That Baby Soft perfume ad was effective though. A huge number of girls in my high school started wearing it, as did I. None of us thought, at the time, that there was anything weird about it, probably because we were about the age of the model, and didn't think of ourselves as children. When it came on The Americans so effectively, since the lead male spy was being ordered to seduce someone that age, it was extremely powerful on many levels, and one of those levels was "OH WOW, it looks completely different to me now, what the hell were they thinking?"
I think for me at least, I wore it was because I really loved the smell. I still do like the "baby powder" smell, I have a perfume oil with that smell right now. (Also vanilla scents, but also Joy, and Ysatis, so...)
Also, that scene with Carrie Fisher in Shampoo was from real life as I recall, possibly her life? I don't feel like googling, but it wasn't simply a Hollywood movie fantasy.
There were, as I recall, significant objections about Brooke Shield's being used in the prostitution film Pretty Baby at twelve years old, people and the press did not just accept it as OK. I specifically remember articles about her mother being on set the entire time, and blah blah. How Brooke feels about it as an adult:
Teens were rebelling against a lot of stuff, and some of it was very good stuff, a corrupt war, friends dying in Vietnam who couldn't even vote, political corruption, segregation and prejudice, and the standards of the older generation lost respect among quite of few of us. The sexual revolution was part of that, the pill brought freedom to woman (and yes, girls) that had never been available before. Marriage itself was examined, and "relationships" evolved, not all necessarily led to sunshine and roses, but frankly, closely examined, neither did those from the past. Women's rights were fought for, frankly, just as much as during suffrage. In huge part, part of those rights had to do, not only with jobs, but also with sexual rights. Did we teens think of themselves as "women?" In many cases yes. Was that exploited by some? Of course.
Neither Taxi Driver, nor Pretty Baby bothered me at the time, and frankly, still don't. Sue Lyon was 14 in LOLITA from 1962 and that one? Did bother me, even though I didn't see it until years later, and had already secretly read the book at about 14. James Mason was in another kind of creepy film in 1969, Age of Consent with a nude Helen Mirren, then 22, a film which bothered me more, mostly because of the creepy ending, the rest of the film was not terrible, but the ending, to me anyway, made the whole film become pot bellied aging men's fantasy, and not in a good way.
Sorry for veering a little bit, but all the talk of the big bad seventies at all excusing or explaining MJ's behavior simply doesn't add up for me. It was an interesting time, a revolutionary, perhaps naive, and certainly controversial time, and yes, that included reexamining sexuality and "norms." Was there more hedonism then than in the so called "good old days" of the Mad Men or other eras? Of course not. The real difference in that generation was that women stopped being simply the wife and mother, and that time had growing pains, and those certainly included some exploitation. More than before? I honestly don't think so, but women started talking about options, about orgasms, about choosing paths closed or restricted in previous generations, from employment, to sex, and beyond.
Still, even the so-called wild seventies didn't condone or imply that 7 or 10 year old children were sexual fair game, the "standards" (such as they were) at least seemed to hold until a child hit puberty.
That was NEVER OK, except among pedophiles, and frankly, pedophilia was around long before the seventies came around, or frankly, long before Columbus set sail.
