Amy VanHym

A 13-Year-Old Girl Is Not “All Grown Up” - Mara Wilson on the Sexualization of Child Actresses and Millie Bobby Brown

The attention Millie gets is a little weird at times, but don't forget that many of the guys crushing on her are the same age. It is also the case that she sometimes dresses very maturely for her age. That she has an adultlike wardrobe is not sexual, and recognizing the maturity of it is not sexual. Maturity isn't primarily a matter of sexuality, and to treat a girl being described as "all grown up" as though it is necessarily about sexuality, is implicitly if not overtly sexist. The linked article that called her "all grown up" was clearly describing the maturity and professionalism of her style. It said nothing sexual at all.

A maturing girl is blooming sexually. Acknowledging this fact can be done gracefully; is not necessarily dehumanizing. All of this -- how sexual Millie's maturity is or isn't, what maturity means and how a teen girl should be addressed in the public eye -- is a topic to discuss, but not one to get so hyperemotive about. Concerned and interested? Sure. "Sick and furious"? Tone down the hysteria, Mara. You are not the "big sister to the world." You are not the queen bee. The world will not benefit from the moral panic produced by your reduction of all discussion of Millie's maturity to an assault upon her sexuality.

Edit Nov 11: reddit thread

Oct 31st:

I'll try to be chill about this. After giving ST2 the benefit of the doubt for as long as I could, I stormed out of the living room a few minutes into episode 6 last night, and ranted a bit too angrily about it on Gab. I'm sure I'll go back and finish watching it after all, if only just to finish this entry.

Everyone's IQ has dropped twenty points, slowing progression drastically. They have lost sight of their common enemy to get into petty squabbles with each other. The plot is moving far too slowly and repetitively. There is far too much character-focused content with no plot backbone to provide tension and drive. Questions left open at the end of season one (how to harness eggo fuel, how to talk through lights, the role of energy) were forgotten rather than answered. The characters have lost their heart and heroism, the dialogue has lost its honest brevity, the story has lost its tension and mystery, and the pacing has lost its concision. The men are largely passive. The women are largely cold. Drama is constantly either nullified or blown out of porportion rather than resolved or developed. Ideals of justice, truth and honor, once central, are absent. In a story that was once about good people vs bad, the good people are going bad and the bad people are so incompetent they may as well be illusory.

( Thoughts on episodes 1-6 )

( Thoughts after finishing the whole season. )

Edit Nov 6: It sure doesn't take much to get a block from Stranger Things writer/editor -- and lover of all things #RAW -- Jesse Nickson-Lopez.