{ "article": { "title" : "Against Kurdish Erasure: From the editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard", "author" : "Holly Mason Badra", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/against-kurdish-erasure", "date" : "2026-02-11 09:17:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/img_0230-copy.jpg", "excerpt" : "Excerpts from Sleeping in the Courtyard, edited by Holly Mason Badra:", "content" : "Excerpts from Sleeping in the Courtyard, edited by Holly Mason Badra: “My Roots Were Somewhere With You” by Nahid Arjouni “Dream and Reality” by Meral Şimşek “Waiting” by Holly Mason BadraWith Kurds in Rojava (Western Kurdistan) and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) facing insurmountable violence and displacement at the hands of the Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish forces, we in diaspora mobilize in anger and strength. Rojava offers an example of Kurdish liberation so rooted in feminist, ecological, and participatory practices that it must be protected. The threat of erasure follows us from Rojava to Rojhelat where the martyrs that spark revolution and move us to action across the globe are Kurdish women like Jina Amini and Rubina Aminian. It’s imperative to acknowledge their Kurdish identity as we remember and point to them as conduits.It is within this spirit of anti-erasure that I initially put together Sleeping in the Courtyard, a multi-genre collection of writing by contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living all over the world. One of the contributors, Choman Hardi, fiercely proclaims, “As a poet, I believe it is my duty to ruin the façade of normality and fairness that prevails.” It is within this current landscape that I invite you to spend time with some poems from the collection and excerpts from the book’s introduction as our communities resist erasure.Sleeping in the Courtyard cover image by Shayan NuradeenDedicated to all writers in exile.Many of the women in this book are writers in exile. They are exiled simply for being women and being writers (the two coexisting at once poses a threat). The fact that the intersecting identity as a Kurdish woman daring to write often means risking one’s safety—simply for writing creatively—also proves that there must inherently be power in writing, if these women are seen as a threat just for doing it.Exile and erasure are tools of the oppressor.This collection is the antithesis of erasure. In 2022, when the phrase “Women Life Freedom” rang out in protests transnationally and across digital spaces in response to the death of Jîna Mahsa Amini, many in the Kurdish community felt a twinge of pain and frustration at the lack of recognition for where this outcry originates. “Women Life Freedom” comes from the Kurdish “Jin-Jiyan-Azadî,” which is a verbalization from Kurdish women’s liberation movements. More than that, though, there was pain for the erasure of Jîna’s name and identity as a Kurdish woman. Arrested by the Iranian state for improperly wearing her hijab, the protests in response that spread worldwide were not anti-hijab campaigns but more about the right to choose. The martyr who sparked the revolution that famous writers such as Marjane Satrapi have written about was a Kurdish woman.Why is it important to recognize her as Kurdish? Why is it important to note the origins of “Women Life Freedom” as Kurdish? Because of the way that Kurdish women are erased from the narrative and Kurdish cultural production is co-opted. More than that, it was the Iranian state that forced Jîna to go by her “official” government name, so it perpetuates further violence when she is not referred to by her Kurdish name in death. It perpetuates further violence when a phrase from Kurdish women’s freedom movements is used in spaces where Kurdish culture and existence is suppressed and criminalized. To gain a deeper understanding of these contexts and implications, turn to “Why ‘Jîna’: Erasure of Kurdish Women and Their Politics from the Uprisings in Iran” by Farangis Ghaderi and Ozlem Goner. The goal here is not to defame the power and necessity of this movement for Iranian women (and Kurdish women alike). The point here is that within feminist solidarities, there must be a recognition of Kurdish women’s roles and contributions in order for true liberation and justice to take place. This book uplifts and spotlights the role that Kurdish women (past and present) play in social, political, and cultural progress.*A group of Kurdish college students posing with their musical instruments by Pirdí Delal. Zaxo, Kurdistan, 1970’s.Photo credit: Raz Xaidan/The Jiyan Archives“I open my ponytail in class and the horses shriek.”This line is from Nahid Arjouni’s poem “My Roots Were Somewhere With You” and constantly plays in my mind. I’ve been so moved by the circulating imagery of Kurdish fathers braiding their daughters’ hair. This tenderness is balm and antidote. This tenderness falls against a backdrop of continued state violence while Kurds in Rojava and Rojhelat are fighting for their existence and rights against the Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian regimes. Erasure continues in multiple forms and in dangerous misrepresentations.This emergence of braiding as protest is in response