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Now there’s a headline I didn’t think I’d write, but it seems to be that an iOS app that provides pole dancing lessons has caused an outrage due to its 12+ age rating. Erm.
Released back in June, Pole Dancer Pro shows us the moves that will apparently turn users into “lap dancing sexpots” through instructor Jessica Jackson. Although rated 12+ due to “Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity”, Jo Squires, director of children’s charity BIG Ministries, is now rallying to get the app banned from the app store.
While the app has quite a raunchy undertone, according to the creators, the main aspect of the app is to help get those interested in pole dancing fit and healthy, and is most likely aimed at a older audience. It’s a paid app too — I don’t think your typical 12-year-old’s are going to have credit cards somehow — let alone iPad’s or iPhone’s of their own to purchase the app. If they’re using their parents’ devices and iTunes accounts, well, they need to use better passwords.
That said, I thought that Apple had strict rules and restrictions on what actually makes it into the store, complete with checks and all — something about want porn, go to Android — but I guess that doesn’t apply to everything it seems. [MacWorld]
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Fuck right off. There are much more important things they should be doing with their time than worrying about this app. This whole thing reeks of them trying to get their charity into the public eye by kicking up a fuss over nothing. Next they’ll be asking iTunes to remove Rihanna from the listings just in case a child listens to S+M.
“Next they’ll be asking iTunes to remove Rihanna from the listings just in case a child listens to S+M.”
[prude] That might not be such a bad thing [/prude]
I’m not sure he thought it was a good thing to get Rihanna banned because he was a prude. I assumed it’s just because he’s a music lover.
Who are BIG ministries? A charity of God Botherers that facilitates children aged 7-11 to worship God something something praise him, something something salvation, something something indoctrinate…..
Calling for the App’s ban. Well that’s restored my faith in Christianity and how it embraces others and teaches tolerance and forgiveness
I see nothing wrong with a young girl learning to Pole Dance. It’s a different, very skilled and no doubt fun way of keeping fit.
My only conclusion is that the people who are offended by it are transposing their own experiences and conceptions onto the activity and onto the girls…sexualising them in the process. If you treat Pole Dancing as taboo…you’re turning it into something creepy when it absolutely doesn’t need to be.
I could quite easily see a 12-year old girl swinging around a pole and be impressed…AND not want to have sex with her…and I would utterly condemn anyone who thought like that as a paedophile.
It’s the same as seeing a young girl in a two piece swimsuit at the beach. I hear people claiming all the time that we’re sexualising them and encouraging paedophiles. No…no we’re not. If an adult male sees a pre-pubescent girl showing some skin at a beach and is sexually aroused…he is clearly socially maladjusted and a paedophile. The exposure of the skin didn’t turn him into a paedophile…just as there would be no case for mitigation of responsibility if he were to act on his urges and then claim that the girl or the girl’s parents had inadvertently seduced him through their choice of clothing.
Children should be free to do what they want/enjoy without idiots trying to judge them as adults. We should learn from them and take the taboo/mystery out of some of our own activities…not project our own insecurities and dodgy sexual associations onto them…corrupting the shit out of them until they are poorly-adjusted adults themselves…
Well said Sir, slightly wandering off topic, but nonetheless true.
How was it off topic? Reading it back…it’s all relevant to the proposed ban. Why shouldn’t a 12 year old see content that is age-suitable for them in terms of nudity etc….just because some sexually repressed, pro-censorship adult deems the nature of the dancing/exercise to have smutty associations in other scenarios?
But thanks for the thumbs-up!
I did say “lightly wandering off topic”. I was referring to the part about paedophiles. Nothing wrong in what you said, just not STRICTLY relevant to the article.
That’s okay then. My main concern when I hit “Submit” was that someone would label me a paedophile…albeit one with an ingenious and seemingly watertight ‘anti-censorship’ angle…