Netflix’s ‘Cuties’ Doesn’t Advocate Sexualizing Young Girls—It Condemns It

Not being a politics reporter, I am only vaguely aware of the alt-right’s growing interest in Hollywood and pedophilia. But being a film reporter, I can tell you that I have seen Cuties, a French film coming to Netflix on September 9, which has been accused of “child porn” for its depiction of preteen girls in skimpy outfits in a recently released poster and trailer. As one of the few people who has actually seen the film, I can tell you that Cuties in no way, shape, or form advocates for the hyper-sexualization of young girls. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Cuties controversy is the latest in a line of recent anti-pedophilia campaigns that have stemmed from the corners of the internet where extreme conspiracy theorists—including QAnon and Pizzagate believers—like to hang out. Earlier this month, far-right conspiracy theorists got a Trolls doll pulled from stores after a viral Facebook video claimed the doll was connected to sex trafficking. Around that same time, a fact-free “documentary” called Out of the Shadows went viral on YouTube, which claimed Satan-worshipping Hollywood executives are spreading messages of pedophilia through movies like Zoolander and coded messages like the word “television.” As Mel Magazine recently reported, the “Save the Children” rallying cry has been co-opted by people who seem more interested in outlandish stories about shadowy factions than preventing real-life sex trafficking. This week, that focus is on Cuties.

But if you’d seen the film, you’d know that French-Senegalese filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré illustrates, very clearly, that the four girls who enter a dance contest together are far too young to be wearing skimpy outfits and performing suggestive dance moves. That’s kind of the whole thesis of the movie—that girls who barely understand the concept of sex are pressured by society to present themselves as “sexy,” and that’s very much a bad thing.

If you’ve only seen the poster and trailer for Cuties—as I assume is the case for 99.9 percent of the people responsible for the backlash—you might see it as an endorsement for pre-teen girls “finding themselves” via sexualization. Neither the poster, nor the trailer, nor Netflix’s official description of the film does a great job conveying the tone of the movie. There’s the added challenge of the language barrier, given that it’s a French film. And as Decider’s editor-in-chief Mark Graham laid out, Netflix’s response didn’t exactly help.

I had hoped that my own review of Cuties from Sundance—written long before the trailer came out or this controversy came to light—did it justice, but according to the emails and tweets I received yesterday that accused me of being a pedophile, I’m not sure I did a great job. Let’s try again: The protagonist of Cuties is Amy, an 11-year-old daughter of Senegalese immigrants who lives in poverty with her mother and two brothers in Paris. Amy’s family are traditional Muslim, which means Amy is absolutely not allowed to wear the kind of suggestive outfits the more Westernized girls at school wear. As a result, she is bullied by a group of popular girls who wear crop-tops and call themselves “The Cuties.”

Amy, like any 11-year-old girl, desperately wants to fit in. She secretly observes the Cuties from afar and discovers they are practicing a routine for an upcoming dance competition. She hatches a plan: She will dress like the Cuties, dance like the Cuties, and then maybe, finally, she won’t feel so alone. She borrows her younger brother’s shirt as a DIY crop-top. She steals her neighbor’s phone and secretly gives herself dance lessons via YouTube music videos. She watches these videos of scantily-clad women writhing on the ground with a clinical eye, learning to copy their moves exactly. She’s far too young to want, or even understand, sex, but she does understand that women who dress like this and move like this have power—and, more importantly, friends.

She’s proven right. The Cuties approve of Amy’s new look, as well as the overtly sexual new dance move that she teaches them. They let her into the group. Together, the four of them rehearse for the upcoming competition. But Amy is fascinated by her newfound power and wants to keep pushing the limits. Eventually, she takes things too far—even for the Cuties. She crosses a line she didn’t know existed.

None of the above scenes are filmed as “sexy.” The camera doesn’t linger in predatory ways. The girls look like children playing dress-up, because they are, and it’s uncomfortable. All of this, Doucouré implies, is very sad, and very real. No matter how much we may try to pretend that little girls don’t so much as think about sex until they turn 18, the truth is that they are all too aware of the daily barrage of hypersexualized women in media. They may not understand it, but they will try to use it. If there is a villain in Cuties, it is the music videos that Amy streams on her stolen phone.

It’s a tricky line, of course, because just because young girls think about sex doesn’t mean that young actors should be forced to do anything beyond their comfort level. I can’t say I was on the set of Cuties; I don’t know how the actors were treated. I certainly hope precautions were taken to respect their comfort levels and boundaries. And if they weren’t, there should consequences. But until more people get a chance to watch the movie for themselves, I’ll hope you’ll take my word for it when I say Cuties is not advocating for the kind of behavior that its young leads engage in. Instead, it’s a heartbreaking commentary on society’s ceaseless objectification of women, and the downstream effects that has on girls too young to understand.

Watch Cuties on Netflix