Mara Wilson Got Real About Being "Sexualized" As A Child Actor

No doubt child actors are sexualized but isn'tIsn't that just a dumb trying to be funny with kids question that gets asked. Like when you ask a kid if they are married. I guess it's a problem.

Mara is desperate for attention. It probably makes me a bad person but anyone who goes to the lengths she has to keep getting attention on social media is suspicious to me, I start wondering how much they're making up just so people will RT them.

[quote]Before I even turned 12, there were images of me on foot fetish websites and photoshopped into child pornography. Every time, I felt ashamed.

How did she know this? Who in Mara's management team or family came across these images!?

Is she still a lesbian? Last year at some point she tweeted "People say you can't change sex but you can change your hair colour" as if that was some massive moment in the history of trans rights.

She's right about the predatory behavior of adults in the entertainment industry but then how do you teach young kids and teens about the perils of the industry without also exposing them to it? Learning that stuff can even make an adult lose his faith in humanity.

I don’t know about the foot fetish stuff but being asked if she had a boyfriend in a casting interview is perfectly acceptable. Her parents allowed her to work as an actor portraying a cute, precocious character. Being in love and having a sweetheart is cute, precocious behavior which millions of children engage in daily, much to the delight of their parents and, as shown below, people on Twitter.

If I had lost a finger as a child driving a tractor, it would have been my parents’ fault, not the tractor’s.

Disney hired half the cast of [italic]Myra Breckinridge[/italic] to make movies for them. I should be more surprised than I am. That doesn't make it okay, but it does underscore how false and insincere their claims of concern for real-world social problems really are.

Children’s idea of a boyfriend is the same as an adult. It’s where they learn it from. In today’s society having a boyfriend equates to having a sex partner.

I read that article & while I think Mara seems to have her head (mostly) screwed on straight, her parents have a lot of responsibility in pushing a kid in to an adult business. Britney is very much a victim of this & her issues also fall very much on her family who used her to cash in.

I don’t remember this kid much thankfully. She looks like Katy Perry’s dyke midget jealous sister.

Her cousin is Ben Shapiro.

R10

She was an ugly child.

She needs to lighten up.

Her mother died when she was young and she left the acting when she was 12, and she was off the radar until she started writing. Also from what I read her family was pretty protective of her and didn’t push her to stay in the industry. She blocked Ben Shapiro on twitter.

She does seem to interject herself into a lot of hot button issues, like Andrea Dworkin.

I'm the same age as the hosts of this podcast (former child actors interviewing child actors) so a lot of their guests are people I grew up watching. They had Mara on, she's pretty level headed

Mara was never as famous or as bankable as Britney and had parents who kept her away from salacious movies (unlike Teri Shields or Jodie Foster's mother), so her experience does not give her much authority. Her insistence that there is a single "Narrative" foisted on child performers is also tenuous at best: Nobody thought Rebecca Schaeffer "deserved" to die because she had been a child actress, which isn't even why she was targeted by her killer, nor would anybody compare her tragic death to the personal and professional trajectory of Judy Garland, if only because Schaeffer did not grow up in the studio system. Beyond that, for Mara to say that Britney's breakdown "didn't need to happen" and only did because of the evil media robs Britney of any agency and endows the media with far too much. What does Mara or anybody know about Britney's mental health, before and after achieving fame? Becoming a "pop star" post-Madonna more or less requires provocative dance routines and sexually suggestive song lyrics, and media scrutiny of celebrities has been a highly visible facet of American media for nearly a century. Britney became famous when entire TV series dedicated to chronicling the seamy side of fame were everywhere. (E! True Hollywood Story, VH1 Behind the Music, et. al.) Britney may have been young and naive, but neither she nor her family were ignorant of what they were chasing and the risks this entailed.

Oh, fuck off with Britney Spears. She ran around acting like an idiot and now everyone is supposed to apologize for criticizing her or asking her questions. Just fuck off.

I mean, this is completely believable: "Reporters asked me who I thought the sexiest actor was and about Hugh Grant's arrest for soliciting a prostitute." Mara also claims in the essay that "50-year-old men" would send her mail "saying they were in love with me,"

I believe it, but I do wonder why whoever received her fan mail didn't just burn the creepy ones and never tell her. Or maybe they told her as an adult.

