From: awerling@nmsu.edu (WERLING)
Subject: Re: Shake Your Body
Organization: NMSU Computer Science
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 19:20:20 GMT

In article <22323@galaxy.ucr.edu> starbuck@ucrmath.ucr.edu (starbuck) writes:

- "Shake your body, shake your body for meeeee.....", coos the voice over
- sung by a man.  While in a music video style Cindy Crawford struts her
- stuff in a very sexual way.  Decadent? A Prime time message to children
- on being a young women?  Pornography?  Or just plain fun?

There are enough scantily-clad *men* these days in the media that I
cannot call it anything but "appealing to one's sexual nature."

- Flip the channel and see the women sexy and sultry leaning against the 
- brick wall.  He shirt seductively open, cut in a style to display the 
- size and shape of her breasts.  She seems to moan as she touchs herself
- and as the camera fades to the next scene her hands are almost fondling he
- breasts.  What has this got to do with a fragrance?  What is the message
- to children about being a women?  Adults ( if they are not extinct )?

Levi's loose-fitting jeans ads.  Most cologne ads.  A billion nude men
in Rolling Stone.

- In the beer ads women lilth, slim, trim bodies, tight buns, in bikinis frolic
- with well built men in the air, over land and on the sea.  Like the women
- of TV ads for jeans they send out messages "over and over agian my friends".

Alas, they do it to men too.

- It's like we are on the "Eve of Distruction".  Sexuality is one thing, but
- this is gross, "dirty", foul, screwed up, decadent, and a thousand thousand
- other terms to discribe the debasing of human life and sexuality.

No, I mean, it's hard not to be turned on by some of these things.
But it does send the message, to women AND men, of "this is what you
should look like."  That's what I find to be disgusting.

- The topics of make-up and pornography are nothing compared to the damage
- this constant barrage of messages defining sexuality has on people.
- Especially litte humans. 

I don't know if I agree or not.  How sexually aware are the
prepubescent?  

- I know! 
- I know! 
- Studies show!

What studies?

- Pornography or erotica if you please has it's place.  And I would say could
- be a safety value for those who are sexually flustrated by having been 
- subjected to constant sexual stimulation and enticement by the media.

I agree.  The war on pornography is misdirected.

- Where I differ from feminist views that I have read is that I feel women
- are involved in this type of thing up to their necks.  At this time women
- are in all aspects of the production of these ads form gopher to writer,
- from actor to director.  The big model agencies are women owned (Ford ect).
- Women selling women. ( victims with 6 and 7 figure paychecks ).

(in a whisper):  they're doing it to men too.  But I'm being unfair.
You acknowledge that.

- How do other people feel about the sexual manipulation that goes on in the
- media round the clock to sell products?  What is the effect on our society?
- What is the effect on women? On men? Or prehaps like studies say it has
- no lasting harmful effects.

Harmful effects: we all get to hate our own bodies.

--
Andrew Werling    awerling@nmsu.edu    yip@acca.nmsu.edu
"Jesus is coming, look busy."
          --from a button I bought in an Albuquerque bookstore.