- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
With a constant barrage of sexually charged photos, and a commonplace idea that we must use sex to sell and to prove "grown up," have we lost the ability to distinguish healthy sexual awakening and art from sexually exploitative images? Read this post to see images that reflect that transition from girl to woman beautifully and artistically, and also one mom's opinion about how sexually exploitative photos affect not just our eyes but also our vision of our feminity.
<!--break-->
Do you ever wonder whether you've been a little trained, like Pavlov's dogs?
I do. I get so used to the pat and stock things that usually I accept them, unquestioningly. But when a moment comes that I do pause and ponder, I wonder why this idea or this image is supposed to be so representative, either of a concept or of something I'm supposed to like or want.
It happens all the time in marketing and advertising. Every day I'm bombarded with images and messages directed to me (the marketing bucket of me, anyway: middle-class, practically middle-aged mom with two kids and buying power): laundry detergents that power through stains, clothing that makes me look hot, cosmetics and creams that make me look young again, ads about weight loss, and so forth.
I wonder, which came first: the chicken or the egg? Did I look at my teeth one day and wonder about their color or did an ad tell me I needed to whiten my teeth?
TV, radio, billboards, Web sites and yes, even magazines. All of these bundle their pleas to my buying power with attractive and appealing packages that are designed to capture my attention and interest. Sometimes the appeal is through information, and sometimes it's through images---images that just might be designed to titillate my prurient interest.
I have it, and so do you, this prurient interest.
But what I am is fatigued by a constant barrage of appeal to it. It's not my only or my chief interest, it is merely my base interest.
I'd so much rather my other interests appealed to, on the whole.
But we seem stuck in this mode of appealing to prurient interest, and from there I think we forget to think. We're back to that trained dog feeling I get every now and again: where I'm just meant to react and not think.
It's probable that the first time some phrase was used or image was shot that it was unique, interesting, original and mind-expanding. That success, though, launched a formula, that after a while might end up as meaningless as a cliche. So people keep trying to think of ways to freshen the formula, push the boundaries of the formula---never quite grasping that they've trapped themselves inside a box of an idea and that what is really called for is fresh ideas, not fresh angles of the tried and true but stale formula. That pushing though, means that eventually the formula might be deployed harmfully.
I think that's happening a lot right now for young people (ignoring the issue for children right now), as clothing, ads, images, and so forth has pushed that "bring sexy back" formula onto them. We forget that or wish to forget that these young people are so much more than sexual awakening.
We limit the face and dimensions of them, and thus, forget to think of it. We forget that growing up and maturing is much, much more than emerging sexuality.
I wonder if this is what happened to Annie Liebovitz. Has she gotten as caught up in the idea of "quintessential Annie Liebovitz" as her fans and employers? Has she gotten so caught up in it that she didn't even see the individual in front of her---the unique person named Miley---and instead saw only a commodity, with a whisper in her ear from the magazine that skin sells? That sin sells?
Did Miley---bombarded her entire life with the message that sex sells---have any idea that there can be bad publicity, and that a suggestive post-coital-implied photograph might imply something well beyond her age or stage of maturity? Did she have any other example before her, something to hold if she wanted to say no, "No, I don't prefer a sexy shot that's exploitative, I don't think that's the way I want to grow up for America and appeal to a larger audience. I'd rather show another side of myself, an accomplishment..."
