When We Were Just Girls : A Widespread Culture of Sexploitation

How Lolita media and Britney Spears’s past exemplify destructive media-driven pressure to be sexualized from a young age

By Nina Afremov

September 29, 2021: the day the world was buzzing because Britney Spears was no longer under her father’s control as a result of a court-ordered conservatorship in 2008. Britney had been given the chance to choose her own representation. The entertainment media have been giving attention to the issue, creating the Free Britney Movement. For example, various streaming services have released documentaries about Britney’s career and the legal pressure that she has been under. 

Like many college students, I took the liberty to educate myself by watching “Framing Britney Spears” on Hulu, searching to understand how America’s sweetheart came to be the object of such marked exploitation. But what I find most compelling about the story is what wasn’t said. Within the first ten minutes, we see a clip of Britney as a child, singing onstage with a soulful growl. Fast forward ten minutes later and there’s 16-year-old Britney, dancing in a high school hallway, singing in a baby voice, and wearing a full face of makeup and a sexy schoolgirl outfit that would never make dress code.

To me, this representation is a bit disturbing, especially considering that the target audience was tween and teenage girls; yet the interviewees glamorized this overtly sexual marketing. “New York Times” critic Wesley Morris said, “If you’re 12 or 13 years old, you’re seeing a person who reminds you in some ways of you. It isn’t the sex part that seems cool. It is the control and command over herself and her space that seems cool.” 

Jive Records’s marketer and Britney’s first marketer Kim Kaiman also said, “She just captured that dichotomy so well of what a teenage girl is. Teenage girls want to be adult women, but they also are kids.” I found it curious how Britney’s marketer stated this as if it was coincidental rather than a calculated detail. Britney was intentionally sexualized as a young girl to gain fame and to make money for other people. 

People first saw value in Britney’s “virginal but sexy” look, which later became the object of her earliest criticisms from parents and journalists. In the Hulu documentary, we see clip after clip of journalists and parents berating her for her expression of sexuality; one middle-aged male interviewee takes the spotlight during a one-on-one with Britney to discuss her breasts. Even aside from that, what caught my attention was an interviewee comparing Britney to Lolita, which certainly coincides with the aesthetic in media that represents both sexiness and girliness. 

The Lolita aesthetic that the interviewee alluded to is derived from the Vladimir Nabokov novel by the same name. “Lolita” follows a charming European emigree, Humbert Humbert, who falls in love with the young Dolores, the daughter of his landlord, whom he gives various nicknames to such as “Dolly,” “nymphet,” and the book’s namesake, “Lolita.” To delve deeper into the impact this book has had on our entertainment culture, I spoke with English department senior lecturer Chris Kamerbeek.

“One thing I think is absolutely central is the game the narration is playing, which is something like ‘what would the monster say?’” he said, regarding the style of the story. “Humbert’s story is a confession and his narration is anything but transparent or reliable; the close reader learns to read against or past what the narrator is telling us, to pay attention to how he justifies or obfuscates, how he might reveal what he’s attempting to conceal.” 

In turn, readers must dissect the text with a critical eye to see past the abuser’s unreliable narration. “We can glimpse a version of Lolita (the character and the novel) through the cracks in the narration that subvert the fantasy and makes manifest the real human damage wreaked by Humbert’s predation.” 

Kamerbeek and I came to the understanding that this novel is a cautionary tale in a sense; but it’s ambiguous whether the story specifically warns against child predation. There is one interpretation that Nabokov was quick to condemn: the idea that Humbert is the victim of a young temptress. 

It is a sickening thought that the young girl is the orchestrator of her own fall from grace given the power dynamics between her and Humbert. Yet it is a sentiment that has prevailed in Lolita-esque media, particularly the 1997 film adaptation directed by Adrian Lyne, an infamous “sexpolitation” director. His work is essentially pornography—but don’t worry! They sometimes had a stunt double stand in for the underaged actress, Dominique Swain, during the sex scenes. 

One of the aspects of this film adaptation that I find notable is that Dolores is sexualized in a way she wasn’t in the book or in the 1962 film adaptation. But what can you expect from a sexploitation director? As Kamerbeek said, “[It] is a pretty stark indication that the film is going to steer directly into a ‘sexploitation’ reading of the text.” Additionally, it has fed into the narrative that Humbert should be the object of sympathy and that “Lolita” is actually a love story. Ick. 

What’s most devastating to me is the effect that the 1997 film has had on young girls since its release. The romanticization of Lolita among young girls began on Tumblr but has moved to TikTok. If you search “Lolita” on Tiktok, you’ll find cosplays, romantic montages of the film draped in Lana Del Rey audio, and young women confessing their attraction to the novel and movies when they were Dolores’s age. They wanted to be her, just like how young girls wanted to be Britney. In a lot of ways, I see Lolita and Britney as one and the same. Lolita was controlled by Humbert, like how Britney’s father took away her liberty. And yet even with these famous examples, society turns a blind eye to the processes behind it all. 

When we were girls, there was a societal pressure to be sexy that was driven by the media. Lolita and Britney are only two examples; how did this pressure affect women in our community? According to a poll conducted by “The Wake,” 88% of the 26 respondents reported feeling pressure to be sexy starting from a young age. When asked where this pressure came from, respondents said that it was from Tumblr, boys and men, the media, and celebrities. 

In regards to celebrity magazines, one respondent said, “I always felt like I should be on a beach with big beach waves in a provocative pose, even though I was like 14 and still had braces.” You want to know who else was 14 and had braces? Dolores from the 1997 adaptation. But I digress. It is clear that the pressure to be sexy came from external forces.

One respondent, who said she didn’t feel sexualized when she was a minor, said, “I was a follower of the original girl boss movement at the time so my mindset was ‘I don't need to sexualize myself to be pretty.’” In the term “pretty” and in the “sexiness” that girls are pressured to embody, there is the potential for empowerment; however, girls do not need to internalize this overarching societal message of sexiness to feel confident in themselves. 

The fact of the matter is that if you do successfully pull off “sexiness,” the systems that convinced you that it was the key to success and empowerment will find a way to exploit you. And it won’t just stop when you turn 18 and it’s more accepted to express yourself sexually. People will still find ways to exploit you. Unfortunately, Britney could not protect herself in the face of sexual exploitation as a child nor as an adult because she was not able to make decisions for herself as a result of the conservatorship. We see Britney back then and today as an empowering woman in control of her body on stage, but her reality is the opposite

Despite the celebrations over the end of the conservatorship, the fight is far from over. In reality, Britney’s father is suspended from being the conservator, but the conservatorship is still in place. I wonder if this could have been avoided if Britney was empowered from a young age for something other than marketed sexploitation. Would she have received less criticism? Either way, her dance skills, her voice, her smile, and the glimmer in her eyes when she performed would have been enough to win over the hearts of millions of girls, I promise you that.