talking about a teen beauty pageant. Now he didn't have a prudish bone in his body, but even he was shocked.

Harlan writes of the ‘Our Little Miss’ Variety Pageant:

“Then they brought out the half-dozen La Petite division children. Ages three to six. Tiny. My god, small. Innocent. And…oh, Jesus Jesus…they had blue eyeliner and lipstick and that awful model’s pose…three to six years old…Oh, Christ! They look twenty-five!
“How can they do it? How can they turn kids under six into jaded strumpets of twenty–five? Mother of God, they all look like hookers!
It’s been years since I’ve felt the need to cry.
My lady, Cindy, watching the pageant with me, said in a stunned voice, “the producers of this thing must be ex-convicts who’ve served time for child molestation!” (p. 147) "The Glass Teat"

the boys were all discussing something about sex and which girl would do what.

(Not just garden variety sex). My daughter had just discarded Santa Claus and I was searching for the language to explain -um- that.

Too much, too soon.

It was very theoretical at that point - we were trying to figure things out.

Netflix for choosing to market the film by portraying it in a way designed to appeal to the prurient interests of a certain segment of the audience.

You're right - the marketing is horrible. I don't have netflix - but I guess I'll see the reviews - once it airs

NCOSE has slammed both "Cuties" director Maïmouna Doucouré and Netflix — one for the "exploitation of the young actresses" and the streaming giant for giving the movie a platform.

"Netflix wants to have its cake and eat it too: it’s underwriting a coming-of-age story by a woman of color, which is laudable, but it has given a home to a film that depicts the oversexualization of children in a way that adds to the problem of child sexual exploitation," Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement.

"While we commend Director Maïmouna Doucouré for exposing the very real threats to young girls having unfettered access to social media and the internet, we cannot condone the hypersexualization and exploitation of the young actresses themselves in order to make her point," she added.