Banshee, Girls, and MA Ratings for Female Sex Viewing

FULL FRONTAL FEMALE, BREASTS AND PUBIC REGIONS- AND STILL NO PENISES!  TV SEX IS NOT EQUAL!

Wow, I thought it was difficult enough already trying to get all the sexualized female nudity off the air, or at least balanced with some full-frontal male hotness.  But instead, Pandora’s Box is on the verge of being wide open.  Literally.

It did seem obvious to me that if we start showing sexy young male bodies full-frontally nude on TV that it would simply trigger media to show even more graphically sexualized images of female bodies, showing women’s area between their legs.  Already now, on a growing number of TV-MA rated shows (which are now proliferating cable channels at levels that qualify as mass-media, and general population), it is very common to show lesbian sex-play, topless girls, and even full-frontal female nudes.  I’d rather see no naked breasts and no fully naked females, especially since there is never full naked guy visual entertainment for me to watch on TV.  Butts are not the same as breasts or pubic regions. Only the penis and testicles are. And we need the opportunity to see males placed in sexual roles, with erotic photography and lighting.  Or we could just stop with all this female-sexualization on TV.  It's on every channel, every day.  It's ridiculous and totally misleading to boys and men as to what women really are in life. 

As it stands now, sex in entertainment media is a very one-sided equation.  Women are going full-commando on You Tube and in celebrity media, in “hidden camera prank shows,” and are putting their own sexual images out in media where ever they can.  All over You Tube now are images of “naked upskirt” shots of girls with no undies on. Yesterday I totally stumbled on a short video designed with humor in mind, and produced as a “show segment” (as opposed to spying on someone, or doing amateur home crotch shots).  The young lady in the video was bending over and climbing ladders wearing nothing but a blazer, with nothing underneath.  Her female area was fully shaved or waxed and was revealed to the unsuspecting male customers who were there to have their photo taken (that was the “storyline” of the video. It was ala “Hidden Camera” style, though it was staged).  It had silly music and sound effects, like watching the raunch-humor of Benny Hill, and there was even a synched-up laugh-track.

The point is, women are now showing it all and will continue to do so.   Pandora’s Box is starting to advertise in media now.  It’s so ironic, though, that Pandora herself (i.e., the female collective) isn’t beating the doors down of the FCC, of Hollywood, of writers and production studios, to create some nice hard-rod silhouetted images of boy parts underneath a pair of tight briefs on a twenty-year old stud on TV shows like Banshee, Girls and other TV-MA shows.  You would think with all the female sexuality on TV we could throw in a little serious male erotica and graphic sexuality from time to time. I confess I haven’t watched Game of Thrones, but I just did a search to see how much full-equivalent of male nudity is shown compared to female nudity and sexuality and this is what I found:  http://www.pajiba.com/game_of_thrones/game-of-thrones-we-need-to-have-a-talk-about-your-nudity-imbalance.php

The TV show Girls was a hit right out of the gate and has won accolades and awards, plus a devoted following.  To me, it’s just more depictions of topless girls, naked girls, and girl-on-girl imagery.  Boring.  Been watching men produce that crap for more years than I care to mention.  It is a disappointment to find that modern feminism simply means the right for women to exploit female sexuality ourselves. 

If women want to be cutting edge and make empowering female statements in media, it would be more effective to do something truly cutting edge.  More naked girls is surely nothing new or cutting edge.  How about fully clothed, cool women, with interesting lives and views who have hot boyfriends that are shown in shower scenes, love making scenes, even a sometimes with a hint of erection through his BVD’s or through the sheet? That would be cutting edge and a statement of female empowerment, in my opinion.

Recently, just skipping around the DISH Satellite program guide where I live, I stumbled on Banshee, a show I had kept seeing on the guide but still knew nothing about. Even though it is an HBO show, this was on a channel called BLOCK, which is just a re-broadcast channel that is part of my general subscription, not a premium pay station.  I clicked on the show, and the very first scene is a guy and gal talking, standing, near a bed.  Girl then takes her dress off over her head, is fully nude underneath, and she jumps on the guy and they fall onto the bed.  Next camera shot is through the bedroom window, looking head on at the head of the bed, and girl is on top, upright, naked breasts heaving and pointing and flopping.