to a video of a Syrian soldier claiming he cut off a Kurdish female fighter’s braid in Raqqa. The Kurdish braid is a loud symbol. It’s a representation of cultural continuity and protection.Power and Politics in Kurdish Women’s BraidsI want to tell you a story about my mother braiding her little sister’s hair in Baghdad. She braided her sister’s hair while their father napped. While braiding her sister’s hair, they practiced the Arabic they were learning in school. Only Arabic in public; only Kurdish at home. These were the rules and a slip up in either space was punishable. Their father woke. Small hands braiding, sisters talking and laughing, and he physically reprimanded them for the linguistic transgression. Such anger and violence. And it comes from a deep well of oppression and linguicide. Still, the daughters bear the weight of it all.I see the man who held the female peshmerga’s braid walking back his claims, saying it wasn’t real, it was a joke. Regardless of the truth—the “joke” holds hefty reverberations. The “joke” is offensive, it’s harmful, it’s violent. It speaks to perceptions of Kurdish dispensability.The same aunt—whose hair my mom was braiding—brushed and braided my hair when I was 5 days postpartum. I felt comfort return to my body. When my sister-cousin braids my hair, I feel loved and protected. The tradition lives on. This display of braiding spreading among our communities all over the world is a refusal. A refusal to be erased.Possibly a double exposure or composite, this 1977 image shows a woman pictured twice - confident, braided, and in sunglasses, Qamişlo, Kurdistan.Photo credit: Hedîya Xan/The Jiyan Archives.The first offering is a poem by Nahid Arjouni who is a Kurdish poet known for her exploration of femininity and war. She lives in Sanandaj in Eastern Kurdistan (touching Iran). This poem was translated from the Persian by Shohreh Laici who is a US-based Iranian journalist, writer, and translator. Her documentary My Room in Tehran Is Called America is currently in production by Pirooz Kalayeh and explores her fight for freedom of expression.My Roots Were Somewhere with Youby Nahid ArjouniSuch a small worldyou spend your days with the broken pieces of me,fallen to earth.I delete the borders from the books, from my hairs, too;Father said, “Cut it off.”He added, “Fuck the horses’ whinnies, we don’t belong to this country!Don’t you understand?”I disturb the earth and spread some of my ancestors’ soil nearthe geraniums,and throw more on the broken and ugly asphalt of the streets.I throw it on the face of the child who calls Grandma “foreigner,” laughing.Father said, “It happens a lot when your roots are somewhere else,”and then he stopped talking.My roots were somewhere with you,and only the strange horses loved my whinny, those who belong to no land.I think of my roots at school, in my headscarf, while the smell of bloodin the national anthemmade me deeply sad!I think it’s the earth’s stupidity which lets us break it into pieces, borders.I think it’s the politicians’ stupidity that never lets soldiers in love feardeath in war.Sometimes I think my teachers are dumb, those who believe war is holyand that not wearing the hijab helps the enemy.I open my ponytail in class and the horses shriek.Father said, “Your roots were somewhere else,” and I was thinking of youwho are somewhere else.You hate the blood,the politicians, too, those who never let soldiers in love fear war.In her essay “Poetry’s power to speak the unspeakable: the Kurdish story,” Choman Hardi writes, “It may be difficult for others to understand what it feels like to be forcibly deported, to see your homes given to ‘settlers,’ to witness the renaming of your neighbourhoods and towns. It may be difficult to imagine what it is like not to be allowed to speak your mother tongue, to witness public assassination of your people, to grow up with images of mass graves, gassed victims, hanged leaders. It is even more difficult to describe what it is like to see history repeat itself when you witness your defeat again.”Sleeping in the Courtyard commission image 1 artist attribution, Shayan NuradeenI turn us now to another poem in Sleeping in the Courtyard—by exiled writer Meral Şimşek. Meral is a poet, novelist, and editor born in Amed (Diyarbakir) in Northern Kurdistan. Her publications and accolades are many. Due to the content of her books and the awards she received, the Turkish government accused her of making propaganda. The prosecutor’s office requested a prison sentence of up to thirty years. After a lengthy and tumultuous escape from Turkey to Greece and back to Turkey, PEN Berlin managed to bring her safely to Germany in 2022. This poem is translated from the Turkish by Öykü Tekten who is a poet, translator, archivist, and editor splitting her time between Granada and New York. She is the general editor of the Kurdish Poetry Series at Pinsapo Press.Dream and Realityby Meral Şimşekclean tables were setwhen the sun was scorchedbread was a stranger to our countryjust as othering ourselves,we burned and scattered our dreamsand sterilized all hopesour refugee hearts turned to the loop of nightwhile the gods bore bastard seedsin crimson gardens of paradisewe were banned from life, from falling in loveit was the time of