Netflix Removes ‘Inappropriate’ ‘Cuties’ Poster, But Is Still Releasing Movie Despite Petition

UPDATE: 1:10 p.m. EDT -- Netflix has now issued a public apology on social media.

Original story: Netflix’s French import “Cuties” hasn’t started streaming yet, but a new petition is seeking to stop it from premiering on the service. Some are accusing “Cuties” of sexualizing young girls, but reviewers said the film is actually very concerned about the hypersexualization of adolescents.

The petition to remove “Cuties” (or “Mignonnes” in French), which does not release until Sept. 9, has gathered over 35,000 signatures to date. “This movie/show is disgusting as it sexualizes an ELEVEN year old for the viewing pleasure of pedophiles and also negatively influences our children!” the Change.org petition reads. “There is no need for this kind of content in that age group, especially when sex trafficking and pedophilia are so rampant! There is no excuse, this is dangerous content!”

“Cuties,” a French-language film, follows Amy (Fathia Youssouf), an 11-year-old from a conservative family who joins a dance group called the Cuties. The official synopsis from Sundance Film Festival, which held the “Cuties” premiere in January, reads:

Eleven-year-old Amy lives with her mom, Mariam, and younger brother, awaiting her father to rejoin the family from Senegal. Amy is fascinated by disobedient neighbor Angelica's free-spirited dance clique, a group that stands in sharp contrast to stoic Mariam's deeply held traditional values. Undeterred by the girls' initial brutal dismissal and eager to escape her family's simmering dysfunction, Amy, through an ignited awareness of her burgeoning femininity, propels the group to enthusiastically embrace a sensual dance routine, sparking the girls’ hope to twerk their way to stardom at a local dance contest.

That, however, was not the "Cuties" description Netflix originally used.

According to The Independent, Netflix's summary initially said, “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.”

That was released alongside a movie poster of the girls posing suggestively in crop tops and shorts at a dance competition.

A Netflix rep told Deadline, “We’re sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for this film. This was not an accurate representation of the film so the image and description has been updated.”

Netflix now shows the description as, “11-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.” The movie poster has also been updated with a more demure image.

Written and directed by French-Senegalese filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré, who won an award for her direction at Sundance, the film is intended to serve as a commentary on the hyper-sexualization of young girls, according to several Sundance reviews.

“Doucouré’s script perfectly captures that preteen desperation to fit in, which so many girls understand to mean to ‘be sexy.’ With the daily barrage of hyper-sexualized women in media, how can you blame them? Amy’s goal is not to have sex with men—again, she barely understands the mechanics of sex—it’s to win the approval of her classmates,” Decider’s Anna Menta noted.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney emphasized that though “Cuties” is showing the effects of young girls being exposed to super sexual imagery, it isn’t trying to promote it. “…The film establishes its critical view of a culture that steers impressionable young girls toward the hypersexualization of their bodies,” he wrote.

Screen Daily reviewer Fionnuala Halligan explained that the images are meant to make viewers uncomfortable. “The sight of twerking pre-teen bodies is explicitly designed to shock mature audiences into a contemplation of today’s destruction of innocence,” she wrote.

Currently, “Cuties” is still set to release on Netflix next month.