Something Wicked this way comes

The backers of the blockbuster film Wicked knew before its release they would face the inevitable backlash from conservatives concerned about its not-so-subtle “LGBTQ agenda.” But they and their marketing partners did not expect to face a class-action lawsuit for peddling hardcore pornography.

Yet that is what the toy-making giant Mattel finds itself up against when parents learned that it had shipped tens of thousands of Wicked character dolls with packaging directing children to an explicit adult website to learn more about the film rather than to the correct URL: WickedMovie.com.

A South Carolina mother initiated the suit, Ricketson v. Mattel, alleging that “after opening the box that contained the Wicked Doll, Plaintiff’s minor daughter used an iPhone to visit the website shown on Defendant’s packaging.”

The story would certainly be darkly humorous if it were not so appalling. An anti-culture that produces a hit movie with the title Wicked and a mother who buys Wicked dolls for her daughter, we might gibe, has little cause for complaint if the product steers customers to genuinely wicked material. Moreover, we have connived for so long in the wholesale sexualization of childhood that porn sites on toy dolls might almost seem par for the course.

Two decades ago, David Bentley Hart sarcastically observed in The New Atlantis that “we dress young girls in clothes so scant and meretricious that honest harlots are all but bereft of any distinctive method for catching a lonely man’s eye.” Today, dance studios offer “Mommy and Me” pole dancing classes, while girls look to highly sexualized performers like Ariana Grande (star of Wicked) as role models.

Yet for all the slippery slope of today’s pornographic culture, there remains a profound difference between the casual eroticism of MTV or TikTok and the explicit, often violent pornography displayed on websites such as the one Mattel mistakenly marketed. Researchers have shown that exposure to such images and videos, especially for young and still-developing minds, can have permanent effects on the brain, creating dopamine overloads and addictive behaviors. It can also profoundly distort children’s perceptions and expectations of sexuality, with long-term effects on their future relationships.

Mattel’s lawyers will no doubt respond that this was a one-off mistake, a freak packaging error that says nothing about the company’s broader business model, and so it is. What makes this story so significant, though, is that it says everything about the broader business model of the technology industry and the products we have casually foisted upon our children. Indeed, perhaps the most notable feature of the lawsuit was the company not being sued: Apple. It is certainly a strange society where a young girl can pull a device out of her pocket and access hardcore pornography within seconds. And yet, this is the daily reality for a large proportion of today’s teens.

While this particular plaintiff’s daughter might have been able to avoid such exposure until now, most children encounter such sites by age 12 or earlier, using the “smart” devices that are somehow not smart enough to come with default protections for minors.

Most children do not find pornography in doll packaging, to be sure, but they do find it through platforms and products supposedly safe for and marketed to children: mainstream social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and Snapchat, or even apps designed for kids, like Roblox. The business model for most of these companies involves maximizing profits by minimizing expenditures on policing the corridors of their vast digital spaces, creating an ecosystem rife with sexual predators. Often, their algorithms even amplify sexually explicit material, such as Instagram’s, which drives boys toward adult models.

In other words, Ricketson v. Mattel may seem like a darkly comic sideshow, but perhaps it can serve as a wake-up call for a far more pervasive problem of pornified products marketed to children. Thankfully, there are signs that the political winds may at last be shifting in response to a growing public outcry over the exploitation of childhood.

Next month, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of a new Texas law requiring adult websites to hide their content behind robust age gates. And just a few weeks ago, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the App Store Accountability Act, which would essentially put Apple and Google in the same boat as Mattel: liable for class-action lawsuits if they allow children to download apps that offer easy access to explicit or harmful material.

In our increasingly sexualized society, it is almost impossible to raise children without lots of difficult conversations. But we can and should draw some legal lines in the sand and hold pornographers accountable for the harm they are inflicting on an entire generation.