laughter in thymeeach of us shouldered, one by one,uncontainable weary dreamswe fell silent in orphaned solitudessurrendered ourselves so that the worldwould be a better placein fact, we massacred ourselvesfor a worthy life through slimy consolationshistory of our consciousness filled with delusionsnothing more than a chain of silenced paradoxesunanswered questions resided with our stagnationblaming each sin on the darknessas they became our biggest unanswered questionwas it our dream that was the realityor our reality, the dream?Sleeping in the Courtyard commission image 2 by Shayan NuradeenExcerpt from Introduction to SleepingIt is in this spirit that I want to finish this offering, to leave you with one of my own poems in the collection–a love poem–because it has been powerful to see the queer Kurdish iconography within the current global protests for Rojava. The Kurdish flag next to the progress pride flag. The Kurdish flag’s sun inserted into the progress pride flag. I am healing.Waitingby Holly Mason BadraWinter branchessilhouettethe darkening sky.In trying to be tender,I slice a pearand add cinnamon.The gate swings on a hinge.Imaginea crescent moon:the beloved’s ear.And in hereyea silhouetteof winter branches.We are all waiting, not passively, but actively. While we wait for an end to the oppression, subjugation, and state violence against our people, we care for each other, for our communities, for our families, for our land.Publication notes:“My Roots Were Somewhere With You” by Nahid Arjouni (translated by Shohreh Laici) was first published in Two Lines Press, no.29 (2018)“Dream and Reality” by Meral Şimşek (translated by Öykü Tekten) was first published in The Markaz Review (2022)“Waiting” by Holly Mason Badra was first published in Bethesda Magazine (2018)" } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Mark Zuckerberg Went to the Prada Show In Milan. It Wasn’t For Fashion", "author" : "Louis Pisano", "category" : "essay", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/mark-zuckerberg-prada-meta-glasses", "date" : "2026-03-06 09:07:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Pisano_Meta_glasses.jpeg", "excerpt" : "When Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan took their seats in the front row at Prada’s Milan runway show on February 26, the photographs circulated quickly—the Meta CEO in his now-familiar uniform of expensive basics, watching models move down the runway in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision of intellectual austerity.", "content" : "When Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan took their seats in the front row at Prada’s Milan runway show on February 26, the photographs circulated quickly—the Meta CEO in his now-familiar uniform of expensive basics, watching models move down the runway in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision of intellectual austerity.He was there because Meta is in active discussions with Prada to develop a line of branded AI smart glasses, a logical next step for a company whose Ray-Ban partnership has become one of the more surprising consumer electronics stories of the decade. Sales more than tripled in 2025, and on Meta’s January earnings call, Zuckerberg described them as “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history.” The Oakley deal followed. Prada, if negotiations close, would be the latest luxury house recruited to solve a stubborn distribution problem: how to get people to wear a computer on their face without making them feel like they’re wearing a computer on their face. The answer, apparently, is to put it in a frame that costs as much as a car payment. The Meta Oakley Vanguards can be yours for the low cost of $549.Zuckerberg is not executing this pivot alone. Over the past year, tech’s richest men have staged a quiet, coordinated rebrand away from the founder-in-a-hoodie archetype toward something more deliberately cultured. Jeff Bezos has become a fixture in the fashion press, his aesthetic transformation carefully managed, his public image now signaling cultural seriousness alongside the financial kind. The underlying message from both men is consistent: that they are not the problem, but rather represent the future. And that the future can be beautiful and luxurious.This is what elite legitimacy looks like in our era of late-stage capitalism. When your industry faces sustained scrutiny across antitrust proceedings, data privacy legislation, and the slow erosion of public trust, you don’t just deploy lobbyists and communications teams. You acquire taste. You sit front row at shows with a century of cultural prestige behind them. You let the associations do work that no PR campaign could. Cultural capital operates differently from paid media; it feels earned, and its effects are harder to trace.Which is why the timing of Zuckerberg’s Milan appearance is worth examining more closely. At the same time that Zuckerberg was cementing a potential partnership with one of fashion’s most storied feminist houses, his company’s flagship wearable product was generating very different press coverage.In January 2026, BBC News investigated a pattern of male content creators using Ray-Ban Meta glasses to secretly film women during staged pickup encounters on