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Sexual Health eBook Volume3
Chapter 14Sex Sells: Business, Politics and U.S. Media, Lara RiscolSex in the United States—despite the nation’s ethnic, socioeconomic, and generational
diversities; its myriad cultural, technological, and media niches; its urban-rural,
religious-secular, left-right divides; and its historic homage to freedom and
individuality—can be summed up in a nipple. Forget real differences, nuance,
and complexity. Not only did the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show expose pop diva
Janet Jackson’s breast during a now infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” but it
also exposed America’s sexual schizophrenia.
Peerless worldwide, America pushes the titillation envelope in each and every
commercial cranny, yet no developed country can match our moral posturing regarding
matters of the flesh. Aside from being a psychotic disorder, “schizophrenia”
is defined by Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “contradictory
or antagonistic qualities or attitudes.” I define sexual schizophrenia as “do
as I say, not as I do” politics (over health, education, science, free speech,
civil rights) amid a plain “do me” consumer culture.
In a 2001 column, I portrayed today’s schizophrenic approach to sex as one
fueled by a “culture war that reduces our basest, most transcendent drive to
extremes. Youth are left to flounder under the intensified hypocrisy and mixed
messages of a nation that can’t move beyond sexuality’s marital ideal or commodified
reality” (Riscol, 2001). As pundits, politicos, and religious powerbrokers
manufacture a sex-obsessed culture war between conservatives and liberals,
youth, women, racial and sexual minorities, the poor, and those of us with
a shaky start in life are its biggest causalities.
Sexual schizophrenia obscures paths to sexual health. America leads the free
world in rates of teenage and unplanned pregnancies, abortion, sexually transmitted
diseases, and sexual violence (Feijoo, 2001). But can the ideological battle
for
America’s sexual soul be lumped into conservative versus liberal camps? Or
is our cultural crux really about tradition against modernity in a media age
of high-tech consumerism, a tabloid reality crafted by celebrity, spin, and
the bottom line?
America’s mainstream sexual narrative offers us either purity or perversion,
with anything in between silenced, ignored, or otherwise absent from the marketplace
of ideas. Sexual schizophrenia swells in a God-fearing capitalist democracy
that elevates unfettered markets as our most sacred freedom, where the commercialization
of sex has become an art form, and consumerism a patriotic duty.
We all know that sex sells. There’s no escape in Mass Mediaville. Check out
your groceries and glance a bosomy magazine cover promising 10 ways to blow
his mind. Click on the radio and catch something about “pop that pussy.” Look
up and spot a billboard with a languid, mostly naked nymph advertising jeans.
Stumble across Asian Sluts! when browsing the Web for “women in technology.”
Open your e-mail to spam promising raging hardons in a pill. Turn on the TV
in time for a crime scene of another raped, beaten, and strangled dead girl
in lingerie. Our entire economy rests on ever shocking ways to slice, dice,
and package sex for consumption.
But the commercialization of sex penetrates far beyond Hollywood and
Madison Avenue. Not only does U.S. business rely on sex to sell products, but
politicians use sex to fundraise, mobilize votes, and strengthen alliances.
In today’s instant “infotainment” age, media conglomerates hype the antagonistic
sexual narrative of popular culture and politics to achieve their own bottom
line of increased viewers and advertising revenue. Often the very businesses
that profit from sensationalizing sex are the same ones that support an ideological
agenda that flourishes by scandalizing sex. Today’s sophisticated and synergistic
sexual marketing by business, politics, and mass media means less openness,
more alienation, and poorer sexual health for us as individuals, and as a nation.
Throw an obscene dose of celebrity obsession into America’s smoldering stew
of smut and sanctimony, and sex is less about intimacy and passion than about
what we buy or buy into. Despite declared oppositions in America’s struggle
with sexual freedom, the celebrity-driven market forces of business, politics,
and the media are strategic bedfellows in a consumer culture that thrives on
sexual taboo, dysfunction, and crisis.
Sexual Health eBook Volume3 Chapter 14 $20 http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/netcart.asp?MerchantID=104436&ProductID=3537186
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