\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnd for whoever\u2019s hammering my inbox, no, when I was Hollywood I did work with a management company that had a line in kids/teens but really I didn\u2019t see any dirty stuff
the \u201cdirty, exploitative\u201d gossip I heard was how aspiring stage moms would pay to go to \u201ctalent expos\u201d in, like, Hawai\u2019i, where agents would be paid to fly in and sleep with EACH OTHER and have a vacation and AT BEST some of these kids would get a chance to move to LA to try to make money for the agents
for all that there WERE hypersexual 14-year-olds with moms who vicariously enjoyed the attention
and the most earnest stage parents who would bend their morals - I remember an evangelical family who didn\u2019t want their elementary-age angel in stuff that said mild curses, but when Scientologists solicited him for an internal campaign that paid, and I called up saying \u201cyou probably aren\u2019t interested but it\u2019s my job to ask?\u201d they were like \u201cwelllllll\u201d
The sexualization is probably hardest on girls 14-18 in part because of all the \u201cprotective\u201d regulations on young actors, as the result of which they\u2019re part of a set-aside-from-normal life system to accommodate, with all sorts of structures and dynamics and local elites that don\u2019t really interact with anything outside of it, but at that point the parents aren\u2019t a load-bearing part.
But to complicate, actresses that age are selected on being able to (sexily) appear younger, for characters of that age you just cast runty 18-year-olds with a lot less regulatory hassle.
Like not as if without regulation child stars wouldn\u2019t be enmeshed in a parallel world full of scumbags, but point being the existing system was co-opted long ago and is in no way a relief from that.
Also note that this dynamic affects how we think of the maturity of teenagers: if you go off mass media depictions and picture an 18-year-old you’re probably thinking of a 22-26 year old (or older \u2013 Luke Perry famously developed a receding hairline while playing a high school heartthrob on the 90s teen nighttime soap Beverly Hills, 90210) and your image of “a fifteen-year-old” is really 18 or 19.
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