Selena Gomez styled to look like teen jailbait for the cover of V Magazine

22-year-old pop princess Selena Gomez graces the spring cover of V Magazine, wearing an innocent expression and some skimpy bottoms, and the look is very teen fetish porn.

Subtlety has never really been V Magazine’s “thing” — the fashion mag’s covers often famously infuse a high octane, high gloss approach to its photography of celebrities that inevitably leaves readers gawking at someone’s visible body part. (If you’ll recall, FKA Twigs was captured in the buff for the publication’s previous edition.) But there is something off-putting about these shots of the doe-eyed Gomez.

With a head full of overblown curls, dressed in little else than high-waisted Boogie Nights ‘Roller Girl’ cut-off shorts and a pair of hoop earings, Gomez stares blankly into the lens of famed photographers Inez & Vinoodh, clutching her bare chest, with her highly glossed pout slightly ajar. Combined with the nubile singer’s highly visible back tattoo and her extended rump, the soft-focus preteen vibes recall the cringe-worthy Love’s Baby Soft ads from the ’70s.

Selena may be 22 years old, but she’s been styled like a teenager — one posing without a top. Sexualizing innocence — sexualizing teenagers, creating a photograph in which the singer looks like jailbait — has been around for years, but it’s still gross. So jarring in its attempts to sensationalize Gomez’s budding sexuality, the cover instantly becomes a parody of itself: an alluring young starlet trying to make her way in Hollywood sheds her top and dons Daisy Dukes for the lens of French fashion photographers. I feel like I’ve seen that Law and Order SVU episode before and I half expected Mariska Hargitay to pound through the door to shut this ardently inappropriate shoot down.

Perhaps the only thing that could make this shoot creepier would be Hollywood’s resident leach, James Franco, prying into the details of Gomez’s personal life. Yes, the former Spring Breakers co-stars discuss Gomez’s much maligned relationship with polarizing ex Justin Beiber in the accompanying interview —  because who wouldn’t want to bare their soul to Franco?

Though Gomez never actually refers to Beibs in name, she does say this much:

I think the next time will be much different… which will definitely not be any time soon. That’s a growing up kind of thing. I was 18 years old, and it was my first love. The older I get, I’m guarding certain things more. After being put through the scrutiny, I understand what it is. When you’re young and you’re being told so many different things…it almost felt like all we had was each other, like the world was against us, in a way. It was really weird but it was incredible. I would never take it back in a million years. You live and you learn, you know?

It’s baffling, the contrast between Selena’s pretty robust and profound responses and the infantalizing images that persist here. Selena has come to some form of self-actualization, but the camera attempts to belie all of that, positioning (and trapping) her in a “not a girl, not yet a woman” sexual paradox that undermines her growth and fetishizes her Disney Channel past. Fashion photography is tricky: it yields the power to glorify or dispel certain myths, biases or tropes while constructing a world completely made of fantasy or certainty. But it needn’t be. What could have been a remarkable moment for Gomez to break out as a young woman of singular style, had her regress even further into utero.

Marjon Carlos is a style and culture writer for Fusion who boasts a strong turtleneck game and opinions on the subjects of fashion, gender, race, pop culture, and men’s footwear.