Washington, DC (September 11, 2020) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) called out Netflix for providing a platform to a film, Cuties, that has permitted the sexual exploitation of children.
“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,” said Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“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.
“The audience does not need to see the very long scenes with close-up shots of the girls’ bodies; this does nothing to educate the audience on the harms of sexualization. And to showcase sexual exploitation of children in a film while saying that this is a ‘powerful story,’ as Netflix has said, is nothing short of corporate malfeasance.
“Netflix could and should insist that the particularly sexually-exploitative scenes are cut from the film, or stop hosting this film at all,” Nealon added.
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography.
