There is no way to argue something like this. No pubescent 12 year old girl should be shown in a movie topless, especially not a movie about child prostitution. It's bad enough that child prostitution actually exists in the world but to exploit a 12 year old girl in the making of this movie is bitterly ironic and director Louis Malle and the producers should have gone to jail for this. Brooke Shield's parents should have also gone to jail for making a little girl take her clothes off for a movie--they had no right. The point that this story is tragic and horrific can be made without having a barely adolescent 12 year old girl take her clothes off.<br /><br />In all fairness should we also have a movie about a 12 year old boy who prostitutes himself during the Depression Era (this certainly happened)? Should he have frontal naked scenes so the film can drive home the point that he was sodomized? These naked scenes notwithstanding let's call it art. We all know a film about a 12 year old male prostitute with frontal nudity will never be made in Hollywood, so what makes it okay to have a 12 year old girl show frontal nudity? At 12 Shields was a minor and cannot legally make a decision whether she will appear nude in a film. And her parents had no legal right to decide that she will appear nude in a film. This movie ends up doing the very thing it criticizes--sexually exploiting a child!