hands on your knees

Shake what my momma gave me

I got it from my momma

Will their mothers be proud when they are doing this on National TV in 15 years?
....this video says yes.

Unfortunately our society has learned to appreciate such advancements in the Womens lib movement that now they want to thank us by misusing that freedom. Shake it for your grandma, momma, and youtube.com, and then make it racist (this video is titled: "dance like a black girl!"). Like a black girl? That's interesting because in the videos below I can see Kendra (The Girls Next Door girlfriend) doing the same move. Last time I checked Kendra was caucasian.

I cannot wait to grow up and teach my daughters how to shake their asses. And then tell them it is dancing like an African American, although you can find almost any girl with rhythm doing this to Akon in the club. If everyone taught their children this in the next ten years, how do you think American women will look then? Really classy, right.

Before the new internet/electronic era this would have been unheard of. Now who do we hold responsible? Can we even blame the parent(s), maybe only for the fact that these girls are so young. The rest of the blame falls on a number of things, the main fault being that women have lost sight of what it means to be free. I hope that we are not only fighting oppression to take our clothes off, spin around stripper poles, and learn to please the opposite sex.

Maybe one day, let's hope soon, women will see all of these things and realize that this video is not funny. The women filming are audibly laughing but I cannot see them laughing when their children grow up and realize that something is fundamentally wrong in what is expected of their gender.

i'm too sexy for my brain

Someone took the time to make that. Are these women sexy? Too sexy? Bleached blond hair, augmented chests and spray tans make real women. Is that the message that American society has so readily accepted?
"[Playboy] gave me a huge stack of magazines to flip through and the only variety I saw was the kind of variety you get when you look at a wall of Barbie dolls...they all look very distinctly poured from the same mold. Individuality is erased: it's not part of the formula." (Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pig) These three women are all a perfect example of different people with distinct similarities. Diversity is necessary as long as everyone has bleached blond hair and a golden tan. Eye color doesn't matter when it's surrounded by mascara, anyway.

The clips used to create this music video are all from The Girls Next Door, a television show on E!, which is one of the most popular television networks in America. E! stands for Entertainment, the entire network focuses on celebrity actions, appearances, and lifestyles. The entertainment factor is not an issue, the real issue is the message it sends to young women everywhere. The representation of American life is of materialistic, poorly educated women who are willing to conform to that in order to receive attention.


You don't think these women are good examples of what affects young women just because the show is so new? What about Madonna? Her influence stretches way back to multiple generations. "She gives us ideas. It's really women's lib, not being afraid of what guys think." -Madonna fan as quoted in Susan Bordo's essay Material Girl: The effacements of Postmodern Culture from Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Bordo continues on to explain Madonnas rapid change from doing her "own" thing to changing her appearance completely. "I didn't have a flat stomach anymore, I had become well-rounded."(Madonna speaking) She did not change of her own accord. Comfort with herself quickly changed from pride to embarrassment as Bordo states and only became positive when she broke under social pressures to be skinny and 'sexy' at 40.
Unfortunately the ultimate result of popular culture on young women today is the confusion of comfortable sexuality with commodification of the gender as a whole.

shopping is for girls

Victoria's Secret first made shopping easy by catalog and now made shopping even easier through their website. Their target market: women of all ages. I peruse the site so often for new dresses and swimsuits I can pick out their clothing on other girls. But going over the site and thinking to myself how good an outfit looks and then actually wearing it have become two different things.

Why does it appeal to women everywhere? Just as Frontline's documentary "Merchants of Cool" divulges how mass conglomerate companies break into youth culture, Victoria's Secret breaks into female culture. They choose a target market and show it what it wants to see to appear "sexy and cool", in the long run it is all about appealing to someone else's tastes.


Do all women have six pack abs and huge breasts? I know that I definitely do not and no amount of "Very Sexy" lingerie by Victoria's Secret will make that dramatic change happen. That "Very Sexy" bra you ordered will never magically turn into a $300/hour personal trainer and a $7000 check for breast implants. Why doesn't the website offer a disclaimer for that? Don't get me wrong, in a society where McDonald's takes over it is amazing to see women in such great shape. But like Levy points out in her Female Chauvinist Pigs essay, why is it that athletic women [Olympians] must show their bodies in minimal clothing to feel sexy? They regress from women who can work and play just as hard as men to women who work and play hard for men.

