The Jailbait Game

So, how old is this girl? If you can't tell, look at her again, here. If you still can't tell, you're not alone. If you got a little...umm...distracted...by her hotness, you're gearing up for a career in the clink, as she's a mere 15.

Which makes her yet another exhibit in the "I can't believe it's not legal!" gallery of fashion models. The most famous models in the world are probably those Victoria's Secret girls, who manage to look both vapid and mysterious at the same time, and also signify the tense relationship between celebrity and product, between endorser and endorsee. Most are Brazilian, which means they're at once Brazil's most famous citizens and its most profitable export. In a sense, they are the product, which is good, because most of them are probably too old to get work as actual models anymore.

I'm not trying to be mean, I swear! My point is, the modeling industry is a little crappy, but I normally wouldn't care - except in the case of 13-year-olds passing themselves off as sexually mature adult women. It kind of blurs the distinction for most of us as to what an adult woman actually looks like, and tacitly promotes barely-pubescent teenagers as a sexual ideal. (And for all the dudes out there who say they can't help what they're attracted to, the New York Times would like a word.) I don't know if models were always so young, but I wasn't always alive to comment on it, so again, I don't care.

The moral is: at the risk of whining, it does seem like a symptom of serious malaise that the "hottest women in the world" (isn't that what models are supposed to be, eh?) are not, in most nations on earth, above the age of legal consent.