On a somewhat less grotesque note, there are a bunch of movies made by BtVS/AtS actors when they were very young--I mentioned a while ago how Seth Green had a tiny role in Pump Up the Volume. Amber Benson was in The Crush. Vincent Kartheiser was in The Indian in the Cupboard and also Masterminds. Alyson Hannigan was in My Stepmother Is an Alien, etc. In most cases, the actors were closer to their appropriate high school, adolescent, or college freshman ages in those movies than they were when they played them on the shows. And it makes you realize how very, very wrong it can be for actors to play their age. I'm not sure I would have been interested in the BtVS where all the characters were played by 16-year-old actors. It would have been unsexy and you simply couldn't have had the same plotlines.
So on the one hand, you could say--if you were someone other than me--that it's bad and inaccurate how shows use older actors and thus sexualize young characters. But high school kids *are* sexual; they have the same kind of problems that we saw acted out on BtVS. It's just that in real life, the sexual soap operas of teens are thank god not that interesting to us adults, unless they're our kids, and even so, they're not interesting *that way*. Their relationship troubles are less dramatically charming--just as real teens are less charming. (They're annoying, in fact. Loud and annoying and giggly and oh for the love of god, can they please just shut the fuck up already?! Bus rides are for sleeping.)
(I should probably add that, when I was a teen, I was also deeply annoying and unsexy. And, come to think...has that really changed? Um. And of course, I am only generalizing to be funny. Many teen people are very cool--just like humans! But in larval form!)
Anyway. I also rewatched Toy Soldiers again recently, which has the young Sean Astin, who was completely unrecognizable to me for half the movie until some tiny note clicked and I went, huh. Sam. (Toy Soldiers: vaguely gay romp with young juvie boys in a tony prep school who fight off terrorists. Also starring Wil Wheaton.)
I really need to get this scene from Van Wilder out of my head, stat. And no, I'm not telling you what it is! And none of you better describe it in comments! And I'm not showing you where that fish-rape story is either! What's wrong with you?! Gahhh!
I need some silky, pretty young men to be kissing each other right now--scrub the evil from my brain with your pretty mouths, young men! Scrub, scrub, scrub!
*sob*