as an older teen girl who now works around and helps a lot of my younger peers, the catcalling experience and outfit you described reminds me so much of so many of the girls I help now, it’s just so interesting going through that experience myself and in turn understanding how society normalizes the exploitation of young girls youth and how so many of us partake in it, completely unaware and how it’s such a vicious cycle that now I look at girls who are younger than me partake in it, completely unaware, just like I once was, unable to say anything to them and it breaks my heart
It wasn't even a conversation when I was that age. I was born in 88 and people barely raised an eyebrow at grown men pursuing teenagers. We were always told girls mature at a younger age than boys 🙄
I really don’t appreciate the little girls being naked, since it puts them into a weird situation. But it was an amazing narrative about girlhood and how the male gaze follows us, even when we are unaware
Beautiful commentary and essay. THERES something so fascinating about the dystopian like expectations that have been put on us before we were born. I’m glad though that society as a whole is probably more accepting as before, from what I can tell. People gotta stick together, and this video highlights it. Looking forward to your next work!
I spent a lot of my childhood running through the woods, climbing trees, hunting for bones, and pretending to be a witch in the forest. When I got home, my mother and I would argue because I got my pretty dress dirty or I skinned or bruised my knees. I remember angrily thinking that my mother wanted a pretty doll on the shelf, where I wanted to be a child and run and explore and play pretend.
Lucile Hadzihalilovic is such an underrated director and deserve an equal recognition as her husband Gaspar Noé. (Btw, this movie is dedicated to her frequent collaborator Noé - "pour Gaspar.") I remember watching her follow-up feature film Evolution in theater (it was considered as the male counterpart to Innocence) and it was also captivating as Innocence.
I think that it's very telling (whether or not it is intentional) that there don't seem to be any black or dark skinned girls depicted in this film (though maybe there are in the background that I just didn't see). As black girls and women, our girlhood is not decorated with the illusions of purity, femininity safety the way our white and lighter skinned counterparts tend to be. This often means that our girlhood isn't considered "girlhood" at all, despite the fact that we experience the same grooming and exploitation. So much of feminine grooming in white supremacist patriarchal capitalist imperialism is about aesthetic; and that aesthetic is supposed to be a pure as those school uniforms.
OOOF! This one hit me hard. I was 10 when I first got my period. I had breasts in elementary school, and was mocked for it, and sexualized by boys and men. When my Nana took me shopping for bras, I wanted tight sport's bras to flatten as much as possible. The amount of men who catcalled me before I even reached high school is abysmal. The men who were meant to be trust-worrhy making creepy, inappropriate comments or requests. I was forced to grow uo too soon.
as someone who was brought up incredibly religious (muslim to be exact), this movie will always be near and dear to me. the permeating creepiness throughout the movie is how i felt whenever i was told to not do certain things because it was shameful or would elicit excitement from men. i wasn’t even allowed to do these things in my own house god forbid. and although i loathe the film’s use of child nudity and the voyeuristic camera angles, i did unfortunately relate to always feeling like i was being watched. like someone was enjoying what they were seeing and they were always out of sight somehow. crossing legs became some sort of sexual provocation and so did enjoying a popsicle. i think that’s why i always feared being a women or getting older because then i wouldn’t have plausible deniability anymore. i wouldn’t be innocent anymore. I would be asking for it.
