: Shields was photographed standing and sitting inside a steaming marble bathtub, with a spritzing shower head and a telephone nearby.
Gross claimed the shoot was inspired by the "Pre-Raphaelite" style, aiming to explore the transition from childhood to womanhood. garry gross the woman in the child full
Critics argued that the image was not art, but a glamorized representation of child pornography. The heavy makeup and sexualized posing clashed violently with the reality of the subject’s age. For many, the photograph represented the ultimate failure of parental judgment and the predatory nature of the entertainment industry. : Shields was photographed standing and sitting inside
The images never ran in the Cotton Inc. campaign. Instead, they remained in Gross’s archive until 1976, when the Playboy Press (a short-lived publishing division) included several of them in a coffee-table book called Sugar and Spice: The Flavor of the Young Woman , edited by Nat Lehrman. The book aimed to explore the "erotic nature of the adolescent female"—a premise that, even in the 1970s, drew sharp criticism. The heavy makeup and sexualized posing clashed violently