SEXY TEEN NAKED HARRY POTTER CONTROVERSY: A Post That Will Probably Get Pageviews

Uh-oh, you guys. The sexy teens are at it again!* 

I know about this, you see, because I read the Internet. Specifically, I know about it because I read Tracy Clark-Flory's piece over at Broadsheet (which was written up by Miranda at Women's Glib in a post that was cross-posted at Feministe and also quoted at Feministing: look, the Internet is complicated) about a pamphlet published in the UK by National Health Services, entitled (yikes!) "Pleasure." 

Yes, this pamphlet is about the fact that sex feels good. And it was handed out to the teens! Who were no doubt corrupted by their early exposure to this top-secret information! Here is a sample of the terrible and pornographic knowledge contained therein: 

Beyond having the audacity to suggest that educators tell students that sex can feel pleasurable, the booklet says that teenagers have "a right" to sexual satisfaction, so long as it is in a safe and consensual situation. It also advises honesty about masturbation being perfectly healthy -- it  winkingly says that "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away," which strikes me as a cheesy attempt to be cool -- and that sex isn't always about procreation.

Oh, dear! So, you can totally see why certain UK newspapers are up in a huff about it, saying (as Clark-Flory notes) that it is telling "schoolchildren" to have orgasms every day and so forth. Clearly, had this pamphlet not been published, no UK teenagers would ever masturbate, and the world would be a far safer and more wholesome place. 

Say, you know what else comes from the UK and is of interest to the sexy teens? Harry Potter, and specifically the Harry Potter series of films starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and that one homely kid! ("Rupert Grint?") Salon published a piece about that, too, and specifically about the fact that Emma Watson, who is 19, is posing for sexy photos, has been the victim of an upskirt shot, and has a legion of devoted fans who would really, really like to see her naked. They furthermore note that plenty of people have already had the opportunity to see Harry Potter himself naked, as 19-year-old Daniel Radcliffe and his naked penis had a starring role in Equus not so very long ago. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that at least two of the Harry Potter kids grew up to be really, really hot. (The other one is Rupert Grint; also, that Malfoy kid, who now has THE FACE OF A MONSTER.) It's also a fact that we got to watch it happen - and, as anyone who has spent any time on the weirder and less comfortable portions of the Internet can tell you, a lot of people were very invested in that process. 

On the topic of Naked Harry Potter, Joy Press notes that "Since it was for a serious role in a serious play (Peter Shaffer's "Equus"), Radcliffe was feted for artistic credibility and bravery (especially after he talked in interviews about the shriveling effects of a live audience on the male member).... I doubt many people actually wanted to glimpse Harry Potter's wand." Actually, a whole lot of people did, and they were all on the Internet; also, they were at the showing of at least one of the Harry Potter movies I attended (can't remember which one! It was about wizards, if that's helpful). In that movie, an underage Naked Harry Potter was shown slipping into a large tub - the scene really only showed his back, but one contingent of grown adult women started to cheer and hoot in a wild and excitable manner. I was rude, and turned around to stare at them, because I had simply never seen women do such a thing. I kind of thought hollering at naked teenagers was for guys! 

But I do, in fact, smell what the Salon article is cooking. Its point - that young women, especially, are pressured to be sexual as soon as they reach "legal" age, and sometimes before, and that this can have a major impact on whether they're perceived as Artists or just spectacles - is a good one. 

We eroticize teens all the time. The "Twilight" series is popular among teens and adults basically because it is entirely about one teenager wanting to fuck the living daylights out of one specific non-teenage dude (but not doing it, because it will DESTROY HER) and apparently conveys the feeling of wanting to fuck that dude very effectively. It manages to play to both sides by devoting thousands of pages to horny teens whilst telling a story about how sex will, literally, kill you. 

It shouldn't be that revolutionary to note that teens eroticize each other, or to educate them about how to do that in a way that's not unsafe, cruel, or otherwise disastrous. Yet we're more comfortable with sexy teens as spectacles - spectacles for adults, no less - than we are with them as subjects. It's a predatory dynamic: we want girls (and also maybe Daniel Radcliffe) to be pure, asexual, not enthusiastic or assertive about sex in any way, but we also want the freedom to slaver over them at will, to sexualize them whether they want us to or not. 

Of course it's never OK for grown-ups to pursue sex with non-grown-ups, even if those non-grown-ups are teenagers who have sexual feelings: it's a desire based on a profoundly unequal power dynamic, one that's about exploiting young people's "innocence" or trust or respect for adults, and it's often profoundly abusive. Yet the idea that acknowledging teenagers' sexuality is somehow invasive or un-OK or will lead to a vast wave of statutory rape (or just forbidden teen sex) is completely wrongheaded. 

The fact that the dynamic is so very much about ideas of "innocence" or "purity" is precisely what makes educating teens about pleasure so subversive. If they're not "innocent," if they're not "pure," if they're just people with bodies like the rest of us, who are trying to figure out how those bodies work and how on Earth one integrates the fact of sexual desire with the demands of polite society, the entire dynamic crumbles. And then we might realize that they're kids, and that they have a lot to work out, and that they deserve our support in the matter. 

"Support" is kind of incompatible with "sneakily taking pictures of someone's underpants," by the way.  

* I am just now realizing that every single post this week will be about sex in one way or another. Didn't plan it that way! Oh well, enjoy your cheap titillation. Meanwhile, I will try to get my hands on a copy of Ginger Snaps.