It’s not exactly news at this point that the rapper known as Tyga is, as a rather self-explanatory headline in The Daily Beast put it yesterday, “a Creepy Predator Who Is Attracted to Underage Girls.”
As the Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern points out, the rapper famously started dating Kylie Jenner when she was 17 — officially “jailbait” in the state of California, where she lives — and defended the, er, romance in a song featuring one of the creepiest couplets in the history of lyrics:
They say she young, I should’ve waited
She a big girl, dog, when she stimulated.
This star-crossed romance got even skeezier last month, with tabloids reporting that while Tyga was dating Jenner he was also creeping on an even-more-underage girl online — a 14-year-old “Instagram model.”
In a press conference on Monday, with attorney Gloria Allred by her side, the girl in question — identifying herself as Molly O’Malia.– told her side of the story, saying that Tyga had approached her online, sending her messages on Instagram and trying to convince her to meet in person.
If her story is true, Stern notes, it
shows that Tyga is a predator with considerable means and influence who targets underage girls, just as he did with a teenage Kylie Jenner. And the public—and tabloid media—shouldn’t laugh off this despicable behavior any longer. It’s this lack of seriousness and accountability that’s allowed a demon like R. Kelly to continue to flourish, despite the countless young girls he’s left violated and forgotten.
Unfortunately, as the mention of the henious R. Kelly reminds us, Tyga is hardly the first predatory pop star. And in most cases, the media has been content to trivialize the issue or simply look the other way.
Sure, rocker Jerry Lee Lewis famously faced a backlash after journalists discovered that he had married a 13-year-old girl who also happened to be his first cousin once removed.
But Elvis Presley somehow managed to avoid this sort of scandal even while he was actively pursuing Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he met when she was only 14. The two eventually married in 1967 after what Biography.com euphemistically describes as a “nearly eight-year courtship.” According to assorted biographers, Elvis was positively obsessed with girls in their early teens. The official story, for what it’s worth, is that the singer didn’t actually have sex with any of them, preferring pillow fights and girly gossip.
Elvis wasn’t the first or the last pop star obsessed with underage girls; most had a lot more than pillow fights in mind. In a spoken-word section of the 1977 Kiss song “Christine Sixteen,” Gene Simmons declares
I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age, but when I saw you comin’ out of school that day, that day I knew, I knew I got to have ya. I got to have ya!
But it hasn’t been just rock ‘n’ roll sleazebags like Simmons who have advertised their interest in underage girls. The Knack’s “My Sharona” was about a real-life 17-year-old who was dating one of the band members; the group returned to the topic of underage girls in another song,“That’s What The Little Girls Do,” which laments how these “little girls” allegedly torment older men, breaking both their egos and their hearts. Oh, and the album that followed the massive hit Get The Knack was titled “But the Little Girls Understand.”
The list goes on and on. There’s Foreigner’s “Seventeen.” There’s “Young Girl,” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. There’s Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow,” a surrealistic ode to yellow vibrators — and 14-year-old girls.
And then there’s Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. He didn’t write musical love letters to 14-year-olds. No, he just sent roadies to bring them to him, no questions asked. Or at least he did on one infamous occasion in 1972. As Cracked describes the incident, Page was so taken by 14-year-old groupie Lori Maddox, whom he’d spotted in a nightclub, that he
sent roadie Richard Cole to Maddox’s table with the message, “Jimmy told me that he’s going to have you whether you like it or not.” The roadie then grabbed her and chucked her in the back of a limo, saying, “You fucking move and I’ll fucking have your head.”
Page apparently did his best to keep the three-year “romance” that followed out of the press — and Maddox herself largely confined to his hotel room.
But the story has been out for decades now, and no one seems to give a shit about it. Page is still treated as a rock god, his creepy years-long exploitation of the extremely underaged Maddox seen as little more than a colorful example of seventies rock excess.
Some might say that it’s unfair to put Tyga’s skeezy but failed online seduction of a high school junior in the same category as, say, Page’s exploitation of Maddox. He didn’t kidnap her; they never even met in person.
Indeed, two other Daily Beast writers, Lizzie Crocker and Tim Teeman, sniff that
[i]n the annals of Allred cases defending pretty girls as victims of lurid celebrity scandals, this particular scandal was hardly a scandal at all before Allred entered the fray. …
it was not clear what made O’Malia … a victim in this case, until she had been transformed into one by Allred.
But that’s not really the point. It’s a good thing that Tyga’s pursuit of a 14-year-old is a scandal (and it definitely was one, albeit a somewhat smaller one, even before Allred got involved).
Pop stars’ exploitation of their young female fans used to be such a “normal” and expected thing in the music business that some of the rock ‘n’ roll predators not only wrote songs about it, but wrote songs in which they — shades of Humbert Humbert — made themselves out to be the victims.
Today, Tyga is getting called out on Twitter and in the tabloids for his predatory behavior. That’s a good thing.
I only hope that Jimmy Page and R. Kelly and all those other musicians who have happily exploited underage fans will eventually be held to the same standard.