The images I see in Victoria's Secret are never meant to appeal to me. They are meant to appeal to what I think a guy wants to see.

perfection

How a campaign meant to endorse natural beauty can so easily be turned on itself by it's audience.....





How do you define beauty and perfection? Can you look anyway you want to?
-slob
-model
-natural
-edgy
-preppy
-fat/skinny
Or is a determination of beauty based on how other's view you? We look at advertisements and compare our flaws to the societally "perfect" example of how we should look. An African American looking at a billboard for make up and seeing a Caucasian American, a plus-size person looking at a stick-skinny model for swimwear...does pop culture determine your differences as ugly?

"...Despite the claims of the ad, one cannot have any body that one wants: for not every body will do. The very advertisements whose copy speaks of choice and self-determination visually legislate the effacement of individual and cultural difference and circumscribe our choices" (Susan Bordo's Material Girl: The effacements of Postmodern Culture Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body., 1993.)


I will make my own decisions about what I think is attractive after the media tells me what to choose from and tells me it is okay.

the world is spinning... around a pole

In an interview with Hugh Hefner, Playboy company founder and famous septuagenarian, (video at the bottom) about an alleged rape taking place at his own mansion during a party, they explain the popularity of The Girls Next Door in the only way seen fit. This is of course right before Hefner denounces the alleged rape as a story the victim made up to "cover up her partying" to her boyfriend. Is he a smart business man keeping trouble away from his mansion and company name or is she making up for her own mistakes by lying about something severe?

Unfortunately, his is the only explanation shown on TV and is therefore considered more reputable. Who would want to tell Hugh Hefner, every man's idol, that he is wrong? Not every man's idol? Just read all the comments after the majority of The Girls Next Door youtube videos.

NBC narrator: "It's these young women who seem most appealing to millions of viewers: most of them female."
Hugh Hefner: "It's fantasy, I think it's a guilty pleasure and a fantasy for women."



Hefner's explanation of fantasy negates his original statement entirely that his relationships with women a third of his age are real. Does he believe that women fantasize about dating a man three times their age or that they would love to be a life-size barbie doll with constant parties and unlimited credit cards? Think fast, Hefner, I am pretty sure women are not attracted to your hot bod. And if they are, they may be blinded by the no limit credit card. Of course, I am assuming no limit because that seems like the only fair trade for his girlfriends having a 9:00PM curfew unless he accompanies them (this is made clear on his reality TV show).
Modern day prostitution? No, Hef says it is true love, so it must be. His definitions of "real" and "fantasy" are skewed for someone so influential to a younger male audience...which covers many generations, since it is not hard to be younger than Hugh Hefner. He sets the stage for more trends in poor reflections of American society.
But then the question becomes: who sets off this chain of events?

When do women ever want to be left behind? Never. "The problem with the "story of man" was that women couldn't recognize themselves in it. So those who produce the "story of woman" want to make sure they appear in it. The best way to ensure that is to be the storyteller and hence to be in a position to decide which of all the many facts about women's lives ought to be in the story, which ought to be left out." (Woman: The One and the Many from Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Though by Elizabeth Spelman)

In any circumstances we race to keep up with men, even when it comes to throwing dollars at strippers on a pole. If we want to seem sexy and fun we encourage any kind of sex-related fun, regardless of how it makes American women look as a whole. We are willing to pay more, yell louder and encourage the raunch in order to keep up with the sex drive of men... because if we don't we are old news.
"Women in America don't want to be excluded from anything anymore: not the board meeting or the cigar that follows it or, lately, even the trip to the strip club that follows that. What we want is to be where it's at, and currently that's a pretty trashy place." (Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pig).
So maybe next time a woman makes it to the top, high profile executive position in a company she should just install a stripper pole in the board room.
In America, that could be the only way she is seen or heard. Regardless of talent, brains, or creative ideal women are determined to keep up with what's happening, especially in the laps of men.