"Cuties" movie

So I finally took the time to watch that "Cuties" movie every one is losing their minds about. After watching the whole thing, my conclusion is rather straight-forward:

You all need to grow the hell up.

The movie tells the story of an 11-year-old girl from a Muslim family that migrated to France. It portrays the clash between Muslim and French values with regards to sexuality, and women in general. It does so through the perspective of a kid watching her Muslim mother organize a wedding between her husband and his second wife, while starting to develop her own sexuality in the rather liberal context of a French public school.

"Wait a second... 'developing her own sexuality?'. Isn't the movie about an 11-year-old?"

Yes. People seem to have forgotten a very basic biological fact: puberty hits kids at around 11/12 years of age and, from that moment on, they start maturing sexually - which means they have to slowly, and painfully learn how to deal with sexuality. Kids learn by imitating adults, which is why hyper-sexualized female artists - from Madonna, to The Spice Girls, to The Pussycat Dolls, to Cardi B - have always been extremely popular with girls that age.

If a teenager grows up in a relatively healthy environment, it is allowed to experiment with other teenagers to a certain degree, and thus mature into a healthy adult, who understands things like consent, privacy, hygiene and the emotional attachment that comes with sex. If it grows up without boundaries set by responsible adults, this experimentation gets out of hand, and you get teen pregnancy. If it grows up in an oppressive environment, with unreasonable boundaries set by repressed adults, it is not allowed to develop, and is likely to become sexually frustrated later in life.

I was born and raised in northern Brazil - a place that has largely inherited the sexual freedom of Native Americans along with their distaste for private property. Because of that, I've always been confused by how a country as culturally and politically developed as the US, can still be so overwhelmed by sex - and in that sense, so similar to primitive religious societies.

Unlike the Portuguese, British colonizers were actually serious about Christianity, so you guys ended up with a culture that sexually represses teens early on - by charging 12 year old boys with sexual assault, for example. The same culture then says "well, you're an adult now, so handle it" when they grow past 18 - and then struggles to understand problems like slut-shaming, porn addiction, pedophilia, date rape, and the inability to watch kids dancing in tights without getting uncomfortable sexual feelings. This has now been amplified as an understandable reaction to the post-modern left's banalization of sex.

"Alright, I get the point. Kids have to develop sexually, and we're more weirded out by that than we should be. Doesn't the movie take it too far, though?"

Yes, and that's the entire point of the movie. Although the scenes do seem way worse when taken out of context, the movie itself is by no means comfortable to watch. The main character is a girl who, unlike her friends, isn't allowed to develop in a healthy manner, and hyper-sexualizes herself as an aggressive reaction against her family. It's not a pretty story, but it's far from the pedophile fantasy conservatives are making it out to be - in fact, claiming it's an apology to pedophilia is a result of the very sexual repression the movie criticizes.

Since the internet is rather childish when it comes to sex, and no one is addressing this basic issue, I'll spend a few more posts talking about sexuality and other gross, uncomfortable grown-up things.