the street, then uploading the footage to TikTok and Instagram as dating advice content. Dilara, a 21-year-old from London filmed on her lunch break, found her phone number visible in footage that had accumulated 1.3 million views, leading to a night of abusive calls and messages. Kim, a 56-year-old filmed on a beach in West Sussex, received thousands of inappropriate messages after her video reached 6.9 million views, and was still receiving them six months later. None of the women had seen any recording indicator. The BBC separately found YouTube tutorials demonstrating how to cover or disable the small LED light that Meta claims signals when the glasses are filming.The problem has spread internationally. In early 2026, a Russian vlogger traveled through Ghana and Kenya filming covert encounters with women using smart glasses (though it has not been confirmed that they were Meta-brand glasses) and posting footage to TikTok, YouTube, and a private Telegram channel where more explicit content was available by paid subscription. Some women were filmed in intimate situations without any knowledge that they were being recorded, let alone distributed to a global audience. Ghana’s Gender Minister confirmed that some victims were receiving psychological support, noting that exposure of this kind carries severe social consequences in conservative communities. Kenya’s Gender Minister called it a serious case of gender-based violence. Meta’s response, when asked for comment, was to point to the LED indicator light and its terms of service, a response that privacy advocates have consistently noted is equivalent to putting a “do not steal” sign on an unlocked car.Hundreds of similar accounts exist across TikTok alone, and the women who appear in them have had no recourse beyond reporting content that has already been viewed millions of times. These cases sit alongside The New York Times’ recent revelation of internal Meta plans for a feature called “Name Tag,” which would allow wearers to identify strangers in real-time by pulling data from Meta’s ecosystem of Instagram and Facebook profiles. Refuge and Women’s Aid told The Independent that this capability would pose a direct and serious risk to domestic abuse survivors, women who have rebuilt their lives at new addresses, hoping that distance and anonymity might be enough. Refuge reported a 62%rise in referrals to its technology-facilitated abuse specialist team in 2025, driven in part by wearable tech being used by abusers to monitor and control partners. Real-time facial recognition running on glasses indistinguishable from any other pair does not care about restraining orders.Into this landscape walks a potential Prada co-branded version of the same device. And there is something worth sitting with in the specific choice of Prada as Meta’s luxury target.Miuccia Prada has spent decades articulating, through her collections and in her public statements, a sustained engagement with feminist thought, grappling explicitly with how women are perceived, constrained, and resist the codes that govern their visibility in public and private life. The Prada woman, as a cultural figure, has never been decorative, according to Miuccia. She is thinking—and she is often acutely aware of being watched.Whether Miuccia Prada or the Prada Group’s leadership has genuinely reckoned with what women’s safety advocates have documented about the device they are being asked to co-brand is a question the company has not yet been asked loudly enough to their consumers. A Prada-branded pair of AI glasses would not simply be a licensing deal; it would be an aesthetic endorsement of the technology inside the frame, lending the cultural authority of a house that has built its identity around the intelligence and autonomy of women to Meta’s surveillance hardware.There is a term for what happens when corporations facing public scrutiny attach themselves to respected cultural institutions, when they fund museum wings, sponsor literary prizes, or plant themselves in the front rows of fashion weeks historically associated with progressive values. The association is meant to transfer accountability and even responsibility. The institution’s credibility flows toward the brand, and the brand’s controversies recede into the background noise of cultural life.Zuckerberg’s Milan appearance fits this pattern. A Prada partnership would give Meta’s smart glasses access to a female luxury consumer demographic they have struggled to reach, while simultaneously borrowing the feminist credibility of a house that has spent decades earning it, at the exact moment when critics, charities, and regulators are arguing most loudly that the product threatens women’s safety. The front row seat was not incidental to the pitch. It was the pitch.But the women who have had their faces filmed without consent, their phone numbers exposed to millions of strangers, their locations potentially traceable by the men who mean them harm, don’t get to sit front row or get a rebrand. What they get is a company whose products have been repeatedly documented and enabled their harassment, now aligning itself with a symbol of female empowerment, hoping the association does its work before the reckoning catches up.Miuccia Prada has built her