Ever since the rise of Stranger Things and IT one of the main things that seems to be rising alongside them is the sexualization of the actors in these hits. Although this isn’t new in any way, we have seen this even before our time with Shirley Temple back in the 1930’s.
With the abundance of sexual assault reports now surfacing about male directors and co-stars sexually assaulting their female counterparts, it is not shocking that there’s now such a large amount of grown adults looking at these children in an inappropriate way.
These are actors between the ages of 12-15. We have older men and women between the ages of 18-35, and I’m sure older, taking their innocence away. There is no explanation why older women and men are posting on social media calling these kids “hot” and telling them to “hit them up in 4 years”. Just like what 27-year-old model Ali Michael said in a post she made on her Instagram stories that was quickly deleted after copious amounts of backlash from the public. Ali posted a photo of Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike in Stranger Things along with the words “Not to be weird but hit me up in 4 years.”
Ali later posted another story which she wrote “Hi, Yesterday I posted a picture of Mike from Stranger Things and wrote “Call me in 4 years.” It was completely, absolutely a joke but I understand that people have been offended by it. It was wrong to joke about and I apologize. I do not want Mike from Stranger Things to call me. I hope this clears things up.”
But the thing is, He’s 14 years old, and joking about viewing him as hot when there’s an obvious and very illegal age gap shouldn’t be what people find funny these days. You definitely shouldn’t post about it on social media because I can guarantee your “joke” will be met with critiques from the public.
Finn later spoke about the incident and you could tell the whole thing made him very uncomfortable and that Ali’s post was “weird”. Also while promoting IT Finn made a comment to an interviewer that he wished people would stop calling him “daddy” because it made him uncomfortable as well. This shouldn’t have to be a topic of discussion for Finn, and he definitely shouldn’t have to speak out on it once, let alone twice for people to get the message.
Mara Wilson who played Matilda years and years ago stated in an interview with Elle magazine “A 13-year-old girl isn’t grown up” after seeing a grown man tweet a photo of Millie Bobby Brown at a premiere with the caption “she just grew up in front of our eyes.” Mara later went on to state that she too had been the victim of being sexualized by far older men since she had been in the spotlight from a rather young age.
The only thing stranger then Stranger Things is the fact that the characters these children play are in no way depicted in a sexual way on their TV show, and yet people are still seeing these children as sexual objects that they are obviously creating in their own imaginations.