by Ben Shapiro
Even aside from their liberalism, these advice columns are simply silly. It’s as though the columnists have only three options they can dispense: (1) go to counseling; (2) visit Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or some other such liberal interest group ; (3) discuss the issues with your [fill in the blank] and see if you can come to a perspective of tolerance for their [deviant] behavior.
Here’s Dear Abby doing a Type 2:DEAR ABBY: I noticed that my 16-year-old daughter wasn’t her usual self. So I questioned her one night and asked if there was anything bothering her, or if she was worried about something. She started crying and told me she is gay. I responded by crying with her and asking her if she was sure. She said she was. I told her she is still my daughter and I love her very much, but that I can’t help hoping she’s just confused and that as time goes on, she might see that this is not who she really is. I’m trying my best to accept it, but it is difficult at times.—Confused Parent in Texas
A proper response could have pointed out that this was a sixteen-year-old girl, that young people are often confused about sexuality, and that seeing someone for help might be a decent option. Instead, Abby offered this brilliantly original response:DEAR CONFUSED: Your feelings are normal. Most parents have plans and dreams for their children, and your child has turned out differently than you expected. Your next step is to contact PFLAG. I have mentioned this organization—Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—many times in my column. It offers support groups, educational outreach and more to families and friends of gay, lesbian, intersexual and transgendered family members. The Web site is www.pflag.org and the telephone number is 1-202-467-8180. Please don’t wait to contact them.75
Here’s a Type 3 (complete with endorsement of pornography):DEAR ABBY: My daughter, “Rhonda,” hosts several “soft porn” Web sites, and it upsets me greatly. She’s 24 and a very bright, sweet and loving person, which is why it’s so difficult for me to understand why she does this. Rhonda earned more than $100,000 last year and has a sizable savings account, but her small business is pornography! We don’t discuss her occupation, and no one but myself and my ex-husband know she’s involved in this kind of thing. As far as everyone else is concerned, she “designs Web sites.” Rhonda wants me to be proud of her accomplishments, but I’m not. I love my daughter very much and keep hoping she’ll grow out of this; however, I’m not sure she will. I hate lying to everyone about what she does, but I would never want anyone to know. How do I come to terms with this—or can I?—Her Loving Mother
A proper response might have been: “Where were you when your daughter was growing up? How about telling her you never want to hear about her business again, and make clear your disapproval?”
Instead, Abby suggested that Mother be Tolerant:You and your daughter have very different moral values. While it’s against your principles, what she’s doing is legal. She’s built a successful business and wants you to respect what she has accomplished. That said, I doubt you will ever see eye-to-eye on this issue. Love her as your daughter, try to accept that this is a choice she has made, and focus on her positive qualities: She’s bright, sweet and loving—not to mention a whiz at business. At this point, I doubt you can change her.76
Meanwhile, Ann Landers self-righteously condemned anyone who opposed masturbation and suggested abstinence:Well, now I am going to suggest a far more realistic solution than abstinence. The sex drive is the strongest human drive after hunger. It is nature’s way of perpetuating the human race. Males reach their sexual peak as early as 17. There must be an outlet. I am recommending self-gratification or mutual masturbation, whatever it takes to release the sexual energy. This is a sane and safe alternative to intercourse, not only for teenagers but also for older men and women without partners. I do not want to hear from clergymen telling me it’s a sin. The sin is making people feel guilty about responding to this basic, fundamental human drive.77
Parents, take comfort: if Ann Landers says it isn’t a sin, it isn’t a sin! When it’s Ann Landers vs. God, clearly Ann takes precedence.
For “mature women” only
Ultimately, all these advice columns and teen magazines serve as gateway products for the hard stuff. Publishers have learned that you’ve got to prep the kiddies with YM, Elle Girl, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, GL, and Cosmo Girl! before you slip them Cosmopolitan. And Cosmo and its ilk are truly pornography; they belong behind those black pieces of plastic at the newsstands.
