Sara Cole says:
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm – Edit

I agree that the images are deeply disturbing. If they are supposed to be representing 12-13 year old girls, they have chosen to do so by erasing the actual girls the ad is supposed to serve, and replacing them with an obviously false, fabricated myth of a person. No-one thinks a person with a 22-yo body has a 6-yo mind, even if she IS only 14– so I think the ad discredits itself immediately with any viewer– and it’s fun for that minority of sickos who will be turned on by an image that combines sexualized children AND decapitation. From their perspective: cool free erotica from the anti-rape advocates!

My sister looked 18 at 12, and 21 by 14. She was routinely mistaken for an adult and she got a lot of attention for it– including intense negative attention in school. Even teachers who KNOW the girls’ ages will often automatically treat more-developed or large-chested girls as slutty and dangerous, no matter what those girls do or how they act. My cousin was the same as my sister. I’m 30 and most people think I’m underage- as long as my saggy boobs are in a sling. Lol.

It seems like the ad might work just as well or better with real girls in it. A picture of a girl like my sister at 12, with the words underneath “She’s 12!” A picture of a girl like my cousin at 14 with the words underneath “She’s 14!”

“At any rate, directing age-of-consent awareness at males is a losing battle, I’m sad to say. ”

This is just a variation on the argument that it is women’s responsibility to avoid rape and that men can’t be taught to control their behavior.

I also just don’t believe anyone who says they can ‘tell anyone’s age.’ How do you know you’re always right? You know the ages of the teens you work with because you work with them– anyone who is there to work with you is obviously a teen. Many people’s age ranges will be indicated by context, giving you anecdotal positive feedback every time you guess correctly. Have you experimented with strangers in public to find out if you’re actually accurate? Have you guessed lots of people’s ages, then gone up and asked them to find out if you were right? Even if you DO have a magical ability to tell anyone’s age accurately, it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone will have an ability you developed through years of working in a particular field.

No, there’s no special training involved. I work in a public library, and so I don’t have prior expectations of the patrons’ ages before I see them. I also deal with people who are three years old, and people in their seventies. I see women who are in their late teens and twenties. But I can confirm my guess at adolescents’ ages by seeing their school IDs or looking at their library records. And I tend to be right – because – amazing revelation! – people’s bodies change with age. As does their speech, and their mannerisms.

I had no special training in guessing ages. I rely on things like voice, mannerisms, what they say, and I rely on what they look like.

It’s automatic . And I’ve yet to meet a twelve year old who really looked liked an eighteen year old. I’ve met twelve year olds who have really developed bodies (read: big boobs and shapely figures). But they don’t look like eighteen year olds. They look like girls in their early years of adolescence who are built, to use a crude and kind of anachronistic term. I may mistake a twelve year old for being thirteen, but I’ve never been off by six whole years. The body is very different between a developed twelve year old and an eighteen year old, no matter what the body type is (voluptuous, or slim-hipped, or whatever). And the six years between twelve and eighteen is an important six years in terms of physical changes. Where I really have difficulty is determining the spectrum between twelve and thirteen or so, which is a necessary distinction with the way our system works (over twelve and one gets “adult” privileges). Sometimes a kid will lie, and say she’s twelve when she’s fourteen, or that she’s thirteen when she’s only twelve. But I haven’t had any young teens try to pass themselves off as eighteen. They know they can’t get away with that big a lie – even though they may get frequently leered at on the street or at the library, they’re pretty cognizant of the fact that they can’t really pass for a legal adult.

Your sister must have had a really unique physiognomy to truly look eighteen at the age of twelve. Then again, unlike my situation, you’re not unbiased when “guessing” how old she looks. You did have prior knowledge of how old she was. So you “guessed” that she really looked eighteen.

Like Sophonisba said, you don’t have to be a wizard. You just have to look. And I’m not that terribly observant a person – I can know someone for years and be unable to remember what color eyes they had. It really didn’t take any effort on my part to figure out guessing ages – it’s kind of automatic, like how a pug looks different from a labrador retriever.

