lifestyle

Another day, another overly-sexualised music video. Except this time the star is 11 yrs old.

 

 

This is 11-year-old Alison Gold:

 

 

Alison Gold has just paid for and released her third song through producer Patrice Wilson. It’s called Shush Up, and there is no other way to describe it other than extremely, extremely disturbing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm9l4s4awUs

From watching it a few times over, here’s what I think I’ve deciphered:

Alison robs a jewelery store and is sent to prison. Cut to lots of extremely suggestive dancing in various different places in various different states of undress. Then she gives birth to a weird doll-baby (?) and is cared for by sexy nurses. She’s visited in prison by… I don’t want to say her boyfriend or pimp (because let’s remember she is 11) but it kind of seems like it’s her boyfriend or pimp. Alison goes to a club, where lots of people in their 20 and 30’s are dancing and all over each other. She is killed in an electric chair.

This little girl is 11-years-old. She wants to be a star (which is not an uncommon dream for a kid) and she has put her trust in the adults around her to make that happen. And this monstrosity horror-show of a video is what those adults have come up with.

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Before I go on, let’s go through some history.

You may have seen Alison before in the video clip for a song she released last year called Chinese Food. It was basically a vanity video – her parents paid a producer to put together a song and film clip so Alison could have the chance to feel like a star. The producer, Patrice Wilson, is responsible for that other little ‘my parents paid for this’ gem, Rebecca Black’s and her ‘hit’ Friday.

Chinese Food (aside from being mildly racist) was pretty unremarkable. Alison’s second song,  ABCDEFG, didn’t even leave a blip on the average pop-culture consumer’s radar. Once the novelty of both videos had worn off, nobody remembered Alison Gold’s name. Her chance at stardom seemed to have disappeared before her parents even had a chance to close their wallets.

But this time? It seems that somebody is determined not to let that happen again.

And it’s shameful.

I have three questions for the adults in Alison Gold’s life:

1. What on earth are you thinking, allowing this girl to be exploited and sexualised in a way that is not even remotely close to being appropriate?

2. Was there not one of you, at any time, in any of this, who stopped and pointed out that maybe things had gone WAY too far; that maybe the line had been so far crossed it was no longer even visible?

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3. She is 11-years-old. 11-years-old. SERIOUSLY?

When faced with backlash today (including a petition to keep him away from young girls), the producer Patrice Wilson commented that “the fact about it is that if a Top 40 artist sang one of my songs, the public would love it and say bravo; however, I have a petition out against me, which I think is ridiculous and pretty funny!”

Um, yeah… BECAUSE THE ARTIST IS ELEVEN YEARS OLD.

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And we often explain those videos away by saying things like “But just because (insert artist here) does it in the video, doesn’t mean my daughter/sister/niece/cousin has to. Our little girls can appreciate the song and not soak up the sexual message!”

Well, that may be true for most adults but something has clearly gone terribly wrong here.

Not only is nobody trying to protect Alison Gold from overly sexual music videos, the adults in her life HAVE MADE HER THE STAR OF ONE. Have we really reached the point where everything is so sexualised that even some adults have lost sight of what the line is?

Because this video is wrong. There’s no other way to say it.