Cosmo has a circulation of about three million, making it number twenty-one on the magazine hit parade.78 To make the teen tie-in clear, they often feature a teen celebrity on the cover. As of February 2005, that teen celebrity was no-talent hack Ashlee Simpson in a slinky red dress, named Cosmo’s “Fun Fearless Female of the Year.”79 Unlike sister Jessica, Ashlee refuses to swear off sex until marriage; instead, she says that “having sex before you’re married is something that you should decide on your own.”80
That’s a terrific message for the teenagers who make up a sizable portion of the magazine’s readership. Letters from readers are often from the barely legal crowd. “I was babysitting, and while the kids were napping, I decided to sit on their deck and write a note to my boyfriend, Brian. I made it really racy and described in detail how I wanted to go down on him the next time we could sneak into his shower together,” writes Katie, age eighteen.81
Each issue revolves entirely around sex. Articles in the magazine include “BEYOND KAMA SUTRA: Advanced Sex Positions (#3 Will Have You Grinning For A Week),” “THE POWER OF PRE-SEX: 5 Tricks That Will Totally Rev His Engine,” “Guess What He’s Really Thinking in Bed,” “His Butt: What Your Guy’s Bum Shape Reveals About His Personality (Squeeze, Then Read),” “50 Ways to Have Fun With Your Man,” and “Hilarious Confessions of Real Desperate Housewives.” 82
Cosmo’s sex positions include “THE COSMO CAT,” “THE PELVIC PUSH,” “THE LUSTY LAP DANCE,” “THE SULTRY SPOON,” “THE SLEEPING DOG,” “THE BOOTY LIFT,” “THE FRISKY FACE-OFF,” “THE TANTALIZING TILT,” “THE FLYING SQUIRREL,” “THE COOTIE-HOP,” and “THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.”83 Well, actually, I just made the last three up. But since I did, can I work for Cosmo now?
The recommended “tricks that will totally rev his engine” are letting him see you naked (“When you finally get down to removing your panties, do it painfully slow so he feels the burn”), using your breath (“Work your way south to his package, pucker up, and blast a circle of cool air around his penis, as if you were putting out the candles on a cake”), playing a little rough (“Make him putty in your hands by physically moving him into different positions, scratching your nails down his back, and being ballsy when he tries to take over”), tantalizing with touch (“Instead of heading straight for his package, mix up your sexual touches”), and bringing him to the brink (“And now for the frisky finale: Pull out the start-stop trick”).84
Alongside the above text, Cosmo prints photos of polar bears in heat. I’ll let this one pass without comment. Sometimes Cosmo speaks for itself.
Cosmo helps with your shopping needs as well with its “GUIDE TO CONDOMS.” “Once you read our manual of racy roll-on maneuvers and saucy love-glove styles, no man will eschew safe sex with you again,” avers the inaptly named Peter Hyman.85
For some hilarious hijinks, Cosmo gives its “Cosmo commandments: 10 Ways You Should Never, Ever Test His Love.” Commandment #4: “Declare that you’re taking a stand against body-hair removal of all kinds.” Commandment #7: “Nickname his member The Little Engine That Could.” Commandment #9: “Have dinner with your ex. Come home with a hickey. . . on your inner thigh.”86 That’s thigh-lickingly funny!
Cosmo continues the teen trend of objectifying men; Josh Duhamel is Cosmo’s “Fun Fearless Male of the Year.” Other FFMs include David Spade, Kevin Bacon, Simon Cowell, Carson Kressley, Bill Hemmer, Ben McKenzie, and Taye Diggs.87 There’s also the “Guy Without His Shirt” rating contest.88 In the article “Butt Really,” Cosmo analyzes m
ale personalities based on the shape of their rears. Complete with half-naked pictures of male models, the magazine focuses in on the gluteus maximus, which is “a sign to behold.”89 In “WHAT HIS MOUTH MOVES REVEAL,” Cosmo analyzes male personalities based on the way they snog.90 It also translates the male mind: “HE SAYS: ‘I love you.’ (After sex) HE MEANS: ‘That thing you just did with your pelvis rocked my world.’”91 Here’s a handy hint to women: Ask a guy how he feels instead of looking at Cosmo. We’re not that hard to figure out.
