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Sunday, February 11. 2007

Playmates and Double Standards

The other day on the Playboy Cyber Club Message Boards the topic of Playmates and Playboy Cyber Girls doing hard core porn came up; the reason being that Playboy Special Editions model Coco Mouton, a.k.a. Nicole Graves, started her own hard core porn site.

It’s nothing new for Playboy models to have their own sites, or new for some to go into hard core porn. Teri Weigel, Miss May 1986, was the first Playmate to start her own site of hard core porn, but it was Terri Welles, Playmate of the Year 1981, who won a landmark Internet case in April, 1998, that gave her and every subsequent Playmate the right to use the words “Playboy” and “Playmate” to describe themselves on their web sites.

The point of the message board topic though was the Nicole Graves web site; and the opinions of the many subscribers to Playboy and the Cyber Club (She has also posed for other websites and Penthouse magazine).

Several of the men who posted comments expressed disapproval of Ms. Graves’s choice of content, expressing disenchantment of varying degrees — they had less respect for Graves. Mind you, these are people who pay to view these women nude — and sometimes in simulated lesbian pics and videos. Apparently, those kind of pictorials aren’t objectionable. That was one of the funniest paradoxes I’ve read in a while! No, it’s not a paradox, it’s hypocritical! One poster even admitted his hypocrisy.

Also posting a comment was Erica Campbell, Cyber Girl of the Month for October 2006 and one of the most popular models on the Playboy Cyber Club. She also has her own, very popular, web site and has appeared in magazines and other web sites other than Playboy.

Campbell’s comments compelled me to reply in the topic, so the bulk of what follows is that response. So it begins with Erica’s comments:

“Not that I would ever do hardcore … because its just not for me … BUT I think IF that’s what she WANTS to do and she is making that choice after thinking it through more power to her.

I often wonder when girls go from soft to hard quickly that they aren't thinking it through or are doing it for a quick buck...but I don't think anyone should judge unless of course you are God … then by all means …”

I so agree with you Erica. In the U.S. we still treat sex like a dirty activity — despite the rhetoric to the contrary. So, “porn” is treated as if it is a dirty, taboo subject as well — despite the fact that internet porn alone is a 16 billion dollar-per-year industry in the U.S.

We have a gross double-standard when it comes to sex and porn; and that I am expected to be ashamed for viewing Erica’s pics, or going to Coco/Nicole's site to view her having sex is ridiculous; even more ridiculous is the suggestion that people like me — men and women, but men especially — have some sort of “disease” because we like viewing nude women and/or nude women having various forms of sex. Where the HELL did that crap come from!

I think no less of Coco/Nicole for doing her thing on her site. In fact, I might actually like her more! I can’t believe that in the 21st Century, Janet Jackson got crapped on for showing her boob during the Super Bowl half-time show (probably the most exciting moment in Super Bowl History!), during a televised event that featured scantily clad cheerleaders, wearing far less clothing than Janet, dancing and prancing and giving us teaser beaver shots (pardon my bluntness) with the explicit intention of using SEX to sell the game! Not to be outdone, the advertisers provided hi-def commercials of hot women wrestling in water fountains or prancing about in sexy, “buy me this beer and you can come do me” costumes … the hypocrisy just boggles the mind!
 Personally, I like watching those commercials because I want to buy the women a beer and … you get my drift.

Yeah, that's what men want! Nude women and nude women having various forms of sex! But we’re just too damn scared to advocate our interests out in the open public. Thank god (whatever that is) for people like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt who have the cojones to put our rights as adults out there! The so-called Religious Right has so brow-beaten politicians with their sanctimonious clap-trap it’s political suicide to express interest in Playboy or any other adult magazine. Instead, they talk about their church affiliation — real or imagined.
 Remember the good old days whe we called them “Men’s magazines” and we were treated to an interview with 1976 presidental contender Jimmy Carter in that year’s September issue? Didn’t hurt him at the polls, although the Republicans were ... pretty scandalized by then.

