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While I think this may have been the opening act in my one man moral play since I had not entertained any actual purchases of these magazines there were obviously more scenes playing out on a deeper level. I've known the sex sells game for years. I'm pelted with it every day, and while I like to think I'm above being sold by these marketing tricks I've never been ashamed to enjoy looking at the images provided. No, it wasn't guilt for enjoying the scenery, there was defiantly something else to this subtle irritation which was eating at me. Some realization lurking inside which had yet to surface and make it's face known. As I continued this pondering of mine which increased it's zeal with each visit to the snack shack I made it a point to search these racks of lurid looks and comely poses for a clue. Some insight into what was triggering these feelings of revulsion, something which was right in front of my eyes, but that I couldn't "see."
I soaked in these covers. Analyzed their layouts. Calculated their individual effects on my libido. I scanned the faces, was it there absurd airbrushed perfection? No. I scanned the laughable article taglines, was it there obvious and cheap ploys to our curiosity? No. I scanned top to bottom, left to right, the women's section to the men's... Slap! It hit me. I couldn't tell where the women's section ended and the men's began! I had been unconsciously placing all the blame for our sad objectification of women onto the male driven media and my subconscious had received this complaint and couldn't file it. It was as if my central processor had run an analyzation on the data being received from my eyes and the data being sent from my brain and couldn't make it compute. me where in comparing the two signals it hit a glitch and it was responding by rejecting this sweeping conclusion of mine. It had been sending it back up the pipes dropping it right back into my mental lap with a big red stamp on it,
"ERROR!"
As if to say, "This data doesn't check out. We can't file your complaint. Please recheck your sources and come back with a revised draft!" So now what or who was I really mad at? I've known for years that women's magazines are absolutely loaded with sex. I pick up their issues every chance I get. While sitting at the dentist or the hair dressers when offered the choice of spending 15 minutes reading either mindless figures on the latest sports games or peaking behind the curtain of what women talk about I always opt for the latter. I've often defended men from the attack of women's accusal that we are sexfiend dogs with this sole piece of evidence. Pound for pound women's magazines have way more ink on the subject than men's magazines. Hardly a cover comes off the press's of Redbook, Cosmopolitan, or Glamour without the words Orgasm or Sex in bold letters. And further, hardly an article between their covers roams from the theme of intimacy in relationships. I realized then, as I compared the similarities between the women's covers and the men's covers, that I was being let down. My delusions and naive innocence was suddenly torn from me, and her angel wings from her, and they both came tumbling down. My crush had been crushed.
Maybe my distaste is really about the let down this is for my image of society as a whole. But it is a natural law of consumerism that what doesn't sell will quickly perish in the Darwinian rules of the marketplace. So it lends to reason that this method of marketing by the woman's media is selling. If women were not buying the magazines which participate in selling the idea that a woman's number one trait was her sexual appeal to men then they would quickly disappear from the shelves. But it's obvious that not only are women sitting silently through this epitome of their worth, they are helping fund it. And there I believe lay the mental thorn in my subconscious side. I still though, even after this depressing insight, felt as if I was missing the final piece of the puzzle. And it came to me that this piece was a large and silent void. As I scanned my memory for any mention of this topic in the media I could not recall a single instance of recent female opposition. Now I don't scour the women's magazines and commentary columns, but I like to think I'm up to date on the social issues of the day. I would think that an opposition to this social phenomenon would be of a strong enough calibre to be something I would have crossed at one point or another. But nay, not one recent memory of a voice or group of voices objecting to this nationwide consensus of beheading our female celebrities. Worse yet, the very people who should be the voice of opposition, the women's magazines, made up of voices of American women leaders, had joined right in on the debauchery. I gazed at the magazine rack with my mental mouth agape viewing the women's magazines drape their leaders on every cover like pagans willingly sacrificing their own. I can recall a heated debate of the media using women as nothing more than sexual objects for most of my childhood. The voices of women's groups were loud and angered as they fought for equal rights. They took no timid ness in pointing a finger in the face of Hollywood and media of all formats for their lack of social morality. Now, they might have packed up their picket lines and gone home after the great mistake called "The sensitive male of the 90's" reared his sad deflated spineless head, but I would hope that the lessons learned were still being passed on from mothers to daughters.