I remember an interview where Eliza Dushku said when she started on Buffy (at 18) she would get fan mail from men in prison. Why the fuck would you show Buffy in a men's prison?

Britney had 2 kids in less than a year. Isn't there a popular theory that she had postpartum depression, amplified by all the noise in her life?

Woman: *opens mouth to speak*

Average Datalounger: "She's DESPERATE for ATTENTION!"

[quote]Her cousin is Ben Shapiro.

I thought it was Stephen Miller. I knew it was some awful, ugly shithead.

Interesting how widespread the outrage on Britney Spears behalf is while there are so many dismissive comments when someone like Wilson or Natalie Portman speak up. Much of it comes down to the idea that middle american waspy women are flowers to be protected while more " ethnic" women can just deal. All this concern over women only comes up for blonde, suburban girls.

I thought the title was about Mary Wilson and thought she must be interviewing from the grave.

R22 Oh in what world are Natalie Portman and Mara Wilson not white and more ‘ethnic’ women?

Well does she have a boyfriend yet? The world is dying to not care.

Britney has brown hair and dyes it blonde. Natalie and Mara have both played all-American girls in films so most people didn't notice they were Jewish. Natalie is a beautiful woman and she gets a lot of sympathy for being sexualized as a kid in Léon.

White attractive women especially blonde do get more public sympathy. But Natalie and Mara both pass for generic white girls and most wouldn't assume they were Jewish. Scarlett Johannson as well. So they are far from marginalized or ignored.

Black, Indigenous, Asian and Hispanic women are ignored in the media when it comes to horrific things like rape, kidnapping, human trafficking, murder, mental health, maternity deaths, homelessness etc.

Getting back to the point of the article, she's correct-- asking a 6 year old if they have a boyfriend is not cool. Digitally changing images of a 12 year old to look like child porn is sick.

R22 = retard

I can see that Mara had good parents who protected her. I feel the Olsen Twins had pedophile fans too I remember a video I watched where this YTer Drew Gordon investigated that fan club they had in the 90s and found most of the subscribers were men.

Britney's case is different because she had her debut in her late teens and was the one who pushed for her sexy image. Britney came up with the schoolgirl outfit and sports bra look. I think Britney was damaged before her stardom but the fame obviously triggered a lot in her. She's similar to Brad Renfro.

Scarlett, Portman, dog faced Matilda are all white bitches ok and still even if we knew they’re Jewish. Blossom is white to everyone and people got to guess that shit is Jewish. You want to talk about women of color let’s talk about women of color. Let’s not make shit up

R30 there was a countdown clock to the Olsens 18th birthday

“Diarrhea forever??”

R20 This is the same woman who conveniently decided to come out as a "mostly straight bisexual" (her own words) immediately after the Pulse massacre and right as she was releasing her pathetic memoir about her brief stint as a child actress.

Yes, she is indeed an attention whore.

Jewishness has nothing to do with how any of these women are viewed. It's all about the individuals rather than their genetic makeup. Natalie Portman is 100% (ethnically) Jewish and beautiful, while Blossom is 100% Jewish and not beautiful (sorry). Similarly, Mara Wilson is 50% Jewish and not attractive, while Scarlett Johansson is 50% Jewish and beautiful.

Natalie Portman and Scarlet Johansson get compliments because they don't look like typical Jews and get called zionist bitches and accused of killing Palestinian children.

I disagree, R36. I think Natalie Portman does look quite Jewish, in the tradition of 'la belle juive'.

Amused that r22 thinks Britney Spears is a “waspy white woman”. She’s swamp trash. Sort of endearing, but nonetheless...

Natalie Portman and Mara Wilson may be Jewish, so can’t be technical “WASP”, but they’re not trashy.

Interesting to ponder.

I honestly think being attractive, rich and white is the biggest privilege for a woman and Scarlett and Natalie both fit that bill. Them being Jewish has nothing to do with that nor affects them negatively. Ugly fat blonde Christian women obviously would not get that much sympathy. Nobody feels sorry for Mama June for instance.

