A: No, and no. Read every word on this site. Now see if you already know the answers. The scrawny fashion model body once again held up as the ideal to the American woman is bad for everyone, except the advertisers and networks who make out like bandits. It’s bad for the sponsors who get connected with a degrading performance. It’s bad for the models who have to make their money maiming the self-esteem of the American woman. Their hours and working conditions are bad, and the effects on their own psyches are negative as well. It’s especially bad for the younger, more vulnerable pre-teens, since some might still be up because the network didn’t even wait for the 10 P.M. adult slot of primetime. It’s bad for all girls and women who watch, since the sight of this impossible standard will launch the more gullible and vulnerable of them into a neurotic dieting campaign followed by a campaign of gorging once they’ve yet again given up on their bodies ever becoming like a supermodel’s. This goes around and around in a cycle of low self-esteem, desperation, frustration, depression, and disappointment. And of course it’s worst of all for the mostly younger females who get driven to dangerous extremes by such shows (and even the lingerie catalogs). Thousands will find all this toxic cultural oppression too much for them and they’ll end up in a morgue due to the extreme effects of oppression-caused eating disorders. Others will end up in mental wards from all the psychological pressures these types of imposed physical standards create. And millions will eventually end up on antidepressants or illicit drugs or become alcoholics.
Good for the above organizations (Concerned Women for America, the Parents Television Council, and the National Organization for Women) for standing up for women and combating the ugly oppression towards American females in the service of greed. And good for the FCC for increasing fines for indecency. It would be good if the pressures for decency got such shows pushed to premium channels at the very least. We don’t want to see censorship of programs, because in a democracy people mostly need to vote with their remotes. There's a HUGE diversity of tastes in this country, and one can't fault the various networks for trying to get advertising dollars to support the vast array of programs needed to satisfy all these tastes. It’s their job, after all.
On the other hand, the uncalled-for Janet Jackson mammary gland incident represents nudity before 10 P.M. and in an unexpected context, which there's no excuse for. We want to be entertained by our TVs, not blindsided. We have no problem with nudity on premium channels or even after 10 P.M. on the major networks, but what excuse is there for nudity outside of its designated place? Charlotte Ross’ N.Y.P.D. bare-all scene where the youngster walked in on her in the bathroom was one of the most adorable scenes ever seen on TV, with magnificent acting and directing. It was both greatly entertaining and tastefully done, by a series that gives clear warnings when they're doing nudity, and that follows the only-after-10 P.M. guideline. And virtually no one complained (except the FCC morons, just because the way TV works is that 10 turns into 9 in a few places and these affiliates got socked)! Who says the public has no taste or cannot recognize quality when they see it? If there was ever a time for the FCC to also recognize quality and be lenient about the 10 P.M. thing, like they did with Schindler’s List, that NYPD episode is that time!
Furthermore, certain foul words would be better off on premium channels only, and the erosion of standards represented by these words creeping into Basic Cable networks is not a sign of cultural "enlightenment," but cultural degeneration. The same is true of the crime show contests of 2001 through today where the crimes are not the normal crimes that really occur but horrendous torture-murder scenarios with sometimes even underage victims. Do we really need our minds filled with this stuff, images that merge with the economic and terrorism worries already there? If pressure groups can keep this trashy retro pulp fiction out of our faces, we say that’s great. Let the premium channels bask in hyper-violence if they must. It’s a free country. But let’s keep it away from our young.
In short, we believe what most parents believe—that we have a responsibility to keep our kids safe and the media that conditions them to be American consumers needs to show judgement and taste, keeping violence, sex, nudity, drug abuse, and bad morals out of our young people’s faces. Hence the rating systems, the "after 10 P.M." rules, the blocking technology, the bleeping and blurring of words and sights that should be seen on premium channels only.
Now, as to the question of whether complaints about Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows should apply to our show as well: emphatically NO. Our sites and clips present values that are the polar opposite of theirs. Where we help steer the bulimic and anorexic away from eating disorders, they send them toward them—with tragic results. Where we demonstrate the best morals and values around, they demonstrate the glorification of decadence. Where they stick in everyone’s face the "body fat is evil" and fascist "thin-to-be-in" dictates, we support acceptance of all body types and we do it with humor, insight, and the never-before-seen metaphor of the backsides of the backside blessed which, whenever they are used in our sites and walking or booty dancing clips, symbolize Hollywood’s and media’s hypocrisy. This hypocrisy includes total discrimination against the backside blessed getting on-camera roles, since if they were frequent sights on our screens tens of millions of people would see how attractive, pretty, and acceptable they are and quit oppressing them, and hundreds of thousands of backside blessed would cease colluding with the oppression coming their way from the media and begin accepting themselves as the beautiful creatures they are, and millions of women who are average weight or less would cease tormenting their bodies and psyches with dieting products and useless get-thin-quick exercise products.
