Tut tut, Girls Gone Wild, Tut Tut
I try not to be a cynic, but it seems to me that Newsweek is dishonest and hypocritical this week. Their cover feature on what they call misbehaved celebrity women is one big excuse to tell titillating stories and show risqué pictures.I've recently come to be a strong opponent of pornography, and the coolification of porn. Paris Hilton (whose famous video I have NOT seen) and the "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon--two role players in this bigger movement--are featured in Newsweek, along with Britney Spears and the like. Newsweek approaches the topic as if it were a public concern, asking "are we raising a generation of 'prosti-tots'?" In other words, are we celebrating pornographic behavior before a closely watching girlhood?
Of course we are! Every year in this country we are hard at work making pedophilia less of a taboo. The unstated goal behind so much of this Girls Gone Wild business is the sexual availability of girls for the public manhood. And Newsweek's wink-wink cover story did less than help the crisis. By collating a timeline (with pictures) of bad girls in Hollywood, they put themselves in the camp of celebrating objectification.
I know that I must be coming off as a grouch. But this is dangerous stuff!
Pamela Paul's seminal book Pornified called for us to "Censure, not Censor" peddlers of smut. That's what we've got to do here: Shame, Shame, Newsweek.
posted by locutus est @ Monday, February 12, 2007
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