This video hits the nail on the head why aging up Ivy was so wrong.

[Aurora Moon]

In a way this could be a general topic discussion in one of the other subfourms... but since Gotham seems to be using this trope heavily I thought I'd post it here.

This video sums up why it grossed me out so much that they aged Ivy up... and why I'm not a big fan of this trope.

your thoughts?

[costas22]

Thanks for sharing. The Ivy situation has certainly been unsettling, to put it kindly. If they aged her up and gave her the memories and experiences of an adult woman, that would have been one thing. But she still comes across as a 15 year old girl trapped in the body of a sexy woman in her mid-20s. And the reason I call her sexy is because Gotham emphasizes on that. What makes it worse is that it's implied that grown up (but still a teenager in mind) Ivy has had sexual relations with men much older than she is.

Why did they even feel the need to age her up? The original Ivy was a couple of years younger than Bruce Wayne and Selina and that was a pretty good difference.

[Aurora Moon]

I don't think the Gotham writers even realized the kind of message they were sending out when they aged up Ivy. At least I hope not.

The message being: "It's okay if you're sexually attracted to a underage girl or have sex with her, if she looks like an adult! If she has an adult body, then that means she's sexually mature for her age! don't worry about her mental state or whenever she's mentally ready for sex at all."

That kind of **** was what got me sexually molested when I was 12 years old. I hit puberty very early at the age of nine years old, so by 12 I was quite developed for my age. And of course the pervert who did that to me used the exact reasoning up above to justify why he did that. To him, that kind of reasoning was completely normal. That's one of the many reasons why I hate that trope with a burning passion and feels very personal to me.

I can just see this happening in the writers' room:

Writer one: "Poison Ivy's one of my favortive Gotham villains in the comics. I can't wait to write her scenes... it'll be so fun to write scenes for a vampy, sexy woman!!"

Writer two: "Errrm... you might have to wait a while. She's like, 15 years old in the story and we're using a underage actress. You know the laws, we can't use underage actresses in sex scenes and the like. It would upset people too much if we depicted a 15 year old girl as vampy and sexy."

writer one: "Really? Damn! But what else can we do with Poison Ivy then... all I know about her is that she's an seductress who uses men and then murders them."

Writer two: "Actually, there's more to Ivy. She's a very intelligent woman who has an doctorate in advanced botanical biochemistry. Maybe we could write stories about how a poor girl living in the gutters managed to climb her way out and managed to make something of her life?"

Writer one: "Boo, that sounds so boring. I want to write sexy scenes with her in... so let's just age her up instead! Maybe we can make it so that Hugo strange aged her up somehow? Some of her origins has her being experimented on by a professor and as an result she gets her powers. Ohh, I know, let's have her get attacked by one of Hugo's mutants who somehow also mutates her in the process using his powers.... I'm sure the viewers will find that believable and not strange at all."

Writer two: "That would certainly solve the problem. We'll get a sexy new actress, so viewers won't be constantly reminded about the fact that the character is actually 15 years old. the rest of Gotham's story-line is already weird and makes no sense anyway, so I don't think the viewers will think twice about that plotline. Alright, let's go for it!"