FHM Magazine Guilty of Child Pornography?

FHM has recently released this years list of the ladies it has deemed the 100 sexiest women. No surprise was the fact that Carmen Electra, Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson were all on the list. What did come, as a surprise was the fact that five minors were on the list. Yes minors, regardless of the fact that these girls are in the spotlight and may be hitting headlines all over the world they are still under the age of 18, which makes them minors in the U.S. legal system and thus protected by the intricate weave of Chris Hanson and the National child molestation registry.

Hayden Panettiere (Heroes, NBC) is one of the youngest of all stars hitting the FHM "sexiest 100" list and yet she herself ranks in at number 6! Hayden isn't the exact portrait of sexuality and yet when she is outfitted in her low-cut cheerleading top and high slit skit for many men she would fit the standard for "schoolgirl fantasy". This brings forth the question of what men are finding attractive and what our society is deeming as appropriate. It would seem that any man can look at Hayden and be perfectly justified in viewing her as an attractive young woman, that he could even lust after her seeing as she has been publicized in the pages of this notorious men's magazine. Yet if the same man went to a high school football game and starred at the cheerleaders, he would soon be arrested for stalking and inappropriate behavior towards a minor. So the question that presents itself is that of asking when did these girls stop being girls and start being sexual icons?

Chris Hanson who hosts "To catch a predator" on NBC should be all over this segment. Here we are living in a society in which one in three females will be raped, sexually assaulted or stalked and yet we have well known men's magazines putting forth the imagine of a 17 year old girl as a sex icon. The imagine of Hayden is not the only depiction of an underage girl either, girls number 96, 98, and 100 are all only 17 years old. Emma Watson (age 17), who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series, ranks in as number 98 and is one of the youngest looking girls to adorn the pages of FHM besides the daughters of some celebrities. Yet Watson is once again thrown in with the voluptuous and sexual portrayals of women in this American society.

FHM, which stands for "For Him Magazine", has a reputation to uphold. Often seen as a soft core Playboy, FHM has always been an adult magazine with scantily clothed women on the inside. FHM can be found on the top racks at bookstores clad in a cellophane wrapper, which protects America's youth from looking in. What is unexpected is that America's youth are not the ones looking in, but in fact the ones looking out.

"Child sexual molestation and sexual abuse consists of inappropriate and illegal touching of a child in a sexual manner, or the sexual exploitation of children by taking pictures and videos of children posed or acting in a sexual manner." (childprotection.lifetips.com) It is hard to sit back and say for sure that FHM violated federal law when they published photos of these girls in such a way. But what is clear is that the intent of FHM was to super-impose the image of these girls with that of the image of sex. When men begin to look at such young women in a sexual manor we find that very negative social consequences are often the result. With some 400,000 registered sex offenders (Ernie Allen, President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) in the United States the act of portraying five minors, as America's Top 100 sexiest women cannot go unnoticed. Furthermore if it does go unnoticed then where will it stop? I for one hope that next year I'm not writing about how the top 100 included an even younger cast of girls.