Ok, so yeah, Banshee is rated TV-MA, so viewer and parents be warned. But that's not the point. The point is, in entertainment media, it's always just about showing female bodies naked and sexualized. It's a form of control, always defining women by that one constant reminder:  that women are primarily valued for their super-sexy young bodies, especially when shown naked or eroticized.  And guess what? There are tons of pre-teen and teen boys accessing these shows. All this exposure to adult female sexuality (all in the complete absence of equivalent male erotic sexualization)  might happen at a time when boys' minds are still very impressionable and attitudes about girls and women are forming. And when you combine the impression of the entire aggregate of media - from video games to TV, to porn-channel descriptions in the guide (which are visible even if you don't subscribe to that channel), it's pretty obvious that women are the only ones sexualized on the planet. Even the "true life" shows on television depict women as nude, scantily clad, bitchy, stripping or dead (found naked or half-dressed, of course).

A week or two after the Banshee experience, I went to watch a show I had recorded earlier. When I pressed play, I had the tail-end of the previous show on my recording, so I watched about five minutes of it.  I wish I could remember the show.  It must have been rated TV-MA.  Anyway, the scene I saw was two girls, apparently a couple, maybe for the first time, and they both get fully naked (breasts showing of course), and then one girl went down on the other orally (with a carefully positioned bare leg to save the viewer from the full Monty, thankfully).  Again, I just wanted to watch the show I recorded. I really don’t need to see full-frontal naked women all the time, particularly engaged in sex acts.

Recently, I caught another movie. Two late-teen aged girls, one good one bad, they both get pulled into some scenario together and I think bad girl gets raped (I only caught the tail end, again, when I just turned on my TV and it happened to be on).

In the last scene, the bad girl comes out of a bedroom, walking up behind the other girl, who is standing in the foreground.  Bad girl is fully naked, no clothes, and walking toward the camera.  She has a bush, is not fully shaved, we can see it.

Then she takes a large chef’s knife which she happens to be carrying, and suddenly draws it across her abdomen.  The slit takes a moment to react, then the blood starts to gush. End of movie.  Nice.  So glad I got to have that little image put in my head.

I purposely don’t have any premium-pay movie channels and I do not seek out female sex and nudity on TV. But I stumble on it ALL THE TIME. Just recently, I was cruising the channel guide for something to watch and found a film with Sean Connery called Rising Sun (1993), probably on the IFC or ESUSP channel (both show uncut full-length movies).   I click on the channel to scope out the film and got broadsided immediately with a scene of very aggressive sex, boobies being unzipped out of clothes and flopping around while lady in garters gets banged by a fully dressed guy (fly unzipped, but we can’t see nothin, of course); he is standing and pounding her. She’s into it, and she’s all naked, but in a fur coat and stilettos.  It’s a shocking adult scene, but there it is on my TV as I just flip around, at three in the afternoon. What do developing teen boys think when they see that? And why do girls and women have to put up with that stuff in media, when guys never have to sit through the equivalent type of male nudity and male sex displays?

Showing males' sexually identifying fleshy external appendages in media is no different than showing women’s breasts. Both are sexually arousing and "shocking" to see.  And while there are no sexualized, erotic images of men on TV, there is countless female erotica for men and boys to see whether they want to or not. I am sick of it!  And I don’t really understand why women keep being tolerant with the fact that we are continually used for sexual entertainment for the viewing masses, especially on our home televisions, but in films also.  The imbalance is a form of power control over women and IS a contributing factor to unfavorable male attitudes about girls and women (such as misogynistic attitudes).

I guess the reason it’s all over TV is because it’s all over the Internet, so anyone – even kids – can see it anytime anyway.  I just tried a quick Google search to see if I could find out the name of the previously mentioned TV show that had the naked lesbians in oral sex.  All I found in the search was a whole bunch of links to girls performing oral sex on each other.  I bet every 10-14 year old boy has gone to those links at one time or another, and older boys probably more so.  

 In about 10 years, it will be interesting to see what the attitudes of men are.  I am leaning towards “more misogyny.”  It’s an interesting experiment.  All I know is, I went my whole developing life and many years after before I ever had to have images in my head of what another woman’s private area looks like, or what it looks like when girls play with each other.  Yet this is what kids grow up with, now, from youth.