#Adiltification of black girls

[blackcat419]

Adultification of all HotD Girls and the infantilization of Rhaenyra.

Two scenes in HotD really bug me with how the characters acknowledge Rhaenyra as a child when she’s 18, but then go on to marry and impregnate girls younger than 18.

Viserys call Rhaenyra, “just a girl” when Daemon takes her to the brothel. He doesn’t use the world woman, he uses girl, denoting Rhaenyra as not an adult at this point in her life. By Visery’s logic, he married a child. Alicent was only 14/15 when he married her and only 17 when she become a mother twice over.

Daemon also cause Rhaenyra, “just a child” when she’s says he abandoned her after her wedding. Daemon then goes on to flirt with a 15/16 year old Laena at the wedding and marrying her soon after.

The adultification of Laena is much worse than characters in text acknowledging people older than her as kids. Laena is played by two actresses that are about ten years older than Laena’s canon age. This also isn’t just a case of adults playing teens, the show has set Rhaenyra and Alicent as the standard for what a 14 through 18/19 year old and 28 through 34 year olds looks like. Laena’s actresses are older than Rhaenyra and Alicent’s Actors and Actresses. This is a classic example of black girlhood being earesed in text and out of. Laena goes from a clear 12 year old who is very visually much younger than Rhaenyra and Alicent to being a near adult woman who looks about the same age, if not older than the other girls. Laena is also styled in much more mature clothing than we see any other character in. Even Alicent’s “sex dresses” are much more reserved than Laena’s gold dress.

We also have the same thing happening to Laena’s daughters, Baela and Rhaena. In text they should be 16 or younger but their actresses are older than Jace’s actor. The only upside is that the two are not visually sexualized and aged up as teen Laena was.

In conclusion, HotD in text shows the absurdity of Viserys and Daemon viewing Rhaenyra as a child while pressing girls younger than she was at the time. The show tries to erase the clear adultification of Laena. The show engages in a lot of anti black stereotypes and I am not looking forward to how they’ll treat Nettles.

Disclaimer: I am not a WOC or a POC, if anything I wrote is wrong please correct me. My goal is to learn and advocate for better representation in media for all gender, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientation.

Blogs I recommend you follow if you want to read more about how HotD fails women and people of color: @bohemian-nights @venusintheblindspots-blog @mejcinta @sunnysideaeggs