career on the argument that what we put on our bodies makes an argument about the world. If she signs off on this, the argument she’ll be making won’t be the one she intended." } , { "title" : "Freezing Time with Matthew Johnson", "author" : "Matthew Johnson", "category" : "visual", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/matthew-johnson", "date" : "2026-03-05 21:00:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/MJxSF_Iran_1.jpg", "excerpt" : "What we are witnessing is beyond what words, analysis, or hot takes can capture. It is an impossible tragedy.", "content" : "What we are witnessing is beyond what words, analysis, or hot takes can capture. It is an impossible tragedy.Through his photographic series “Screen Time”, Johnson uses long-exposure techniques to capture moving TV broadcasts, creating images to hold the intensity of these atrocious moments. Praying for the bombs to stop.Israeli intercepter missilesBeirutTehranDisplacement from the SouthRiyadh embassey attack (unconfirmed)Iranian drone strike on high rise in BahrainDubaiIranian missile launch" } , { "title" : "How to unpack and resist a pedophilic beauty standard: In a post-Epstein file world", "author" : "Emma Cieslik", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/how-to-unpack-and-resist-a-pedophilic-beauty-standard", "date" : "2026-03-05 13:58:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Justice_Store_13594585535.jpg", "excerpt" : "In January, the Department of Justice released a 3,000,000-document drop of Epstein files which mentioned among others Les Wexner, the billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch among other brands. Although Wexner was already labelled a co-conspirator with Epstein by the FBI, this newest file drop raises questions about how Wexner–and by connection Epstein–were connected to clothing marketed towards young girls. In the aftermath, a whole generation of women are deconstructing how a pedophile was actively part of the marketing that eroticized and idealized prepubescent girls’ bodies as the ideal.", "content" : "In January, the Department of Justice released a 3,000,000-document drop of Epstein files which mentioned among others Les Wexner, the billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch among other brands. Although Wexner was already labelled a co-conspirator with Epstein by the FBI, this newest file drop raises questions about how Wexner–and by connection Epstein–were connected to clothing marketed towards young girls. In the aftermath, a whole generation of women are deconstructing how a pedophile was actively part of the marketing that eroticized and idealized prepubescent girls’ bodies as the ideal.It is a reckoning with how American girlhood was shaped by men like Wexner and Epstein that informed not only the clothing that was marketed and sold to us but also the body shame that came with it, along with purity culture enforced by the very Christian leaders whose writings Epstein sent to his own victims.Birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein attributed to Donald Trump. The text is censored due to potential copyright concerns (authorship of this work is disputed), though the rest of the piece is composed of simple shape and thus falls into the public domain.Wexner was the creator of L Brands, the retail company behind Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch, and owned TOO, Inc., the parent company of Justice and other brands marketed directly towards young girls. This past Friday, Wexner participated in a deposition to House Democrats about revelations from this latest file drop, claiming that he was “duped by a world-class con man.”Wexner notes that Epstein became his financial advisor back in the 1980s and at one point, served as his power of attorney. In this same deposition, Wexner revealed that he cut ties with Epstein after he discovered that Epstein stole over $100 million from him.Wexner called the accusations that he was part of Epstein’s sex trafficking “outrageous untrue statements and hurtful rumor, innuendo, and speculation,” claiming that his relationship with Epstein was strictly business. He also denied Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s claim that he was one of the men that Epstein trafficked her to. Wexner similarly denied knowing Maria Farmer, who accused Epstein of sexually assaulting her in 1996. Farmer claimed that after she was assaulted, Wexner’s security staff kept her on the property until a parent could pick her up, but Wexner said that “I never met her, didn’t know she was here, didn’t know she was abused.”But House Democrats repeatedly questioned how Wexner could not have known that this sex trafficking was happening and that it was fueled by his own money. The Democrats cast doubt on his story, arguing that “there would be no Epstein Island, no plane, no money to traffic women and girls without the support of Les Wexner.”While Victoria’s Secret sexualization of infantilized women is not new–we have known for years that the modelling industry behind Victoria’s Secret not only targeted children but sold people an ideal of beauty conflated with girlhood, this new file drop reveals that this was intentional by Wexner and others that sold us a form of girlhood that enabled