September 19, 2000 10:15 PM EST

Paul was complaining to me about police strip club surveillance tapes -- all the news stations here are fighting to get their hands on it so they can compete with each other to show the most. The police had been casing this strip club to prove that it was a connection for hookers. This offended Paul, not only in terms of police man hours wasted and taxpayer money not being applied to something more serious, but the whole sex thing in general. We're talking several hundred hours of tapes here. On one club.

"Ok, compare this to European countries like Amsterdam -- who have more relaxed sexual attitudes. They will allow some nudity on news shows, but will not allow scenes of violence like murder. Here in the the US, we get all hyper about seeing boobies on TV, and yet have no problem showing dead bodies or blood and gore from crime scenes. Who has the higher crime rate!? We do! It's like, c'mon people! When did a nipple kill anyone?! Why are you wasting all this effort to catch some guy paying for pussy? If he's happy, and the sex worker is happy, and nobody is getting hurt, who cares? It might not be legal, but there are more serious crimes to be tracking down than this! Try MURDER! RAPE! People just worry about the wrong damn things!"

I agree with him. On all sorts of other "wrong things." Like the boob ads.

I got my latest issue of Bust in the mail and I had to stop and think about the bit about the ad campaign from the Breast Cancer Fund that spoofed other popular ad campaigns like "Obsession" and "Victoria's Secret" with models who had mastectomy scars. I hadn't seen any of that on the east coast!

Apparently there was enough public outcry on the west coast to have those ads torn down or not even go up at all. The last bit of the blurb reads:

"In the end the ads proved the Breast Cancer Fund's point: that public sexualized displays of breasts are fine as long as they are being used to sell something -- but make a comment that's more relevant to women's lives than how sexy some designer perfume will make them feel, and well, that's just offensive."

That is so sad. That people will get that excited and complain about ads showing scars, but they won't get at all excited and complain about other ads that are far more objectionable. I happen to think the Breast Cancer Campaign is pretty slick and well executed.

My great aunt died from breast cancer, so it's close enough in my family tree to make me think about it. Why aren't these the kinds of ads that appear in "women's" magazine instead of fashion porn?!

Yes, I did it. It's September and the fall issue of Vogue is out, and like I do every year I break the rule about no foofoo magazines and buy it, intentionally for the ads. Compared to last year's, the big theme this year is "tasteless sexual imagery" instead of the "ultra skinny models" theme. I expected it to be bad, but damn, it's always a little shocker to see it. Paul was flipping through Harper's so we got that one too.

Every once in awhile, I hear of a woman who feels inadequate or threatened if her significant other indulges in skin mags or strip clubs or whatever. Like she'll worry that if he's looking at those bodies he must somehow not be happy with hers or that she's being made to compete in an arena she's not wanting to compete in. I think erotica can be fun for both people as long as it isn't exploitative. But I can see why other women might feel upset over it.

Gratuitous sex and body parts are used to sell everything from cheese graters to shoes to beer to cigarettes. It offends me. Use body parts and sex to sell SEX dammit, not cars. What's the difference between these two images other than one chickie wears fur and a purse and the other wears ties? That the fur lady is a "Gucci" ad from this month's Vogue and the tie lady the start of a spread from an old Playboy hanging around the house. It's still the same type of imagery, even though one magazine is supposed to be less "bad" than the other.

It's still basically -- "This shiny, glossy body? That is what is pretty, and what should be sexy to you, and if you don't look like that, you are NOT pretty or sexy, which only leaves butt ugly. Get with the program!"

It invites looking, and it invites judgment because since we can't talk to the woman in the spread, and all we have of her is how she appears. We judge whether or not it is a good spread by whether or not she's been able to stir something within us as we look at her. Envy, desire, jealousy, arousal, attraction, disapproval -- it really doesn't matter what the feeling is, so long as we noticed it. Then some people carry that reaction around, wanting to remake their bodies and be out on display and generate the same reaction when people see them. "I want to lose 10 lbs and look hot and make X soooo jealous!" How often have you heard that song?

People get riled up about porn magazines. I don't know why, when porn magazines at least don't pretend to be something they aren't. We go there EXPECTING to see this kind of stuff. Yet people bitch about how dirty these magazines are and how horrid. Dirty maybe, but horrid? If there is a magazine out there called "Boobies!" what do you expect to see other than boobs? Recipes for chili? But everyone gets mad anyhow.

Then you get atrocious images like this one from this month's Harper's Bazaar -- a trench-coated woman wrapping her whole body around this tall, vibrator blue, phallic shape with her face near the tip and her hand gliding along it ending near her crotch. It's kind of funny that she's stomping around all these blue balls with stiletto heels, but still -- it is more tasteless than ha-ha funny.

I don't see people complaining, I don't see people calling up the magazine or tearing the ads out of magazines with as much fervor as they did while tearing down the ads from the Breast Cancer Fund. That reaction kept the Breast Cancer ads from getting to me on the east coast. As far as I know, Harper's still made it nationwide.

Mom's slap their teenage boys for hiding Playboy under the mattress but they don't do diddly about their girls buying fashion mags. Hell, even ripping the ads out and hanging them in their rooms. THAT makes sense.

"Is that a boob from a porn magazine!? Oh, it's a fashionable boob. Ok, then you can have that one. But don't let me catch you looking at porn boobs! That's BAD!"

I guess somehow if it's porn in the name of fashion it's ok to have. Suuuure.

~Astrophe