I'm not completely convinced that Henson is a pederast. People are born naked and in some cultures nude children run around with the nude adults. I don't think nudity in itself is enough to make something pornographic. It's kind of strange, but on Youtube, you can see all kinds of foot-fetish videos, but nudity is forbidden. It raises the question to me, where is porn and when does something become porn (and in this case child porn).

In the US, the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act made virtual child porn illegal. The Supreme Court invalidated that part in 2002. THe reasoning was that the law could protect kids from exploitation, but could not restrict freedom of expression. which is why we treat kids differently than adults. Adults can protect themselves.

I find those child beauty pageants disturbing precisely because of the pervs who attend and the intentional sexualization of the kids. The kids don't seem to even notice they are being exploited - not that their ignorance excuses the poor judgment of their parents.

I admit I am uncomfortable with what Henson is doing. But assume that the under-aged model was not exploited. Assume she was a well-adjusted and mature young woman with nice, caring parents (I do not know this to be the case at all). Does that imply the crime (i.e. the pornography) is in my perception and not in the photograph, itself? Is it the titilation that we want to stop? A photograph is just a bunch of colored dots and isn't an actual person (though a person posed for it).

But to back up for a second, Alex's primary problem seems to be with the artists' habit of trying to shock. Artist do this because it has worked in the past. Parisian society was shocked by Dejeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia. But Manet was shocked by their shock. He wasn't even trying to shock. Now he is recognized as a genius. The lesson artists have extracted from this sort of anecdote is that if they are shocking, they are doing their job.

Unfortunately, Mapplethorpe already shocked us this way, so Henson isn't even doing that much. In a sense, by being shocked, you've given Henson the victory he wanted.

And I would NEVER have a picture like that hanging on my wall.