ABSTRACT
In June 1957 Brenda Lee, ‘the little girl with grown up reactions’ released her single ‘Dynamite’. Recorded when she was 13 years old, her vocal delivery abounds with an overtly physical and self-conscious sexual energy that belies her age. What makes her ‘sexy’ is the sense of ‘knowingness’ behind what might appear to be innocent lyrics, the erotic pause before a punch line pregnant with innuendo – ‘one hour of love tonight just knocks me out like dynamite’, with the inference of post-orgasmic exhaustion. I was 16 when the song was released and thought little about the exploitation of young vocalists. Rather, I wondered how someone so young could be so confident, so popular. She obviously possessed that special ‘something’ that singled her out as ‘star’ potential, a quality shared by such other young performers as Helen Shapiro who, as a 14-year-old school girl scored her first UK Top 3 hit with ‘Don’t Treat Me Like A Child’ and whose deep intonation again belied her age. My reaction, then, was more likely to have been ‘Lucky them!’ rather than ‘sexploitation’. With age and experience – not least the legacy of feminism and feminist theory and its concern with child abuse – I am more cynical. The erotic potential and appeal of children, not least the attraction of what can be described as an adult performance by a child, continues to exert a questionable appeal. In the profit-driven world of advertising, fashion and music, the image and culture of the young are appropriated for the high pleasure quotient they evoke. Youthful appeal and sexual allure are marketable commodities and are consumed today not simply by teens and adults but equally by the growing market of tweenies, the 8–10 year-olds who make up the majority fan base for girl and boy bands. Fame, however, comes at a cost and as Dr Michelle Elliott of the Children’s Charity Kidscape states: ‘We have found that with most child stars their journey into adulthood isn’t successful. Children need to be children’ (Le Vay, 2003, 6).
