The Sinister Seventies
 

The 70′s and some of the 80′s was sinister.

On TV even the BBC ?Holiday? and ITV?s ?Wish you were here? were (from what I remember) a look at women topless on the beaches. The pretense was that the show was about holidays, when in truth much of it was a look at the local beaches with the cameras zooming onto womens topless boobs. Looking back one wonders if anyone gave permission to be filmed, and indeed did they know the ages of those filmed. Its more than likly girls under 18, if not under 16 were being filmed topless for these shows that would go out around 7pm.

The Sun, up to as recent as 2003 would have topless pics of girls as young as 16 and 17. Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker, Debee Ashby, and others began their topless modelling careers in the Sun when they were 16, while the Daily Sport was even known to count down the days until it would feature a girl topless on her 16th birthday, as it did with Linsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994. The law has changed, and to pose topless today in the UK, you must be 18 or older. To have images of under 18′s topless would today be an offence.
In other words millions of people in the UK would on a daily basis look at photographs of what today would be considered to be child pornography.

If you go on youtube today and search out many UK TV shows from this time, many presenters are seen to have arms around young girls. Top of the pops for instance, seems to have this going on most of the time.

In recent months we are seeing TV stars going to court over sex crimes from this time. One suspects that in truth this was rather more common than we can imagine. Its probable I would suggest that there are lots more presenters who took advantage of the time.

While we condemn the actions of these TV stars, we must also recognise the times we rather odd and sinister. And maybe we should also be ashamed ourselves that we allowed both TV and the newspapers to print or show topless children. How many adults were buying the Sun to look at 16 year old girls topless? And this was not just the 70′s. This was going on even up to recently when the law changed.

Where did you cut & paste this from?

Rolf Harris did more than try to put his arm around the young ladies.

Didn't one of the Cory's (80s childhood actor, not Haim, the other) come out and say sex abuse against minors is rampant in Hollywood? He and others were passed around like candy, something to that effect.

How the times have changed!!