Personally, if I had a daughter who wanted to pose for Playboy, or do what Coco/Nicole does, more power to her! If she enjoys it, make all the dough possible while you can! She wouldn't be dirty, she wouldn't be taboo, and I wouldn't be ashamed to talk about her in public!

Playboy supports many political causes, and one political party in particular — the Democratic Party, and yet that political party treats Playboy like the sick aunt hidden in the attic!

It was the height of political hypocrisy when Harold Ford, Jr. was vilified by the Republican Party because he went to a Playboy Super Bowl party. Worse yet, they really emphasized his dates with White Women, as if that were some moral crime, just to influence voters! And who was their candidate for senator in Illinois for 2004? Jack Ryan, who took his ex-wife to sex clubs. Just last year we found out one of their congressmen, Mark Foley of Florida was hitting on underage teenage boys, trading salacious e-mails with them. The real hypocrisy there being Foley sponsored legislation to make what he did a federal crime! Add that to the Republican Party’s efforts to cover it up and blame the pages and we have a party without a conscience.

The double-standard is alive and kicking when it comes to nudity and sex and it is apparent whenever we turn on a football or basketball game that has cheerleaders. The double standard exists because we bombard our media with images and messages wrapped tightly around the themes of sex and looking HOT and then apply “standards” to television and radio that contradict that message; we tell young women, girls, “don’t have sex until you’re married” yet the most popular shows on TV are all about the sexual encounters of the very people they can’t wait to grow up and emulate.

“Well, take them off the air,” you might say. No. Why take them off the air? Frankly, if they’re at the top of the ratings, which many of them are, then that’s clearly what a majority of Americans wish to view.

And it’s a flight from reality to treat sex, a natural — and necessary — component of human existence as if it’s some dirty little secret and talking about it, let alone doing it in open forums or viewing people doing it open forums, is a taboo that we just can’t broach.

Clearly, a minority of Americans control the content of what we can view and how we view it. “We must protect the children!” is the constant cry.
 You notice that almost every television commercial is geared towards adults with children? Except the beer commercials of course!

Puh-lease … If you want to protect your children, get a V-Chip for your TV and some effective filters for your computer.

This topic wasn’t meant to be the screed for the day — the Inspector General for the Department of Defense testified on Friday that Douglas Feith and his “intelligence” group at the Pentagon (the Office of Special Plans) cooked the books on the Iraq intelligence to build a case for going to war, especially egregious was the connection between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al Qaa’ida Feith claimed existed but was discredited even before Feith and his team presented it as fact to be regurgitated by the Vice President on national TV. That’s pretty heavy information. In essence, we were lied to by the current administration.

What got me going though was the recent death of Anna Nicole Smith, Playmate of the Year for 1993. For years Playmates have been both loved and scorned, called everything from goddesses to whores. With Anna Nicole Smith, the gossip-mongers had a field day, rivaling only Pamela Anderson with the amount of tabloid scrutiny heaped on her troubled life and the picture of Smith became, for a very vocal few, the stereotype for all Playmates and other models. Ditzy blonde airheads, one and all.

I've loved Playmates and Playboy since I first saw Cynthia Myers’ centerfold in the December 1968 issue. So, I am happy Anna Nicole was here.

And for the record: I liked Pamela Anderson’s TV show Stacked, felt bad for Donna D’Errico when she got into trouble, felt sad when Claudia Jennings died so tragically — she was a hometown girl at that — sad Star Stowe died in such circumstances that she did.

My favorite Playmate: Miss August, 2003, Colleen Marie. She’s a veterinarian. I’m tempted to move to her area and buy a couple parakeets just for a reason to stop in and chat … but she lives in the snow belt so that’s usually a (very) short-lived fantasy.

Every Playmate or Playboy model that I've chatted with, person-to-person or online, has been ambitious, seemingly unfazed by rejection and failure, determined to succeed, and what might surprise most people, far more intelligent than most people. That most of them have college degrees is no surprise. They know how to accomplish their tasks, get things done.

So, I mourn the passing of Anna Nicole Smith, not my favorite Playmate, but a person who was determined to succeed and for that I admired her.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 10:47 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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