Divergent views on juvenile ‘sexualization’

Xia Vigor as pop star Taylor Swift

Xia Vigor’s recent impersonation of Taylor Swift on “Your Face Sounds Familiar” has gone viral, with more than 1.6 million views. Viewers’ reactions to the video clip have generally been positive, but there have been naysayers who find it too mature for a child perfomer like Xia.

The critics include British TV personality Piers Morgan, who found the number “creepy” and an instance of excessively precocious “sexualization” of a minor.

Richard Arnold chimed in, sharing that he found it “slightly unsettling … that we’re celebrating that sort of thing, and that it’s trending worldwide.”

On the other hand, Perez Hilton expressed his delight at Xia’s performance, and media outlets like the Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Metro and Billboard found her
number “an impeccable imitation,” “a pitch-perfect routine” and “the real deal.”

After Xia’s “too mature” impersonation was dissed by some, her defenders pointed out that what could be pertinently operative here is a conflict of pop cultures. They aver that the sexualization of children is a hot issue in Europe, but the situation in Asia is less contentious.

In other words, impersonations of sexy performers aren’t “loaded” with controversial content and significance, and are done just for the fun of it.

Despite this proferred insight, some dissers continue to be bothered by Xia’s Taylor Swift spoof, which they believe could encourage other children to play it “slightly sexy.” What do you think?

For our part, we weighed in on this topic even before it became an issue with Xia’s controversial impersonation.

From the get-go, we’ve always batted for kiddie talent tilts to be for children—meaning, focus on their inspiring innocence, not on making them come across like precociously smart and with-it “little adults,” as is the usual practice:

Xia Vigor channels Taylor Swift.

“Above all, keep the kids’ musical acts free from any hint of romantic love, passion or sensuality, even in the choice of songs, or stars to spoof or impersonate. Otherwise, some parents and teachers may have cause to complain.”

Admittedly, this is a hard lesson to learn in these parts, where we dote on children who “smartly” perform like pint-sized adults.

This pressures performing kids to grow up too fast, and thus lose the time they need to be children.

It helps explain why some of our former child stars have problems as teens or young adults, because their maturation has been fast-tracked for the sake of trendy, with-it “entertainment.”

Aside from being made to perform too much like “knowing” adults, the problem is exacerbated by the wrong choice of songs for the impersonating kids to perform.

Just take a look at the songs’ lyrics and you’ll see inappropriately mature words, thoughts and feelings all over the place!

Songs kids should avoid performing include love anthems like “Achy Breaky Heart,” “All By Myself,” “Miss You Like Crazy,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Chandelier,” “Because You Loved Me,” “Fire Down Below,” “Baby, Light My Fire”—etc.!