predators.It’s no mistake that President Trump, another person mentioned over 38,000 times in the Epstein files, also owned Miss Teen USA pageants. In fact, in the deposition, Wexner said the only time that Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump would have interacted would have been at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Both attended fashion shows.But this latest Epstein file release is a wide scale realization that Wexner wasn’t the only one grooming a generation–think of what came out about producer Dan Schneider (who was also named in the Epstein files) after the release of the 2024 docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. Schneider oversaw the rampant, calculated sexualization of young actors.As children who watched Schneider shows and wore Wexner’s clothes, we are reckoning with the ways that many of us were exploited as children within a system marketing sexualized girlhood to us. Artist Sam Rueter put words to many people’s emotions following the latest Epstein file drop: “women in America are in deep grieving. Not because we are surprised or overcome with disbelief … but because we have to reckon with the cruel proof of our entire lives being a commodified, fetishized version of girlhood: and we are meeting, all at once, the children we were and could not protect.”In the aftermath, how can you reckon with and reject pedophilic beauty standards in the aftermath of the Epstein file drop?1. Do not spend money or support brands that sexualize children or infantilized models.While at first glance, this includes for many of us Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and other brands owned by Wexner, this also includes brands that market sexualized clothing or content to children. This month, the babycare brand Frida Baby came under fire for using phrases suggesting sexual innuendo on their baby products. The packaging had the phrases “I get turned on quickly,” “How about a quickie,” and “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome.” Other brands like Balenciaga and Fashion Nova have also come under fire, but a number of other brands and fashion corporations are to blame–according to a 2011 study, ⅓ of all children’s clothing for girls is sexualized; “tween” stores like Abercrombie Kids, the study finds, are most to blame.In a capitalist society, sadly our most powerful tool is choosing where we spend our money, so it’s important to boycott and call out brands that sexualize children and market infantilized models.2. Do not consume and boycott any media sensualizing or sexualizing children by avoiding AI, social media platforms, and other content.Sadly in the age of AI, a number of digital platforms have been shown to generate and share sexualized images of minors, and according to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a number of online platforms including Instagram, Roblox, GitHub, eBay, Discord, X, Reddit, Spotify, and Snapchat fail to protect children from sexual content, putting them at risk for grooming and sexual exploitation. Avoid AI for this reason (among many others, including environmental impact) but also if you can, boycott social media platforms and call your representatives to urge the government to require these platforms to take actionable steps to protect children.This also applies to what may be some of your favorite Classic movies, television shows, or music, but know that by watching the movie, show, or consuming the content, you not only give your consent but also support its continued existence on streaming platforms. This is also a timely reflection given what has come out in the past three years about children on Nickelodeon; what once seemed innocent, at most odd, is revealed to be intimately connected to abusive behavior and sexualizing children.This also goes for new content, like the new season of America’s Next Top Model.3. Do not dress up as sexy babies, or sexualized children.While the Spirit Halloween costume section was full of sexy babies in the early 2000s, I hope it’s clear that any costumes that sexualizes children or infantilized adults contribute to the perception that sexualizing children is acceptable or funny. This is a simple step that you and others can take next Halloween when choosing your costume, or when engaging in kink and BDSM cultures.And if you are buying clothing for your children or those of friends and family, do not buy them clothing that sexualizes them. This includes snarky sayings like “lady’s man” on a baby’s smock or “heartbreaker” on a baby’s bib. While some people may brush it off, especially if the child can’t read, studies have shown.) that children may begin to view their bodies as sexual objects and may be treated differently, including being targeted by sexual predators.4. Do not police other people’s bodies, period.This may be harder for people who were raised in systems where unshaved armpits or unplucked eyebrows are seen as unkempt (spoiler alert, this is connected to transphobic, racist beauty standards), but pedophilic beauty standards are built not only on a beauty standard that idealizes not just a hairless body but also a small, underdeveloped one. Commenting on other’s bodies, even if it’s not meant to criticize their appearance, can