WASP can be used too ways. Originally, it was wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant which was the culturally dominant elite minority for centuries. If you use it very literally and interpret it as white Anglo-Saxon Protestant instead, then most of The US is WASP including the poor whites of the Deep South, Appalachia, Ozarks, the Bayou (Britney), the trailer parks, The Okies in California and the folk from the Kentucky hollers (Johnny Depp).

[quote]asking a 6 year old if they have a boyfriend is not cool.

FFS, it's one of those playful tongue-in-cheek questions that adults ask small kids. It's not as if they're actually expecting a 6-year-old to be in a relationship. The rest of your post is correct though.

It's a innocent question but some parents would be rightfully uncomfortable with it because they don't want their kids thinking about things like dating or having a "boyfriend"/"girlfriend". 6-year-old kids should be asked "what's your favorite sport?" or "who's your role model?"

It depends. When I was little I remember older aunts and uncles constantly asking if I had a girlfriend when I was younger. Everyone laughed.

One time, a stranger at a store asked me that and my mom was creeped out and told the guy (a cashier) to stop talking to me.

I went to NYU with Mara, and she was a classic case of white guilt. We saw her as rich and privileged (maybe she wasn’t but she tried so hard) and she’d constantly tell my friends (black and Latinos) how great it was to not be white and how exceptional we all were (like most college students we were pretty dumb). At first we bought into it but she overdid it. Privileged white people claim to be aware of their privileges but they have no idea and always give themselves away the harder they try.

" Nobody feels sorry for Mama June for instance"

That happens when you reunite with your daughter's abuser while you have minor children still living with you.

Mara lives on social media and has tried unsuccessfully for years to relaunch her acting career. Her “coming out” after Pulse as a bi woman who still only date men was gross, her playing handmaiden for MTFs is even worse.

r3 omg I remember that! She like like 'checkmate TERFS'. It was one of the moments when I realised half of these vocal/ enraged 'celebrities' literally dont know anything about sex or gender. Like nothing, and yet they think gays or gender critical men and women just got out of bed one day and decided to make trans peoples lives hell. No. Sex matters, it why im a homosexual and not a bisexual. Biology and hormones are why I am a homosexual man and not a heterosexual man. Like she is soooooooooo stupid.

Believe it or not, many of us interact and even have friends that are trans. Many of us support transition (of adults) and with 'gate keeping' them being able to use many public spaces as the gender they wish. But this is a legal fiction, and material reality overrides this nicety in (certain) circumstances. This is especially important for sexual minorities and women.

It’s sad how child actors are preyed upon. She is always making herself part of the child actor issues when you get a sense she’s using it to further her own narrative. She barely had a career compared to so many other former child actors and she went to university and seems very well adjusted. She never went off the rails like the other child stars who had some major shit in their early lives.

R22 I really wouldn’t say that’s true (yes I can see white Vs POC), but not WASP vs Jewish or Italian, etc. Except someone like a Mayim Bialik, but Jewish or not she’s just ugly, so yes unattractive child stars will be treated differently.

Speaking of, I do recall reading articles on Mara back when she was a child actress and that she was Jewish, her parents were very protective, etc. That tends to be true - Jewish parents of child stars generally speaking are protective and value education - often forcing their kid to go (a good) college and then come back to acting, etc. Very rarely will a Britney Spears type case have Jewish stage parents.

R47 You know what? There’s every type of Jewish person. Stop trolling.

R48 yes if you look hard there’s every type of every person everywhere. But there are things called trends. Yes, people tend to be much fatter in the flyover states. That doesn’t mean you can’t find skinny people in the middle of Kansas. Or a white person who’s amazing at basketball. Don’t be a fucking literal idiot.

Remember when trans wasn’t really a thing? Who the f pushed this shit into our daily lives, Soros?!

I just listened to the Coogan podcast she was on that was mentioned upthread. Despite her attending NYU and being a published writer she comes off as whiny and one note. More jarring is every other word is "like" punctuated with "you know". I get she's on a mission to correct the perception of child performers, but she's a poor spokeperson.