Why It’s A Good Thing To Be Disgusted By ‘Cuties’

Back when Netflix first introduced its poster for “Cuties,” it immediately — and rightly — met disgust for the way it sexualized children. While Netflix tried to dismiss this as a glitch in the marketing, the film’s release reveals that as a lie. The content of the film is actually worse than what the poster implied.

Now, the pretense is that the film is actually a statement against the sexualization of little girls. Yet, whatever the alleged message the creators intended to convey, they clearly exploited actual children in its production, put it to film, and distributed it for mass consumption. Fighting the hypersexualization of children by depicting hypersexualized children is nonsensical.

A more reasonable conclusion to draw is that producing and normalizing child sexualization is, sadly, what’s going on here. After all, filmmakers have managed to tell stories about other serious subjects like rape and murder without actually raping or murdering anyone as part of the production.

It’s only natural to react to this with exactly the kind of outrage that Netflix is currently reaping. Sexually exploiting children is so revolting that anyone would recoil in disgust when presented with the kind of material in “Cuties.”

Except not everyone is disgusted. The film made it through layers upon layers of writers, actors, producers, and marketers who thought it was a great idea—even to the point of giving it awards.