Ugh. I’ve never really liked mainstream rock or the like – not really into popular music with lyrics at all, to be honest – and this sort of crystallizes it for me. It’s really everywhere, isn’t it? No such thing as rape culture, though. See, she’s asking for it. It’s right in the lyrics, and rock’n’roll don’t lie, right?
It makes me happy that this sort of horrible bullshit is becoming less and less tolerable to society.
Teiresias, in slight defense of The Police, most of their relationship songs are meant to be messed up. Sting has said repeatedly that he doesn’t get how anyone can think Every Breath You Take is romantic.
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is basically a Nice Guy anthem though.
Thanks, RosaDeLava. I made the mistake of googling it and… oh my. I’m not going to touch that with a pole. That’s some messed up stuff right there.
Even worse, there’s entire comment threads about how to find them in real life.
I’m not going to defend any of the specific behavior written about by David in the post, but when you’re talking about song lyrics referencing 16 and 17 year olds, have a bit of perspective:
While part of the point is clearly the *youth* of the person, 18 isn’t the universal age of consent. I’m not sure how much this has changed over the last hundred years or whatever, but, for example, 16 is currently the age of consent in the UK and in, AFAIK, most of the states in the USA.
None of that means that the specific situations, whether hypothetical or real, aren’t ethically wrong, but it does mean they aren’t as flat out obviously illegal as some people seem to be acting.
Why would you WANT to find a yandere in real life? The whole point of such characters is that their sweet appearance and superficial behavior hides murderous psychopathic thoughts and tendencies.
@Buttercup:
“well, why don’t groupies pick up a guitar and make their own damn music instead of throwing themselves at male musicians, being a sex toy is no way to achieve lasting immortality, and anyway most of the great and respectful love songs are written about wives and girlfriends, not backstage flings”
If you actually wrote that, I’m kinda understanding she flew off her handle. Bebe Buell might be a symptom of how crappy the music business is for women, but it’s hardly her fault it’s like that.
Girls don’t get to play rock music unless they’re extremely talented or extremely pretty, and even then they’re not taken seriously. Guys, however, get to be both mediocre musicians and/or hugely unattractive. Imagine how much worse that must have been in the seventies…
Also, you pretty much said “you’re just some pretty slut, no one really cares about you, have some self respect” to her. So classy, much feminist.
What. Why.
@EJ(TOO)
Is it weird I’m not surprised?
Buttercup mentioned the popularity of things like 50 shades and Twilight, and given some of the opinions manospherians have on how relationships should work, I’m not really shocked to find out that there are people who think someone who will murder people in fits of jealousy make good partners.
I think they are a minority, but I’ve seen enough exemples of people idolizing abusive relationships to think it’s that out of the ordinary.
Age of consent in Japan is 13, with restrictions (apparently in practice parental approval) until 18.
My recollections of the guy I met who was a MAJOR fan of Jimmy Page and gave me the book “I’m with the Band” by Pamela DesBarres (groupie of many rock groups/stars) when I was 14 – thank goodness my parents refused to let me date at all regardless of they guy’s age – were always that he was creepy, but the years that have passed since only amplified just how gross and creepy it was now that I know what he was after in his pursuits of my freshman in high school self. I was relatively sheltered and oh so very naive, making me an attractive prospect for the pervs who sought exactly that.
I need to call my mom and thank her and my dad for being so strict about dating.
Age of consent in Germany is 14.
Adults who are in a position of power over the teen (teachers, etc.) are excluded.
Oh finally, a topic that I am overqualified to talk about. *Cracks knuckles*
I’m pretty amazed that the stories about Jimmy Page aren’t more well-known, as the people surrounding him have been talking for a while. Poor Lori Maddox still seems a bit Stockholmed, but she describes the kidnapping, even though she ultimately seems to think of their relationship as romantic.
As much of a disappointment Courtney Love turned out to be, I loved what she had to say about groupies at the time. I remember an interview where she was talking about Meeting the Madwoman, and she said “groupies make their fucking sex life their art form” and how unsatisfying and dangerous that was.
I remember listening to “My Sharona” as a little kid and doing cheerleader routines to it, and finding out it was (a) filthy and (b) about a 17 year old girl was pretty crushing. But I still want to listen to it.
That is, I believe, a common misconception.
The national minimum age of consent in Japan is 13, but every prefecture may set their own age as long as it’s not below that. Most prefectures have the age of consent higher than that: Tokyo has it at 17, for example.
EDIT: I am not a lawyer or Japanese, merely a person who argues a lot on the internet. I am very happy to be told that I’m wrong.
For me, I think that makes all the difference. There are plenty of people who fantasize about actions that are immoral or skeevy, but who don’t act on them. I don’t think it is reasonable to demand that people’s desires always correspond to what is socially acceptable, as long as their actions do. For me, the criteria is whether someone else is actually hurt/negative impacted, and not what someone privately desires. It’s also pretty clear that the teacher isn’t comfortable with the situation, whatever his desires may be — after all, the title of the song is “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”.
(And given that Sting was originally an English teacher and is familiar with Nabokov, I don’t think comparing the male in the song to Humbert Humbert is intended to be complimentary.)
