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.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a predator/pedophile ever since the Jared Fogle story broke out. Now Janet Bloomfield claimed in one of her posts earlier last year titled, In Defense of Pedophilia” that “Being attracted to the body of a sexually mature 13 year old male or female is not pedophilia by definition!”
But is pedophilia always about physical sexual characteristics? Jared Fogle talked in one of those phone confessions that he loves young, naive girls. “The younger, the better.” This isn’t just about physical characteristics. It’s normal to be attracted to breasts and developed bodies, but it’s an entirely different thing to act upon those who are underage. The ones that do, for them it’s not all just about sexuality either. It’s about preying on young people that have a child-like state of mind. A mind that is vulnerable, naive, and easy to manipulate. Power and domination.
peaches – it wasn’t Hyde’s reflection on her own experience that pissed me off – it made me sad, but that is her prerogative. It was the way she applied this to other women/ girls and judged them.
@Hambeast:
I paid it no attention when I was little, but as I grew up it started to disturb me. Privilege in action! And yeah, really horrible and threatening.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants, you’re definitely a friend and a regular. You’re one of the nicest of all of us.
@ellesar
Ah, yeah. Sorry.
I don’t really have much to add on the subject, beyond agreeing that there’s a ton of skeeviness in the music industry.
Hell, even Danny Elfman wrote a song about it with his usual…demented vigor.
http://youtu.be/jItz-uNjoZA
Aww, thanks, EJ! I don’t post very often, so I don’t count myself as a regular. WHTM commenters are a hilarious and smart bunch, and I hate the idea of rubbing anyone the wrong way.
I wish I had more time to post in depth and chat back and forth with everybody here. Usually when I’m reading WHTM, my twins are distracting me with Legos that need to be pried apart, or some catastrophe involving suntan lotion and the cat, or a drawing that requires someone to LOOKIT LOOKIT LOOKIT NOW RIGHT NOW, so I have to be content with occasional drive-by snark. If I say moronic things and use bad word choices when trying to type longer posts (see above), well…they’ll be out of the house in 18 years and maybe I’ll get my brain back.
Meanwhile, I’m mostly keeping my mouth shut and larnin’.
Yeesh, that one is up (or down) there with “Under My Thumb” in general horribleness. Compared to the Stones, the Beatles weren’t always cuddly and fuzzy. John had a lot of issues with abandonment and jealousy (no surprise, considering his chaotic early life).
Paul was pretty sympathetic towards women, especially the struggles and loneliness of working women, single women, and mothers. I always liked his character songs. George strikes me as the most ambivalent of the three. He wrote some beautiful love songs, but it’s not always clear whether he’s singing to God/Krishna or a woman.
It seems like attracting girls is a major impetus for many young guys to learn a rock instrument and join a band. I’ve seen advice on PUA and seduction forums to that effect – “Learn guitar and instantly slay (unpleasant slang for genitalia) !” Maybe that drives a lot of the icky behavior and lyrics, and some musicians just fail to outgrow it.
@Selt
I’m not sure what to do with the sudden knowledge that Jack Skellington’s singing voice (and also one of my favourite film composers) was also the lead singer in Oingo Boingo.
Reading about Elvis Presley and being a fan I just had my heart pierced and cried for the truth that has killed me inside. Rest in Peace.
Hugs for all who have been with creepy predators. And ones who have found out the “truth”.
http://youtu.be/sbwTZPjieLA
Speaking of yanderes, I don’t mind having one there are really good ones out there, they are very rare but they’re out there.
@Selt: FWIW, I’m certain Elfman was mocking the whole thing. I’ve never heard anything skeevy about his offstage life.
Uff, PLEASE, Bebe. Most of those “great love songs” are forgettable bilge, and amount to little more than “Oo, baby-baby, you’re so young and tight, I wanna get into your pants and boff you all night, so I wrote you this song. Now don’t take long. And while you’re at it, couldja gimme some head!” Deathless poetry, they are NOT. And these dudes are not gods, and being passed around among them doesn’t make you a goddess. Sleep with whom you want to if that’s your thing, but don’t kid yourself about what you really are to them.
I also note in passing how little of music — or indeed ANYTHING artistic — is devoted to women fetishizing and using under-age boys this way. Other than the afore-noted Joan Jett song, which I take to be ironic, because Joan is openly gay. (I twigged to that from the moment I heard her cover of Tommy James’s great “Crimson and Clover”, and was a bit surprised that she didn’t switch any pronouns.) And because it’s not apparent from the lyrics who’s being the real aggressor, anyway. (I always kind of figured it was the dude. I could be wrong, though.)
PS: Age of consent in Canada used to be 13, but was upped to 16 some years ago, probably because people were finally getting skeeved out by early teen marriages to older men. Teachers are expected to keep hands off students because they are in a position of power and trust, regardless of how small the age gap between them and their students might be. And because quid-pro-quo grades-for-sex shit is inexcusable, no matter who’s “seducing” whom.
Iggy Pop dressed up like a woman, and said that there was no shame in dressing as a woman, because there is no shame in BEING a woman.
Kurt Cobain said that he couldn’t understand why we teach women to DEFEND themselves from rape, that we should be teaching men to NOT rape.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Post more if possible, though! 🙂
My mom’s friend had a one night stand with him when she was younger (but not underage!) A secret she divulged very loudly in the middle of a restaurant after having a bit too much to drink. Her exact words were “I fucked Iggy Pop!”
He was my first celebrity crush and I’m so glad I’ve never had to be embarrassed about it. I still love him and wish he was still around.
Ugh, trust HER to go there.
