Thotler. I’ll never forget the way I stiffened when I first heard, or saw rather, that term: on Instagram, describing a little girl wearing a crop top. It’s no surprise that it was in an online space — which can bring out the worst in us — where I was introduced to the hybrid term for a toddler and thot. The fact that this language exists is a horrible reminder of just how much we’re invested in racist, classist, sexist myths and bodily determinism that tells us that Black girls are thots from birth just because they’re Black girls

The Black Internet is known for so many great things: its creative humor, its activism, its diversity. But I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t also heavily saturated with tomfoolery and problematic commentary. One example of this is its nasty habit to prescribe sexual deviance onto its children. And not just on Instagram. I’ve also seen it in reference to the fashionable babies of Black Tumblr, and in it’s most hostile form in reference to young girls doing dances that are deemed inappropriate, like twerking. These children are understood to be sexually deviant and immoral — and, as a result, doomed to a floundering adulthold. Most recently I saw an adult man claim that a group of girl who was particularly adept at twerking would be pregnant by 16, which stigmatizes both young Black girls and young parents.

Here is an example of how adult scripts are imposed on young girls’ bodies:

To suggest that this little girl is already a gold digger reveals the very classed aspect of racialized sexuality. Because she is “pretty” (also code for racially ambiguous with light skin and eyes) it’s assumed that she should and will aspire to use her sexuality in order to access a different economic status, in this case it’s preschoolers in leadership. Yuck.

Moreover, these images are also read as a reflection of the parent’s values and morals.

That’s one of the reasons why I take issue with this trend: it’s a way to ridicule, critique, and discredit a specific kind of Black femininity (mainly that or young poor Black women) via their children. Even if parents were intentionally teaching their toddlers to shake it like a red nose, it doesn’t mean that they can’t also be teaching them to read, write, and practice healthy consent. Plus, assuming that little Black girls are the sum of whatever entertainment they consume before age 5 reveals an investment in the continued pathology of Black female sexuality. It reaffirms that unless Black girls are constantly performing respectability, they remain “at risk” and require constant supervision, regulation, and discipline (hence so many people calling for the girls to get beat).

For the record, I’m also uneasy about the fact that some people dress their children as miniature adults and put them all over the internet as fashion icons. But not because I think they’re going to be irreversibly marked with the stain of excessive sexuality when they become teenagers. It makes me uncomfortable because kids are human beings, not dolls. They want to eat fruity snacks, watch Doc McStuffins, and play with everything in the house except their toys. They don’t care about color coordination or print mixing. So for me, a three year old dressed perfectly for a job interview followed by happy hour just feels wrong. But not so wrong that I’m questioning their parent’s capacity to care for them and raise them to be responsible human beings.

Also, as a general rule, I’m not inclined to call anyone of any age any sort of derogatory sexual term, like “thot,” based on their clothing. As it relates to these images, I am acutely aware that clothing is no indication of a person’s sexual history, availability, or (sometimes) interests. The same applies to dancing. Despite the many ways that dancing can be used to represent, simulate, or mimic sex itself, it should not be assumed that people who dance in a certain way are inherently more or less sexual. I think these basic facts become even more relevant as we talk about younger people and small children.

I’m sure some readers will think I just can’t take a joke. But there is nothing funny about imposing sexuality onto young children. It’s creepy at best, grossly inappropriate at worst, and at a basic level it works to reinscribe racialized and classed anxieties about sexual deviance that have no place near the bodies of people who have yet to master their motor and language skills.