Blonde: A dark mirror on a world of sexploitation
By Dr Emma Wood
A young Norma-Jean, early on in her career, poses for a family-friendly catalogue, wearing girlish, innocent-looking clothes, and sporting that post-war, picture-perfect, pearly-white smile. But the sultry soundtrack playing in the background – “Every baby needs a Da-Da-Daddy…” – tells us where this is going. As the montage of Norma Jean’s photoshoots progresses, each image becomes more sexualised, ending with an image of the young woman posing, bare-breasted, for a calendar.
Read moreTo Turn The Tide On Sexual Harassment, We Must Address Our Pornographic Culture
By Silvana Scarfe
In the documentary Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution, released in 2017 by Magic Lantern Pictures, director Benjamin Nolot investigates today’s young adult hook-up culture as he follows the journey of college students on Spring Break (the Australian equivalent being Schoolies – a time when Year 12 students celebrate the end of their schooling years). The film provides shocking insight into attitudes and behaviours regarding sex, the normalisation of sexual violation, and the struggle against conceptions of gender and sexuality shaped by the media.
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