sex trafficking, but if there is one thing I can do, it’s use my voice to interrupt this thought pattern so we can stand up and say to the powers that be, we see what you are doing, and we will not allow it anymore. I hope you go forward with eyes more attuned to the things hidden in plain sight.

For the skimmers:

Don’t forget to wash your hands.

Talk soon.