The images were taken by fashion photographer Gary Gross; Shields’ mother, Teri Shields, made $450 off them at the time. Gross died in his home of a heart attack in 2010, without ever facing any legal justice; Teri Shields died in 2012, also without any sort of consequence for pimping out her child daughter. No one involved with the Playboy shoot faced any kind of punishment, as far as I can tell, and the magazine can still be bought on Amazon, where it’s now a “collectible” worth $350 (a reviewer who identifies himself only as “Dan” says about it that “The book is so expensive because of the Brooke Shields photos, but truth be known there are only two of the controversial photos of Brooke in the book, and 3 pages of other nymphets. Still the overall quality of the book is great.”).
An artist named Richard Prince later displayed the photo in his own series called “Spiritual America”, where it was finally taken down by the police on charges of possible obscenity; Gary Gross, the original photographer, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the decision to remove the photograph, which “has been infamous from the day I took it and I intended it to be.” Richard Prince is still alive, has also never faced any sort of legal action beyond being sued once for copyright infringement, and, horrifyingly, has two children of his own.
This is NOT something we’ve left in the past. Consider Gross’s lawyers’ defense of the image:
Gross’s lawyers argued that his photographs could not further damage Shields’s reputation because, since they were taken, she had made a profitable career “as a young vamp and a harlot, a seasoned sexual veteran, a provocative child-woman, an erotic and sensual sex symbol, the Lolita of her generation”. The judge concurred and, while praising the pictures’ “sultry, sensual appeal”, ruled that Gross was not a pornographer: “They have no erotic appeal except to possibly perverse minds.” That decision was overturned by an appeals court, but in 1983 the original verdict in Gross’s favour was upheld.
Yeah, a “provocative child-woman”; it’s not child porn, it’s just images of a naked child with a “sultry, sensual appeal.”
The “no erotic appeal except to possibly perverse minds” argument is one you still hear a lot on places like this site, by people arguing that there’s nothing wrong with young girls dressing like hookers or with the ridiculous oversexualization of a lot of little girls on social media - “well, if this is sexual to you then you’re just a pervert.” This is literally an argument that’s been used for decades to justify actual child porn, and it’s just as sick today as it was in the past, and perhaps worst of all is it’s still an effective argument - at least for shutting people down. It’s not child porn, it’s just “art” and you’re the pervert if you think there’s anything inherently sexual about it.
And remember that Hillary Clinton, in her defense of child rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor, said that the victim was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.” Almost the same defense, again, used against a child victim: that she was sexually mature for her age, that she used to seek out older men and so there was nothing wrong with using her in a sexual way; if she’s a “provocative child-woman” then it’s all right to make child porn of her, or to rape her, and apparently the legal system overwhelmingly agrees.
People like this have been using the same excuses for a long time, and the legal system has been allowing them to get away with it for a long time.
turnnoffyourmind
jimmyeatworldofficial
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