And there’s the requisite celeb gossip. Cosmo hired psychotherapist Cherie Byrd, author of Kissing School: Seven Lessons on Love, Lips, and Life Force to analyze pics of celebrity kisses. “Kate [Bosworth] and [Orlando Bloom’s] smooch is full of heat and love, and they are both equally engaged,” Byrd says. “Also, the way Kate touches Orlando’s face with her fingertips is intimate.”92 Whoever said that psychotherapists were fraudulent shrinks?
Celeb gossip is a big moneymaker for other magazines as well. People magazine has 3.6 million readers, making it the thirteenth largest magazine in the country; their Teen People lead-in for teen girls was number forty-eight.93
Does marijuana lead to crack? Perhaps. Do teen magazines lead to Cosmo and People? No doubt about it.
The pitch
“Don’t let magazines (or anybody!) try to define love for you,” writes Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein.94 Yeah, right. If the teen magazines weren’t trying to define love, beauty, and virtue to each and every teenage girl, who would buy their drek?
Girls’ Life faced that very problem. “For the first eight years, GL barely ran any articles on crushing, dating, kissing, or anything else that smacked of guydom,” admits editor Karen Bokram.95 The magazine, designed for ten- to fifteen-year-olds, was dedicated to “features on dealing with friends and family, building self-esteem, and learning more about themselves.”96 As of 2004, they still hadn’t cracked the top 100 magazines in the country, according to the New York Times Almanac;97 as of 2001, their circulation remained around 400,000.98
In order to reach the saturated girls’ market, they sold out. While remaining much milder than most of the teen magazines, they turned to boys and crushes. In August 2001, the magazine was made over.99 “[A]fter getting letter after letter from girls asking for help and advice, we felt we needed to step up. After all, we were always saying that girls should go after their dreams. Suddenly, it seemed super-judgmental to totally blow off all girls whose dream was to have a boyfriend,” Bokram explains.100
It’s a weak explanation at best. If girls wanted boy advice, there were only a hundred other magazines from which they could choose. Finances were a motivating factor here. Seventeen makes over $110 million in advertising revenues each year; YM makes over $100 million; Cosmo makes over $280 million; People is the number one advertising revenue magazine in the country, raking it in to the tune of more than $780 million per year.101 Why should GL get left out in the cold?
Once again, it’s a vicious cycle. The magazines push the market ever deeper into sexuality; the market demands more; the good magazines get marginalized. Members of the porn generation keep on buying, reading, and imbibing the sweet poison of oversexed culture. Before you know it, it’s the responsible folks at the teen mags that determine when, how, and why a teenager has sex.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ABERCRAPPY & BITCH
“When sex is a commodity, there is always a better deal.”
JEAN KILBOURNE, AUTHOR, CAN’T BUY MY LOVE1
When Janet Jackson bared her right breast at the Super Bowl half-time show in 2004, social conservatives were justifiably enraged. But why did it take an exposed breast to cause FCC chairman Michael Powell to crack down on television sexuality and vulgarity? After all, the very same Super Bowl carried some of the most raunchy commercials in recent memory.
Budweiser ran nine commercials during the Super Bowl. In one, “Fergus, Bud Light!,” two dog owners meet. The first tells his dog to fetch; the dog brings back a Bud Light. He turns snootily to the second dog owner, and asks what his dog can do. “Fergus, Bud Light!,” the second dog owner commands. The dog immediately chomps on the first dog owner’s genitals, and he tosses the beer directly to the second dog owner. It makes you wonder whether the focus group for this ad was a group of ADD-ridden third-graders.
In another Budweiser commercial, Cedric the Entertainer visits a massage parlor. “I’m here for my massage,” he tells the attractive girl behind the counter. “These big muscles need some tenderizing.” “Okay, cutie, room five,” she responds with a seductive smile. Cedric accidentally ends up in room four, the bikini wax room. A good-looking young black woman enters. “You’re here for the body treatment?” she asks incredulously. “Oh yeah,” he answers. “My body, your treatment, umm-hmm.” She obliges with a bikini wax; the commercial ends with Cedric sitting beside a fellow bikini wax customer, asking “Is there a breeze in here?” Apparently the third-grade beer drinkers thought highly of this idea.