As for Foreigner, I’m far more worried about them wanting to have sex with people while they are clearly ill with a fever of 103.
This kind of stuff I find makes me intensely angry, partly because I went through it as a teen (and younger), and mainly because these guys, and men much less famous and ‘glamourous’ do it all the fucking time and no one seems to give a shit about how the girls feel about it.
Mandy Smith for eg, actively groomed by Bill Wyman at 13, being fucked by him by 14, married to him at 19 and divorced at 21. Her mother was collusive with Wyman due to vicarious ambition. Smith acknowledges now that he was manipulative and said:
‘He didn’t flash his cash around. He was never one for lavish gestures. He came across as a quiet, nice guy. I wonder now if that was deliberate.’
These days, we would use words such as ‘ grooming’. She nods. ‘I honestly don’t know if it was that. I’ve thought about this a lot and I just don’t know.
‘With hindsight, he was quite an immature character. Even though he was a man, a dad, he wasn’t mature. He didn’t do responsibility either.
‘I was underage, but I was complicit. Now, I see it in black and white. I work with teenagers. I see how vulnerable they are under all that bravado.’
A commenter above is a bit miffed that we are concentrating on the exploitative nature of older men with teen girls as she sought out older men – but I am from the UK where underage is 15 and under, so I do not see it any other way. Yes 16 17 are definitely different. For eg I knew someone who was having an ‘affair’ with a married man of 25 when she was 15. She fully acknowledges that her ‘collusion’ was part of having grown up in an environment of emotional neglect and general abuse.
I was just talking about ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ to someone yesterday. Sting was a teacher, which makes it potentially creepier, though Sting doesn’t appear to have been relating his own experience. How must it have been for his previous pupils to have seen him marketed as sex symbol?!
I don’t doubt that there are men who got into the music industry to maximise access to teen girls. I am pretty sure Gary Glitter did – though his preference appears to be pre teen.
I used to love John Peel and was SO disappointed to read of his gleeful account of fucking a 15yo when he was about 24.
I guess these men are great heroes of that part of the Manosphere that goes on and on and ON about 14/15 yo’s as being the only girls worth their attention.
Right? I’ve always wanted to date relatively close to my own age (my comfort gap at 29 is at about 4 years plus or minus), because I want to be around people that I have someone in common with; people that are in a similar stage of their life to me.
But I guess when one views women and girls as commodities to possess rather than people to have relationships with, one is going to be more concerned with getting the “highest quality” (read: youngest) goods that the law “allows” (read: turns a blind eye to). And I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Why are we doing the legal age of consent thing? The brains of 16 and 17 year olds are not developed yet and it is in no way appropriate for adults to go after teenagers. I could give a fuck if 18 isn’t the universal age of consent. Adults having relationships with high school age KIDS is predatory and immoral.
Anyway, another song I’ve always been skeeved out by is Cherry Pie. It’s about the vagina of a teenage girl. Nope, nope, and more nope.
@EJ
I am also in neither of those categories, but from what I understand there are exemptions to the prefecture laws. Not ones the Americans who like to talk about young Asian girls are likely to get, though. Apparently the most common is “sincere romantic relationship”, which is in practice usually decided by the parents.
I would like to recommend this linked article – not at all about sleazebags in the music industry, but ALL about the supposed consensual sex that girls of 12-17 are having with men in their early 20s and older:
http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/21/original-essay-the-not-rape-epidemic/
Triggers warning for rape and sexual exploitation.
For some reason, I feel compelled to point out that the boy in “I Love Rock’n’Roll” is “about 17,” but I am unaware of anything skeevy that Joan Jett ever did.
The specific age isn’t the problem. A person rarely changes in any significant way from when they were one day to their 18th birthday to one day after, but we have age of consent laws to prevent child abuse. These laws might not be perfect, but they’re certainly useful and I’m really glad they exist.
@Ustc
I can’t tell if Kylie Jenner can give consent (even if legally she can’t), but whether she’s a bigger star or isn’t “indebted” doesn’t mean she can’t be a victim of abuse. I don’t know and won’t pretend to know what her relationship with Tyga is like, but her fame doesn’t protect her.
@guy
Thirteen?! How do they justify that?
@Falconer
The only really skeevy thing Joan Jett’s done is deny that Kim Fowley drugging and having sex with Jackie Fox was rape. And fuck it, that’s bad enough.
@peaches, well now I know. I admit I don’t know much about Joan Jett.
When I say 16 17 is different I do not mean that there is some magical difference in maturity, but simply that after 16 in the UK a person is taking part in the adult world more, therefore is more mature in that sense. Having been 16 17 and daily predated upon by middle aged men I would not suggest that it suddenly becomes OK after a certain date.
The age of consent in many European countries and US states is 16. The PROTECT Act in the US establishes 18 as the de facto federal age of consent since it’s illegal to travel between states or internationally to have sex with someone under 18. The main rationale for 18 over 16 or 17 is that most 16 and 17 year-olds don’t have the same legal rights as adults and haven’t finished high school yet.
I think most ephebophiles are turned on by the power difference in the relationship.