Nov 10
18
Portrait of a mother-sanctioned sexualized 14-year-old
Daily Mail – November 18, 2010
Portrait of a VERY modern 14-year-old: She’s got two tattoos, body piercings, drinks alcohol and sleeps with boys (and the middle-class mother who allows it all to happen)
By Rachel Porter
From her rock-chick black hair, with its green and blonde streaks, to her Doc Marten boots, nine body-piercings, a faceful of permanent make-up and two tattoos, there is little about Sophie Watson’s appearance to suggest her true age. But, aside from her disturbingly adult appearance, it is the conversation that really makes the jaw drop.
Ask Sophie about her social life and she’ll tell you that she drinks and parties with Mum’s blessing. Ask about her sex life and there are no mortified blushes. Instead, she’ll tell you — again, in the presence of her mother — that she’s slept with four boys in just six months. ‘But I was either seeing them or in a relationship with them. It wasn’t a case of a pick-up here and a pick-up there,’ she says, with utter nonchalance. Indeed, her boyfriends have all been welcome to spend the night in her room, under her mother’s roof.‘As long as I haven’t got anything to get up early for the next day,’ says Sophie.
So how old do you think Sophie might be? Eighteen, perhaps? A rebellious 17? No, she is just 14 years old — an age at which she should still be gossiping with friends in the playground, not sleeping with boyfriends and spending pocket money on piercings and tattoos.
But then, unlike most ordinary 14-year-olds, Sophie doesn’t even have to go to school. Since May, when she declared that she was ‘sick and tired’ of getting up for lessons every day, Sophie has been home-educated by her mum Joy, 39, who somehow squeezes in tutorials around Sophie’s regular evening gigs as a singer on the local pub circuit and her own full-time job, training beauty therapists in the art of hair, nails and massage.
It is, by Joy’s own admission, an unconventional way to raise a child. But, of course, in her eyes Sophie is not like other 14-year-olds. Joy believes that her daughter is an ‘exceptionally bright’ girl, who is going to take the music world by storm — and does not need the normal boundaries parents set for their children. ‘Sophie just needs to get her education done, so she can focus on other things,’ explains Joy, who is a former a teacher. ‘Sophie wanted to fit more into her days, so she could learn faster and get her career on track. She’s not a drop-out. She’s the opposite, really.’