The new pornographers

My latest article for Salon is about how kids are being treated as kiddie pornographers for taking photos of their own naked bodies. I argue that "the potentially damaging implications -- for child pornography law, free speech and kids' sexuality -- are abundant":

This is all part of how kids initiate themselves into our sexual culture long before they actually have sex. At one time, that meant a boy would flip through his father's stash of Playboys and a girl would try on her mother's ample bra. For me, it meant privately mimicking the stripper moves I had seen on TV and having online chats with people who occasionally turned out to be aging pervs. It was the best way I knew to try on, test out and confirm my femininity without actually having sex. (And that's having been raised by hippie parents who compared the spiritual magic of sex to "two star systems colliding in outer space.")

That sexual rite of passage remains, but today's teens have an entirely different notion of privacy than past generations. They grew up in the exhibitionistic Web culture of LiveJournal, YouTube and MySpace. They've seen girls on TV playfully jiggling their breasts for plastic beads, "Real World" cast members boldly screwing in front of cameras, Britney flashing her bald lady parts. These days, why would a girl be concerned about her silly topless snapshot circulating around school?