Unless you have been locked in your room, fingers in your ears, shouting, “LALALALALALA”, you have heard of the controversy surrounding the Victoria’s Secret TV special. It all seems monumentally silly to me, and I actually haven’t been paying that much attention, because I have other things to concentrate on, and I actually don’t really care why people seem to be up in arms about girls in their underwear.
But I read Lileks’ Bleat today, which is a mocking deconstruction of the entire issue. He was listening to a radio show featuring two guests who were completely up in arms about it:
They have every right to protest; I’m not telling them to shut up. I’m suggesting they stop thinking of Tyra Banks as one of the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse.
And then there’s:
Several of the callers to the radio show wanted the FCC to shut down the VS TV show as an affront to public morals. They hadn’t even seen it – but the idea of Wonderbras on a prime-time show was so horrifying you’d think the government had required everyone to be fitted with Clockwork Orange eyeclamps and be forced to view an “Ellen” marathon.
Lileks breaks down the responses of one of the angry female guests on the show:
Sex is acceptable only in the context of marriage. She’s welcome to think that, of course, but I would point out that no one in the viewing audience had sex with the Victoria’s Secret models. Her very point seems oblivious to the possibility that married folks might shop at Victoria’s Secret. Every been to a VS store at the mall? I’d bet that half the clientele is married, at least. But she seemed to think that a lingerie show was, by definition, incompatible with marriage, as if there was something dangerous about female sexuality that wasn’t explicitly tied to a social convention.
And here’s this skewer:
Marriage itself, however, doesn’t guarantee a healthy society; if the society is clan-based, rigidly patriarchal, polygamous and gynophobic to boot, well, we know what hell on earth for women that creates. But wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie before one is married will not destroy America. Being 20 years old and watching the TV special will not shatter the institution of marriage like a cold toffee bar struck with the spike of a high-heeled shoe.
