From: starbuck@ucrmath.ucr.edu (starbuck)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Shake Your Body
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:58:10 GMT
Organization: University of California, Riverside

"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?

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 )?

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".

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.

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 know! 
I know! 
Studies show!

But as Bob Dylan once sang "You don't need a wheatherman to know which way "
the wind blows."  

I am not a prude.  ( Trust me ) thats yuppie talk.  But not being a prude
does not mean that I accept any expression of sexuality as healthy.  Letting
TV ads in Particular and ads in the rest of the media define the sexuality 
of women and men is not healthy.  I would go as far as to claim it has more
of a causal effect on rapes than pornography ever has by many orders of 
magnitude.  

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.

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 ).

No doubt for many many if not most women sexuality is a consideration
for their "look".  I make *no* claim that it should not be so.  What I do
feel is that the influence on both men and women from outside sources is
too great to overcome.  Dan Quayle may have a point.  Even the dumbest of
us is correct at one time or another if only by accident.  Should we turn
in the cable boxes and pull the plug on the TV set and say FY I'll watch
when you are not offensive?

Oh it's the 90's.  We've "come a long long way, baby doll sugar pie honey
bunch".  Men are now shaking their tushes on TV.  A real garden of erotic
delights.

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.

starbuck
Newsgroups: alt.feminism