Yet while woman's lib has degenerated to actresses and singers "taking charge of their own sexuality" by disrobing for every men's magazine possible to answer such ingenious and probing questions on topics such as, the first time they saw a man's penis or what their favourite position is, the women of America have not only sat mute, but cheerfully offered up answers as if they were applying for a highly regarded position as the national sexual fantasy of the month. And not a word from the voice of women in America. Not a peep. I'm shocked, and ironic as it is, being one raised in the thick of women's lib and having had my fill of the rhetoric, a bit disappointed. Where has the concern for our Sisters, Daughters, Wives, and Mothers gone? Who has sold these young actresses the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to treat themselves with such a low self worth? What are their mentors saying to them? Do the ends justify the means? Are their Mothers and Friends simply biting their tongues as they make their way to the bank to cash enormous checks? Are not the women of America furious? Has not a single one noticed that the standard of what makes a Woman today has become measured by her willingness to pander to the sexual fantasies of males on wholesale levels? Have they become too busy practicing Isis breast enhancement products and reading Redbook on how to give better oral sex? Have they become so caught up in the roaring 90's that social consciousness has taken a back seat to personal insecurities?
Are women more concerned with finding out the "12 ways to make him lust for you" on page 56 so they can feel desired and worthy than the fact that the magazine they just bought is displaying our public image of a woman as nothing more than a seductress operating on the single thought that being a sexual object is the embodiment of what it is to be a woman? If anyone is getting upset by my verbal darts just take a walk to the local store and check out the magazine racks. I'm not coming out of left field here. I think while we can find instances everywhere which discourage our hope for humanity, from Jerry Springer to racial hate crimes, in this specific topic my disappointment comes not from the fact that this is some great indictment of human civilization falling apart, but from a disappointment that our acceptance of a distasteful behaviour has gone too far. Are we not bound by some standard of self respect?
It is after all merely entertainment and entertainment has always had more than a pinch of sexuality in it's recipe. I too would hate to let the morally righteous freaks get too much control over the media. I am and always will be anti-censorship. But with freedom of press and speech comes a responsibility. A conscious knowledge that we are accountable to the effects of the media we put out there. It's not that there is sexuality in the media which bugs me. It's that everything else has been shoved off the table. I'm annoyed from the lack of content inside these covers. In the times I have been seduced into picking up a magazine to check out the pictures of the "national girlfriend of the week" and read her interview I'm repeatedly let down. Instead of an intelligent volley of questions and answers I am subjected to a sophomoric line of questioning which amounts to little more than a quiz of her preferences in the bedroom. Now maybe I'm just expecting too much. Maybe I should be giving the benefit of doubt here and these magazines are taking advantage of young actresses anxious to get ahead. Maybe these magazines are giving thorough 3 hour interviews in which some innocent sexual talk has been peppered into an honest and rounded interview where the actress has been comforted into revealing some risqué titbits with an experienced interviewer. Then when the reel gets back to the office the evil editors reduce her otherwise intelligent interaction down to a near adult discourse. Maybe these actresses are picking up a copy of the magazine a month later to be disgusted at finding they have been reduced to nymphet PG13 centrefolds who's thoughts wander little distance from their onscreen sex scenes. I'd like to believe that, but it's difficult when the accompanying pictorials are of them in their underwear or less covering there nipples with a few fingers as they stare lustfully into the camera. No, I don't think any duping is going on there.
I ask you, what the hell does a woman's personal sexual likes and dislikes have to do with a professional acting or singing career? I think the truth is more likely a general acceptance by the entertainment community that you must strip for interviews and one up your competition to grab the spotlight. But ladies, don't get upset when you're treated like meat. Once again, to those who think I'm in the deep end here, visit the store. Take a survey of all the interviews in men's magazines then tally up how many included pictorials more than vaguely reminiscent of Playboy. Don't any of these girls have more to offer? I can here the men out there now, "My god man! Shut the hell up! You are going to ruin the party. Here it's taken us nearly thirty years from that whole bra burning fiasco to calm them down and lull them into thinking that posing naked for a mere movie roll interview and discussing vibrators was the ultimate symbol of Feminism! We are in the golden age. Brittany just ripped all her clothes of in front of millions to escape the "shackles of teendome" and you have to go sending out this essay. What are you thinking! We've got them totally duped. Leave it alone!"
My fellow Gents, don't worry. This essay will have little impact on the amount of skin being pumped out in ink, film, and electrons these days. Maybe I'm a little upset because the fun has been sucked out of the game. Where's the chase, the seduction? Why even bother when the forbidden fruit is arriving in semi-trailers being dumped on every street corner? But I think the plain truth is I'm insulted and let down. I'm insulted by the media men out there who think that I may not want a woman who amounts to more than the flesh she has to offer and I'm let down by the women out there who feel that the only way they can get my attention is by showing me there tits and ass instead of their intelligent thoughts on life which I know they have. And I hate to think that no one out there is speaking up because they simply don't notice. That we really do live in a world where we have forgotten to question our actions because "Everyone else is doing it." Or do we?
By:Trossen
© Trossen Inc.
http://www.trosseninc.com
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