But our sites and clips don’t merely wish to question the oppression of women in all these ways. We are actually trying to change the values and ideas that underlie these cultural toxins. Please support us in our quest. Send money to eating disorder foundations. If you send us money, that’s what we’ll do with it. But don’t send it to us (unless you buy a DVD—those things aren't free to produce, you know)—send it instead to the foundations that know how to use it best. Resources like this info@NationalEatingDisorders.org , where one can get information on eating disorders by emailing them, and
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/, where one can find resources of all types, links, articles, research, and news, and
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/, where one can make a donation (top of page), all do their part. Watch our sites and clips and tell others about them. Help create other programs with our message. Write the dieting product companies and gracefully thank them for their products which aid the obese and the overweight, but get them to show AVERAGE WEIGHT LADIES OR BACKSIDE BLESSED LADIES as their "after-product-use" models. They're showing way too many scrawny supermodel body types and that’s cruel and unfair to their potential customers. They're playing into the hands of the people who are the most guilty of all of spreading the "body fat is bad" lie—the media and Hollywood. Tell them how important it is to you that they change the context from "use this product until you're scrawny or until you look like a supermodel" to "use this product only until you're at your healthy weight." And if a lady has a really prodigious bust or rear and she looks good or even only okay and it’s just her body type, it should be noted that she should be heavier than what normal weight charts say for her height.
Check out the chart How our walking or booty dancing clips Values Contrast With Normal Media/Hollywood Values under the question: Is the show sexist or exploitative? Note the difference between the decadent right-column values and the healthy, humanistic left-column values. The left side—our sites' and walking or booty dancing clips' values—are pro-woman, pro-health, pro-human, and pro-compassion. The right side is anti- all those things. Are YOU pro-woman? Women are wonderful creatures. We need to LOVE them, not oppress them. There are portions of the oral and written traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam that really GET this. But there are also portions that appear NOT to get this, which has led to a lot of misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and oppression. We urge you to reject the portions of ANY belief system that rejects our positive attitude toward women and embrace only the "LOVE women" portion. This includes not just religion but science, art, music, and entertainment. Reject all rap music that uses the "B" word which refers to women as female dogs. Reject all Freudians who have failed to exorcise the anti-women demons out of their philosophy. In short, reject everything anti-woman, whether it’s relatives, friends, doctors, movie stars, books, or entertainment.
Objectification: Finally, should our sites and walking or booty dancing clips be taken to task for "objectifying" women—which is what the Victoria’s Secret specials do? Is our show doing this too? Read the answers to the rest of this site’s Q and A. The only way you could say yes to this question, aside from the possibility that you're either illiterate or dumb, is if:
Notice that there are pro-women people afoot in organizations that have good intentions but a few erroneous ideas. By their actions they seem to be saying the following foolishness: "showing skinny ladies with no real busts or rears is the way to keep sexism mitigated since there are no parts worthy of singling out as the focus of objectification, and since I'm a bigwig in our organization you need to realize that since I say it, it means that shows that ever show ladies that are something besides scrawny are SEXIST and are OBJECTIFYING WOMEN!" False logic and egoism have gotten into the pressure groups that influence networks, with the net result being that they have not only created enormous discrimination toward certain groups of women (e.g., the backside blessed), but they have helped to create the network attitude that showing something besides scrawny ladies means they are SEXIST and are OBJECTIFYING WOMEN.
Most interesting of all is this: The Victoria’s Secret show features only scrawny ladies without big busts or rears. And these, along with Paris Hilton who was called "white hot" in ads for The Simple Life, are what the American public has been and is being told is HOT and SEXY by the media, Hollywood, and everyone else. And yet the pro-women people are trying to keep ladies with big booties and hooters off the air?! By their own logic above, using the scrawny doesn’t objectify while using voluptuous ladies somehow magically does objectify. And yet they were the ones screaming to get the Victoria’s Secret show cancelled, a show of scrawnies!
Perhaps it isn't the body type but the context that should be the issue. Perhaps the voluptuous, the skinny, the cheerleader type, the athletic, the fat, and women with average body shape should ALL be given air time on TV, without discrimination, rejection, judging, disparagement or uproars from groups who have decided that there are forbidden body types, thereby becoming the biggest violators of their own hypocritical preconceptions, since in order to reject a whole class of women mercilessly because of body type one has to be the ultimate OBJECTIFIER!
Let’s all patiently explain to such people what we've said just above dealing with Objectification. The main opportunity one gets watching our DVDs and walking or booty dancing clips is to learn to drop biases against voluptuous ladies and replace "body fat is fatness or evil or bad" with "body fat is good, unless you have a lot more than you need in which case there are health and appearance liabilities." In the case of people that have body fat placed in pleasing places which contribute to the classic Marilyn Monroe hourglass figure, body fat is attractive and in no way do they have a weight problem needing lots of expensive dieting regimens. People with body fat in less pleasing places but that are not substantially overweight also have no weight problem needing lots of expensive dieting regimens. If they should choose to reduce certain body parts’ bulk for aesthetic reasons, they should stop when they get to their average healthy weight, AND RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO OBSESS ON SCRAWNY FASHION MODELS, TRYING TO LOSE MOST OF THEIR BODIES’ BULK SO THEY CAN EMULATE THEM PHYSICALLY.
