By Courtney Woods
It seems as though television, films and advertising are getting more and more creative on how to slip in a sexual reference here or there to help fuel their product to success. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am sick and tired of Britney Spears. Yeah she’s pretty, but I do not necessarily want her thrown in my face wherever I go. She’s promoting the hell out of her new movie, her Pepsi commercials are all over the television, and to top it all off she is on almost every beauty magazine cover. All of this for a girl who can’t string together a coherent or intelligent sentence in interviews, who lip-synched her way through her entire HBO concert but has, according to a male co-worker, “a hypnotizing belly-button.”
This is like the ever-popular Anna Kournikova, who is on tons of ads and in the risqué new Enrique Iglesias video. She was on the cover of Sports Illustrated a while back and it caused quite a controversy. This female tennis player has yet to win a Grand Slam Tournament, yet she is the fair-haired media darling.
If sex does sell (and indeed it seems to), then Britney and Anna are making good use of it because they are both richer than I could ever aspire to be. As for television, even my favorite show Sex and the City pushes the envelope every week with its material. The character of Samantha Jones (Kim Catrall) alone makes people want to tune in to see what she does (or who she does) next. I remember a commercial a few years ago with Taco Bell. They had two kids standing in the parking lot watching some famous bikini model slink outside with one of the new burritos. The truth of the matter is, after merely holding the burrito the model probably worked out for three hours to shed the pounds she gained from contact with the greasy wrapper.
If a famous bikini model holding a burrito isn’t unrealistic, then I don’t know what is. She probably lives off of the “model’s diet,” diet soda and a cigarette. The truth of the matter is, according to intelihealth.com’ s article, “Responding to the Media’s Siren Song;” the average woman stands around 5’4″ and weighs 138 lbs. Some fail to remember that Marilyn Monroe, arguably the most recognized sex symbol, wore a size fourteen. This is a far cry from the size twos we see walking about on runways, in ads, and on television.
In the same article, intelihealth.com reveals that “75 percent of family hour television programs have at least some sexual content.” By family hour, more than likely, they mean before 10 p.m; after when MTV used to air racy and controversial videos like Madonna’s “Erotica” and others like it, that may be stumbled across by youngsters. After Elvis Presley first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, he was only shot from the waist up because of his now famous gyrations. In the 50’s this was shocking, sinful, and scandalous. Of course, that was then and this is now.
Now Halle Berry receives a $50,000 bonus for going topless in a completely gratuitous scene in the movie Swordfish, and Britney Spears bumps and grinds with a python at the last MTV Video Music Awards. Now the Internet is the key to any form of media. Now sex is thrown in our faces without subtlety and people are making millions off of it–off of our feelings.That is probably the most disturbing prospect.
Courtney Woods is a senior communications major and a staff writer for The Louisville Cardinal.