And, sorry, Sara Cole, it’s not the same as saying that men can’t be held accountable for their behavior. They certainly can. It’s just that men who are drawn to jailbait obviously don’t care to control their behavior. Everyone knows that there are statutory rape laws. The ads are preaching to an audience that couldn’t give a fuck about the message. You’d really need to have a combination of particular circumstances – a girl lying about her age, meeting a guy who doesn’t know anything about her, the girl being up for some anonymous sex with a stranger, and the guy being so clueless that he can’t catch obvious cues in mannerisms, speech, and physical attributes – for some innocent adult to accidentally have sex with a girl under the age of consent. Sure, that can and does happen, but it’s not usually what happens, is it? Mostly the girls are in “relationships” – the guy knows full well that she’s in junior high or early high school. And is just fine with it.

Maybe the ad is aimed at the hypothetical innocent guy, telling them to check a girl’s i.d. before sex. Doesn’t seem that way to me. It seems more like: “Hey, have a heart. You shouldn’t be cruising after underage girls. It’s just wrong.” Yeah, that’ll really make someone stop and think.

For the record, I really don’t have a problem with breaking the consent laws in circumstances where the parties are close in age. I had a co-worker who is under the age of consent by a year who was sexually active with her college age boyfriend. But there’s a two and half year age difference between them – they’re basically on the same page emotionally and mentally. If he was twenty-five, or thirty, then I’d be worried for her.

Yeah, I had the poor judgement of any other teenager (as I’m sure the above paragraph illustrates). Smarts do nothing for that, and neither does financial independence. I got myself in a fair bit of trouble and made a few pretty heavy mistakes. But age-related poor judgement doesn’t always make itself known through either appearance OR speech patterns/topics/etc. To claim that the only people who ever mistake teenagers for adults are deliberately predatory men is unrealistic, although they certainly exist in vast numbers.

I’ll also point out that my first bunch of sexual and romantic partners as that peculiar teenager were women. As a mid-twenties queer chick, that now seems a touch disturbing… but I still don’t think those women were deliberately preying on an obviously underage girl.

Even if you DO have a magical ability to tell anyone’s age accurately, it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone will have an ability you developed through years of working in a particular field.

Oh, come now. Unlike the other commenter, I have no specialized training, no background in teaching, and no children, and it took me all of a week working retail to learn to distinguish a group of high school girls from a group of college women. It just isn’t hard. We are not wizards, okay? We don’t have to be.

And who has said they can ‘tell anyone’s age’? I mistake forty year olds for thirty year olds all the time, and so what? What we can do is tell a girl in her early teens from a woman in her late teens. Sometimes, it is quite true, we have to talk to her for all of a couple minutes before we can tell. But this is something anyone can try, not only high school teachers and other such magicians.

My sister looked 18 at 12, and 21 by 14. She was routinely mistaken for an adult and she got a lot of attention for it– including intense negative attention in school. Even teachers who KNOW the girls’ ages will often automatically treat more-developed or large-chested girls as slutty and dangerous, no matter what those girls do or how they act. My cousin was the same as my sister. I’m 30 and most people think I’m underage- as long as my saggy boobs are in a sling. Lol.

It seems like the ad might work just as well or better with real girls in it. A picture of a girl like my sister at 12, with the words underneath “She’s 12!” A picture of a girl like my cousin at 14 with the words underneath “She’s 14!”

“At any rate, directing age-of-consent awareness at males is a losing battle, I’m sad to say. ”

This is just a variation on the argument that it is women’s responsibility to avoid rape and that men can’t be taught to control their behavior.

I also just don’t believe anyone who says they can ‘tell anyone’s age.’ How do you know you’re always right? You know the ages of the teens you work with because you work with them– anyone who is there to work with you is obviously a teen. Many people’s age ranges will be indicated by context, giving you anecdotal positive feedback every time you guess correctly. Have you experimented with strangers in public to find out if you’re actually accurate? Have you guessed lots of people’s ages, then gone up and asked them to find out if you were right? Even if you DO have a magical ability to tell anyone’s age accurately, it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone will have an ability you developed through years of working in a particular field.

It’s the predatory older men we worry about, and those are the men who are going to be most turned on by having sex with someone who “doesn’t have the brain” of an adult. So I don’t see quite what these ads will accomplish.