If you’ve spent any amount of time on YouTube or Facebook or Vine or any of the other various social media outlets, there’s a good chance you’ve already run across one of the images which opens up director Darryl Robert’s latest documentary, “America The Beautiful 3.” It’s a cell phone video showing a young boy and girl, presumably not yet old enough to enter first grade, grinding away to some hip hop. In case you’ve never heard of it, grinding (or twerking, take your pick) is a dance style in which the girl bends over while the boy simulates having sex with her from behind. The hokey pokey it ain’t.
What makes the video even more disturbing, at least to sane people, is that a large number of adults are standing around laughing and cheering the kids on. Based solely on what we see in the clip, everyone on screen appears to be blissfully complicit in the sexualization of the two preschoolers in their care.
To this scene of dumbfounding domesticity, Roberts overlays the voice of President Obama speaking at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil. “This is our first task, caring for our children,” the President opines, “If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.” By opening with the imagery which it does, it’s clear that “America The Beautiful 3” has indeed judged us as a society… and found us wanting.
From that somber beginning, Roberts then takes viewers on a nationwide tour to visit a variety of subjects. He attends a beauty pageant for toddlers in rural Georgia, talking with some of the mothers about why they feel it’s appropriate to dress their daycare-aged daughters up in sexually provocative outfits. He interviews a number of poor unwed teen mothers in Chicago, discussing with them the pressures they felt to begin having sex at an early age. He talks with people involved in the production of pornography in Los Angeles, as well as a group of teenaged boys addicted to such X-rated material.
Large segments of the documentary are devoted to following the stories of two very different teenage girls: Sydney Spies, an aspiring actress/model who made national headlines when the photos she submitted to her high school yearbook were deemed too racy for publication, and Cali Linstrom, Roberts’ own intern who organized a boycott against clothier Abercrombie & Fitch after that retailer’s CEO publicly stated that his company was only interested in catering to teens who were thin and cool.
With such a large number of disparate segments, the narrative comes across somewhat scattershot and unfocused, a criticism that’s been leveled at Roberts’s style as a documentarian in the past. It’s also true, as some other reviewers have noted, that there’s not a lot of new information in “America The Beautiful 3.” Both Spies and Linstrom’s stories received heavy rotation on cable news outlets and all of the other topics have individually been covered in more depth elsewhere.
But as valid as such criticisms might be from a technical standpoint, it has to be said that Roberts’s choice to lump all of the stories together in one place does serve to drive home the larger point of the film, that the oversexualization of children is a sickness that has seeped into all corners of our society regardless of race, religion or status. Sure, something like “Toddlers & Tiaras” may have provided a more detailed look into the mindset of the moms involved in child pageantry, but by showing the activity in the same context as blatantly sexual advertising aimed at children, Roberts does a convincing job showing how such things all come together to form a greater societal problem.
The structure of the documentary makes even more sense if you understand that much of Roberts’s argument is derived from the American Psychological Association’s report on the sexualization of girls. By including a number of different stories, “America The Beautiful 3” manages to cover all of the APA’s warning signs. How so? Well, according to the APA’s study, sexualization occurs when one or more of these four conditions is present:
- “A person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics.” In the case of the teenage mothers Roberts interviews, the girls make it clear that they had sex at such a young age only because they were desperate to feel loved and it was the only way they could get boys to notice them.
- “A person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making.” Roberts quotes a statistic that kids between the ages of 12 and 17 are the largest viewers of “gonzo” porn, the type of pornography that eschews any hint of story and concentrates instead on degrading (sometimes violent) sex. Is it any wonder boys addicted to this stuff refuse to even notice girls who don’t put out?
- “A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy.” Although this principle could apply to any of the advertising displayed in the film, it’s best exemplified by Abercrombie & Fitch’s initial decision to not carry any clothing over a size 10. They purposely excluded anyone who didn’t fit into their definition of attractive.
- “Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.” Roberts may allow the mothers to tell their side of the story, but he can’t hide his sadness over the overt adult sexuality on display in the children’s beauty pageants.
It’s important to recognize the problem of over-sexualization in our society. The Catechism tells us that “sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.” That’s part of why the Church has a number of teachings on the necessity of chastity and the dignity of the sexual union, not because she wants to control what people do in their bedrooms, but because she recognizes how an ill-formed sexuality will negatively impact all aspects of a person’s life.
Sadly, “America The Beautiful 3” has no room for the moral teachings of the Church, or any other institution for that matter. As an entirely secular exercise, the documentary ignores the moral collapse of the country after World War II and places the origins of the child sexualization problem at the feet of politicians, particularly those of Ronald Reagan, who refused to sign a 1988 bill that would have heavily regulated advertising aimed at children. I’m not too sure about that. While Reagan’s decision may have been questionable, it sure seems more likely that the problem of sexualizing children is yet another fallout from the disastrous sexual revolution rather than the result of some pocket veto.
Still, the documentary’s heart is definitely in the right place. Heck, there’s even an effort to put forth a purely scientific explanation for why teenagers should practice abstinence (never noting the irony that science has once again finally proven as true something the Church has been teaching for two millennia). While some of the imagery in the film is far too explicit for younger children, if you have older teens, it might just be worth watching this with them. It could help them become aware of the overly-sexualized junk our culture is filling their heads with, and the negative consequences that can result from it.
And as for the ones who are too young to view “America The Beautiful 3,” well, that’s our responsibility to watch over and protect them from a culture that wants to sexualize them at the earliest age possible. Roberts seems to agree with the President that if we don’t protect them, we will be judged accordingly. He never says by whom, but as a good Catholic boy, I’ve got a pretty good idea. And that’s a judgement I’d rather not face.
In a world he didn’t create, in a time he didn’t choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he’s not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ivesspends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
And today we celebrate...