But the title for grossest Super Bowl commercial had to go to Budweiser’s “Horny Talking Monkey” ad. A beautiful young woman sits on a couch, her boyfriend standing behind the couch. On the couch beside her is a monkey. “I love your apartment, Brian,” she says to her boyfriend. “And Frank is so well behaved!” “Yeah, we’re best buddies. I’m gonna go grab some Bud Lights,” Brian responds. He exits the room, leaving the monkey alone with the girl. She turns to the monkey and coos, “You’re so cute!” The monkey puts his arm around the girl and begins talking: “I think, uh, you’re cute too,” he says. “You can talk?” she asks. “Baby, I can do a little bit more than just talk,” the monkey states. “But let’s cut the chit-chat, head upstairs, or you know. . .” The monkey then simulates sexual motion while grunting and screeching. After Brian enters the room and then leaves again, the monkey turns to the girl and asks, “So, how do you feel about back hair?” This commercial certainly wasn’t approved by the third-graders—it must have been approved by college students.
Other sexually oriented commercials included a Visa commercial about US Olympic women volleyballers playing in the snow; a Gillette commercial for men’s razors containing no fewer than fourteen shots of beautiful women in a one-minute commercial, many depicting actual sexual activity; a trailer for Starsky and Hutch including various scantily clad women; and another Budweiser commercial joking about infidelity. Hilariously, the most subtle commercial about sex was an ad for Levitra, an erectile dysfunction drug. The ad depicted former Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints head coach Mike Ditka describing the differences between football (“it’s fast, it’s action packed, play after play”) and baseball (“it’s not quite the same”). Football, Ditka says, is Levitra; baseball “could use Levitra.” For those who know nothing about what Levitra actually does, the references in the commercial mean nothing. Still, you wonder how erectile dysfunction commercials ever made it onto prime-time television.
“Fashionable exhibitionism”
Sex in advertising has been present for decades. In 1968, Look magazine publisher Thomas Shepard stated that sex in advertising was on its way out—yet as of 1999, 70 percent of respondents to an Adweek poll felt that there was too much sex in advertising.2 The level of sexual explicitness has escalated over time. In its earliest incarnations in America, before World War I, sexuality in advertising was bound by the mores of the time—temptation was marketed through long skirts or subtle language, not explicit nudity.3 In the 1920s, sex in advertising escalated; while showing the backs of women’s knees remained taboo, marketing of silk hosiery helped create the “flapper” image.4 Sex in advertising gradually escalated into the 1930s, when nudes first appeared in American advertising.5 In the 1940s and 1950s, “the treatment of sex in advertising shifted from an almost reverent dignity to casual humor.”6 The 1960s sexual revolution opened the door the rest of the way.
Between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s, use of sexily dressed men and women in magazine advertising increased sign
ificantly; between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the percentage of magazine advertisements containing a man and a woman involved in sexually suggestive behavior shot from about 20 percent to over 50 percent.7 According to Barry Gunter of the University of Sheffield, one 1998 study showed that “12 percent of advertisements from a sample of over 500 commercials recorded from one week of network television contained less than fully dressed models . . . One percent of the advertisements contained verbal references to sex, 7 percent contained physical references, and 8 percent contained physical contact of a sexual nature.”8 That may not sound like a lot, but when you realize that the average child watches 40,000 commercials per year, it’s a ton.9
Sexual advertising is overwhelmingly targeted at the youth market, and has been for more than two decades. In 1981, for example, movie star Brooke Shields, who was all of fifteen at the time, starred in Calvin Klein’s jeans campaign, in which she purred, “Know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Three network-owned stations in New York refused to run the ads, but sales of the jeans skyrocketed 300 percent after the first commercials hit.10
