The little adults: child and teenage sexual exploitation in contemporary Brazilian cinema

This article explores three contemporary Brazilian films’ depiction of commercial sexual exploitation of young girls and teenagers. It points out how the young female characters cope with the abuses they suffer and proposes that these filmic representations of the characters’ experiences expose a significant social problem of contemporary Brazilian society: violence against women, teenage girls, and female children, particularly regarding sex tourism, people trafficking, and domestic sexual abuse. It argues that by engaging with the problem of sexual violence against young females these three films show the consequences this has on their gender and sexual identities and that these are shaped according to their social experience within their patriarchal society – for example, the latter’s failure to lawfully protect these youngsters against such a crime. The article concludes by pointing out that although commercial sexual exploitation has a huge impact on the victims’ lives society still needs to tackle the crime so that these youngsters develop appropriate gender and sexual identities for their age.