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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
From "The Bachelorette" to "documentaries" on the Bunny Ranch, America is wallowing in boobs and butts like never before. But just how nasty do we wanna be?
Jan 18, 2003 | It must be the season of the slut. From low-rise pants to cropped shirts to tiny hot pants, women's clothing is more revealing than it's ever been before. While men's magazines follow the Brits' lead in pushing the boundaries of taste, even mainstream magazines are filled with photographs of women straddling chairs, animals and men, splayed out on pool tables, and lying half-naked on the floor of shower stalls. Everywhere we go, our eyes pass casually over material that up until recently would have been considered pornographic.
The Internet is flooded with teenagers and young women with webcams, drawing crowds of men who'll pay to see them change clothes or put on funny costumes or just bend over in front of the camera before climbing into bed. And the boob tube has never been so aptly named. First, there are the babes in leather and string bikinis gyrating to Nelly's latest on MTV. Next, the women on "The Real World" have been assigned the job of "promoting" a Las Vegas club, mostly by acting out bizarre sexual scenes, or by go-go dancing in minuscule outfits onstage.
Click over to HBO to find prostitutes sunbathing naked and sticking their breasts into a birthday cake, all under the guise of a "documentary" for "America Undercover" about the Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada. Onward to E! where you'll find the same girls in their bikinis and stilettos on "The Howard Stern Show," where the East Coast whores are battling it out against the West Coast whores in a makeshift quiz game. Cut to a commercial of girls flashing their breasts in the latest "Girls Gone Wild!" video, starring Snoop Dogg, or the women of "The Bachelor" jumping up and down in their bikinis on a trampoline, and soon you're so overcome by masturbation material you'd think half the country spends the vast majority of their time touching themselves.
But hey, boys just wanna have fun! Everywhere you turn, from men's magazines to TV shows like "Hidden Hills" and "The Mind of the Married Man," you find the same story of the bored, sexually underfed male.
The story tells us that it's perfectly natural for married men to be absolutely apathetic toward the needs or interests of their spouses and children. Such alienation isn't a reflection of any shortcoming in the husband, of course. His self-centered neuroticism, flights of fantasy and total inability to focus on those other than himself don't echo some pathology in his emotional makeup, a total paralysis that prevents him from connecting meaningfully with those who are closest to him.
Instead, we're told that, in a compassionate world, our hero should be allowed all the hot sex with strangers that he truly deserves. Sadly, though, he was born unto this insufficient world, walks among mortals, and must endure the tedious, mundane demands of a humdrum universe in which absurdly desirable women don't constantly offer themselves up to be ravaged by short, hairy middle-aged men of average looks.
Not surprisingly, it seems the romantic lead has been replaced, at least in part, by the lust interest. Instead of representing the promise of love and a lifelong companion, she offers hot sex, no strings attached. In the movie "8 Mile," Eminem's character, Rabbit, finds himself falling madly in lust with a sexy stranger. She's everything he's ever dreamed about: She's hot, and she looks really good in short skirts. "Getting to know you" scenes are replaced by "wanting to get with you" scenes. There she is, at the factory where Rabbit works, in a tiny skirt and three-inch heels! There she is, across the room at a club, dancing!
Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for: lust in bloom! Without speaking, the happy couple sneaks off to a discreet corner of the factory where they can have sex standing up. Violins soar! They part at last, flashing each other meaningful "that was good for me" looks -- again, no words are necessary. But, of course, such a love affair is too hot not to cool down -- or to end suddenly when Rabbit finds her screwing one of his friends. "But, but ... she promised me ... I mean, she gave me a look that told me she definitely wanted to do me again, whenever we ran into each other!"
Lust interests abound on this season of "The Real World," where three of the four women have fooled around with their housemates. One of the girls worries that she's pregnant every other episode, but continues to sleep with the same housemate without using protection. Worst of all are the scenes where her partner explains that he's not really interested in dating her, that he wants to continue to be able to flirt and fool around with other women, but that he still can't resist sleeping with her whenever she's around. "You're like this big piece of candy," he says, and she blushes like he's just told her he's madly in love.
The setting (Las Vegas) and their jobs (promoting a club) are obviously meant to exacerbate the highly charged sexual climate, and it's certainly entertaining. But when their boss pressures them to go-go dance in skimpy outfits, berates them for not taking their jobs seriously or behaving like professionals, then buys drinks and hits on most of them openly, going so far as to take one of them back to his room and then repeatedly ignoring her requests that they leave, you have to wonder if the producers had any qualms at all about feasting on the inexperience of these women by placing them in extremely confusing and demeaning situations.
