Copyrighted image from Danielle Corsetto. Visit her site for full-size version.
I’ve been really enjoying Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots comic strip since being turned on to it by an anonymous commenter on a previous post.
Her portrayal of 10-year-old boys in the strip behind this link is a little off. I mean, yes, yes, I get that the boy saying “Booobies” nicely reverses Hazel’s concern that she wouldn’t be a safe babysitter and her friend’s reassurance that the 10-year-old is “probably much more mature than you think.”
But still, when you say 10-year-olds you’re talking 4th and 5th graders. I’ve been spending… quite a bit of time with about 47 fifth graders lately. And even for the “mature” ones we’re still talking very pubescent children, not college freshmen!
Comics are funny in very large part because they’re precisely not actual real life. If a real-life little kid behaved the way this one does in this comic, the next one (“so how was baby-sitting last night?” “Hormonal, nerdy, perverted, and gross.” And, sardonically, “My, how unlike a 10-year-old-boy!”) and the way he and his on-line friends behave in this one that wouldn’t be “par for the course.” It wouldn’t be “boys will be boys.” It wouldn’t be “what a surprise.” It would be “speak immediately to the parents” and/or “talk to a child psychologist” and/or “contact child-protective services.”
Because, seriously, a 4th or 5th-grader addressing an adult only in terms of sexual body parts (e.g. “boobies!” and “oh, hi tits”) or, as in this strip, is making out aggressively with another child his age is, has been seriously and prematurely sexualized.
Funny in the funnies (no, really, it’s great bleak/dark/edgy humor) but at the same time it’s factually-incorrectly framing the narrative of all men, of all ages including childhood, as obligate, reflex, obsessive sexual beings.
The “no-sex” class paradigm* is a habit of mind, not reality. It’s a habit we want to break in ourselves. It’s a habit we don’t even want to start in children. Let alone encourage by setting expectations.
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Just to be clear I’m really, really not knocking Corsetto. The comic that was current when I first visited her site was also bleak, also a good poke at gender stereotypes, and also pretty funny. Particularly funny when you’re aware that both the gay man and the straight one in the final panel are deluding themselves — a point Corsetto makes clear with, for instance, the perpetually dateless main character Hazel.
* With apologies to Plymouth
As I understand it from
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-10 14:19.As I understand it from reading through the whole thing, the situation eventually turns out the 10-yr-old’s mother doesn’t understand where babies come from – and the 10-yr-old himself doesn’t actually understand why boobies, or making out, are supposed to be so interesting. In a way it’s a criticism of abstinence-only sex-ed, but taken to absurd extremes (which is, of course, one of the staples of comic effect).
And that “we know it’s interesting but not really why” thing is something I definitely remember from my peers when I was 10 years old, so to me it actually rang true in that strip.
It’s sick to portray 10 year
Submitted by Red (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-10 18:01.It’s sick to portray 10 year old boys as being that sex obsessed. A good chuck of them aren’t going to be clearly interested in girls for four more years or more. And even those who are can be quite shy.
I was babysitting a very
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-10 19:15.I was babysitting a very young girl once, about four years old, who out of nowhere in the middle of playtime yelled out “that’s your boobie!” and poked my breast. I was startled, and talked with the mom about it afterwards, but we were both fairly sure she didn’t mean anything sexual by it; she was in the stage where she’d go “that’s your nose!” and “that’s your shoes!” with the same enthusiasm.
By ten, though, I really hope she’s outgrown that sort of thing.
(Also: the kids are BIG these days! The other day I had to transport a 12-year-old girl, and I walked into the room expecting a kid, and a 5-foot-6 fully developed WOMAN was sitting on the bed. I hate to be all alarmist about “oh no it’s the beef hormones” or whatever, but the kids in today’s middle schools seem about two years further into puberty than I was at their age.)
The average default age for
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-10 20:33.The average default age for puberty is about 16 years. With modern nutrition, and it drops about 2-3 years. Add in the stress of being forced to grow up too soon mentally in some ways due to parents never being around thanks to the modern economy (too busy working, and too exhausted to take proper care of them when they’re not working), and the body tends to follow – it drops another 2-3 years. The result is kids going through puberty as early as age 9 and reaching their full adult size as early as age 12 (though that’s still somewhat rare; it’s usually more like 11 and 15). So while it’s a trend, it won’t get much worse than this. Probably.
My older son is ten, and this
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-11 08:35.My older son is ten, and this weekend he was extremely passionate about … building a pendulum that would keep swinging as long as possible. The thirteen-year-old boys I know are pretty similar.
I don’t know if we just live in a relatively sheltered community, with friends who don’t let their kids watch oodles of music videos – or if this is typical in less sheltered spots, too. I certainly see thirteen-year-old girls who are already very into acting sexy.
[Hi Sungold. “I don’t know if we just live in a relatively sheltered community…” I don’t think so. If anything I think that if there are communities where it’s normal for 10-year-old boys to be that sexualized they’re… whatever the opposite of “sheltered” is. Girls on the other hand are subjected to a lot more of it. There the whole “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant business, but I’m sort of afraid that since the idea of beauty pageants is that grown women are supposed to be sexualized, yes, but not actually sexual there might paradoxically be somewhat less risk to small girls. That’s somewhat less risk, by the way, which isn’t the same as no risk. At all. Thanks. —fl]