Having seen 13-year-old boys (and been a 13-year-old myself many eons ago), I can’t imagine what the attraction is for adults; it was hard enough to feel it myself at that age. They’re as immature at that age as the girls, if not more so. The only person with any right to feel sexual attraction to a 13-year-old is another 13-year-old, but at that age, everybody is so cliquey and dorky and perpetually awkward and emotionally labile that it’s a wonder they can feel anything for each other at all.
When I see high-school boys now, I never think “young stud with a body that won’t quit”, because all I ever see is a gangly (or chubby), pimply, ill-defined kid with a lot of growing up left to do. I do prefer younger men, but the operative word here is MEN. I want a fully developed pair of frontal lobes, not just a working set of ‘nads. That’s where MY lowest bar is set.
“Sexually mature” doesn’t mean jack shit, beyond being able to produce sperm or eggs that could lead to a viable pregnancy. Just because a boy that age can get an erection, or several a day, doesn’t mean that he’s not still very much a kid. Or that he’s any more of an adult than he was when he wasn’t yet spending hours in the bathroom wanking over a Playboy he stole from his dad’s hidden stash.
And it doesn’t give anyone the right to take advantage of his erectile capacities, either.
Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of ass-backwards logic is that?
It’s only a scandal because of Gloria Allred’s involvement? What about the fact that, I dunno, an older man was trying to seduce underage girls? I understand it’s a (outdated) social norm, where younger women marrying men a decade or more their senior is sometimes encouraged, but I thought we got to the point where it stops being an excuse for anyone under the age of 18.
And, of course, it’s rather infuriating when they do that – being these successful entertainers who can get away with a lot.
I notice it with comedians and comicbook artists as well, this weird notion that being criticized or called out for bad behavior makes them victims of “political correctness” or the Ess-Jay-Dubews. Yeah, it’s so unbearable to take responsibility for the work they put out and how they compose themselves in public – all while sitting atop their ivory tower, weeping into silk hankies embroidered with their initials.
We unwashed commoners obviously can’t comprehend the tragedy that is their often decadent lifestyles…
I’m old now, but I was a drummer from the time I was about 14 up until my 30s.
In 90, I had just turned 18 and I moved from my small town to Atlanta, where I lived until 98. I auditioned for and subsequently played with about 100 bands. I knew 2 other female musicians, both guitarists. I met a few others, but they fell off the map, just like lots of guys did.
Anyway, every single audition that I went on, ALWAYS, it was “you sound good, but would you wear a corset, sweetie?” or some form of something about how I looked.
If I wanted to play, I had to look how the men running it wanted me to look. And I sat behind a huge drum kit, it’s not like anyone could actually see me all that well. After 8 years, I just quit. I wasn’t making a living, I was a hairdresser the rest of the time, but I did it because I loved it. It didn’t matter how much I loved it, I just couldn’t stomach it anymore.
I met some good people, I got to meet iggy Pop once, he was great. I knew the black crowes, their drummer was from the same small town I grew up in. I also knew drivin’ and cryin’, they were nice.
I also met some famous men that were horrible people. Let’s say that if anyone loves echo and the bunnymen, or anthrax, I won’t ruin them for you. But I could. 😉
@selt
Oingo Boingo’s “Little Girls” is supposed to be satire. Danny Elfman wrote it about all the older guys he would see in LA with much younger women. Hence the chorus:
They don’t, ask me questions
They don’t, want to scold me
They don’t, look for answers
They just, want to hold me
The basic idea being that these guys would date young women because they were less threatening to their fragile egos than grown women. Hardly a tribute to ephebophilia. Also, the live version from their farewell concert is much better:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vqn-w0wYzQ&w=420&h=315%5D
sorry, not really sure how to embed. Link works, though.
Ew, what the heck does JB define as “sexually mature”??
I have a 13-year-old family member, and while his cohort are all starting to think independently and develop their adult personalities, they’re nowhere near grown-up, and especially not in a sexual way.
I have never seen a 13-year-old with a fully mature body – Hell, I was a semi-early developer, and I’d barely got any pubic hair at that age.
13-year-old boys are all still short, and high-voiced, and none of them are close to having whiskers. They’re barely even pubescent.
They’re all kids with muddy knees, really. I have to explain the sex jokes in The Simpsons to my 13-yo.
There’s just nothing sexually appealing about kids that age, to a normal adult.
And it makes me want to puke to think that there are people who want to insist that it’s normal to sexualise children. Somehow it’s worse when the abuse apologists are mothers themselves.
I am so terrified for Jb’s children. Its terrible to be living with a pedo/rape apologist and being a rapist herself there is probably a chance she’s a pedophile as well.
@Fruitloopsie – I wouldn’t speculate about JB’s own behaviour in that regard, but I really hope her kids manage to grow up with a healthy perspective on things. It’s unlikely that her public opinions wouldn’t affect their upbringing in some ways.
@raysa: Ian McCulloch said I had pretty hair. That was about it. I’ve had good luck in meeting famous people. They’ve always been friendly and not creepy. The danger in meeting your idols is that they’ll be odious, freaky jerks.
One word: Lostprophets.
Buttercup, sorry if I’m gonna ruin George Harrison for you, but Patti Boyd’s autobiography about her life as the wife of first George Harrison and then Eric Clapton makes it very clear just how normalized behaviors were in that world that we would today readily acknowledge as sexist, abusive, cruel, and dangerous. I closed the book thinking, “Damn, she sure put up with a lot of completely insane shit.”
I’m happy I don’t know half the people listed here, although the Joan Jett thing still hurts. :'(