contribute to body image issues, and at the root of pedophilic beauty standards are the very eating disorders glorified in the early 2000s.This beauty ideal (perpetuated not only by companies like Victoria’s Secret but by magazines, music corporations, and media companies that glorified baby-ified women) not only aided and abetted the development of eating disorders but also severe body dysphoria that persists to this day. I distinctly remember friends of mine that experienced amenorrhea, or the absence of regular periods, because of eating disorders. Without vital nutrients, their periods stopped coming regularly, and with it, the development of their bodies—stunting their growth. Many of them remain small or underdeveloped because of childhood eating disorders.The same marketing and cultural influencers that encouraged us that skinniness was not acceptable but necessary also enabled young girls to stop getting their periods, the one thing that many cultures identify as their transition to womanhood. To be clear, a child getting a period does not make them an adult.5. Start with your own beauty routine.Do you dislike shaving or waxing your legs, armpits or other parts of your body? Do you dread expensive, medically unnecessary skincare routines and Botox meant to glorify perpetually young bodies? Good news–you don’t have to do these things.While our American beauty standards are rooted in the model of a young girl, they are not absolute and they only change when people pressure corporations that have marketed these standards to us in order to sell their products. If you can (for cultural and sensory reasons, not everyone is able to), take the first step and reject the urge to shave, wax, pluck, or inject.As someone with autism, I admit that shaving my legs and armpits is a sensory issue informed by pedophilic beauty standards, but it’s still a practice that helps me feel at home in my body. None of these suggestions are asking you to reject what makes you feel at home in your body. Some of the body care processes that pedophilic culture has coopted are ones that help to affirm our genders–practices that affirm who we are and how we feel at home in our bodies should never be challenged, but these steps encourage us to think about what has informed not only our view of what is an attractive woman (often modelled after young girls) but also what a woman is.6. Reject transphobic, racist beauty standards. Consume brands that showcase models of diverse body and beauty types.Because the urge to wax, shave, and pluck our hair is not only rooted in pedophilia, it’s also rooted in White supremacist transphobia that essentializes the beautiful body as inherently thin, White and visually binary. Pedophilic culture is sexist culture is purity culture is racist culture is transphobic culture. Gender essentialism is the bedrock of sexist beauty standards that seek to make adult women feel bad about our bodies. Fighting transphobia goes hand in hand with fighting gender essentialist beauty standards and by extension, pedophilic ones too!In a capitalist economy, much of our power is defined by money. Use that to your advantage! Along with not supporting brands that sexualize children and infantilize adults, seek out brands that showcase and celebrate adult bodies. Some great ones include WRAY, SmartGlamour, Lucy & Yak, and Modcloth that purposefully create clothing for and highlight models of diverse body types.7. Encourage and embody body neutrality.In this same vein, embody body neutrality by refusing to assign value judgement to your body and others’ bodies. Body positivity is great, but it still assigns a value judgement to bodies–for many fat people like me, celebrating our bodies much less feeling beautiful in them is rare because of thinness culture (especially in the age of Ozempic), but assigning our bodies value judgements still exacerbates the problem. Bodies are bodies that help us to stay alive. Need helpful starting steps? Check out Jessi Kneeland’s 2022 book Body Neutrality: A Revolution to Overcoming Body Image Issues.8. Finally, reject new-age purity culture.Although the Purity Culture Movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s is already facing a public reckoning, other Christian groups are trying to rebrand purity culture for the next generation. Back in 2022, I wrote about how modern social media influencers like Girl Defined are rebranding purity culture for a new generation, and I have even argued that modern anti-trans legislation is a new form of purity culture policing queer bodies. Take note of where purity culture continues to exist and call it out!And importantly, fight school districts, religious institutions, and public spaces that enforce sexist clothing rules like the ones we all remember from childhood. The fact that young girls were told that we would distract not just our male classmates but also teachers is deeply upsetting and shifts blame onto children and victims rather than adults and predators.This is a deeply upsetting reckoning but one that we have to undertake personally and communally. I hope that these recommendations are helpful first steps to move towards unpacking the very beauty standards and sexualization that groomed a whole generation of girls and women." } ] }