Call Me A Prude, But Lewd Ain't A Good Look

Sun Herald

Sunday October 9, 2005

MIA FREEDMAN

YOU know you've reached a certain age when you find yourself muttering things like "inappropriate" as you walk past a group of teenage girls. This happened to me during the week and the trigger for my tut-tutting was their T-shirts. More specifically, what was written on their T-shirts. One said "Porn star". Another said "Will pash for chocolate". A third said "Yes, they're real". The girls were about 14.

Prude is not a word often used to describe me. I've had a pole-dancing lesson. I've been to strip clubs. I've seen the Pammy and Paris tapes. More significantly, I've spent my career defending the need for women to empower themselves with information about sex and their bodies.

But lately I've been wondering whether, for some women, "empowerment" has mutated into something a little less empowering and a little more, well, demeaning.

Some call her the ladette (a female version of the British "lad"). She's the one who thinks behaving like the blokiest bloke is cool, clever and sexy. The one who falls over herself to outdo the boys with crass innuendo and out-there sexuality.

But is it so liberating to discuss masturbating with your electric toothbrush on a reality show in a tone so blase you could be discussing petrol prices? Is it clever and cool to aspire to be a porn star, even as a T-shirt joke?

Could it be that some women are so desperate to prove to men how sexually free they are, that they're demeaning themselves in the process?

At either generational end of this new out-there sexuality phenomenon are two significant books written 40 years apart.

The first is Sex And The Single Girl, written by Helen Gurley Brown in 1965. Until then, socially acceptable sex was the kind you had during marriage and for the pleasure of men. This book was empowering because not only did it acknowledge that a single woman might want to have sex before marriage, it spelt out she could, indeed should, enjoy it.

Four decades later, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs, 30-year-old author Ariel Levy notes we've come so far, the new sexual liberation is starting to look alarmingly like the old sexism. Instead of guys wearing Playboy logo T-shirts as they did in the '60s, it's now young women brandishing the bunny logo on everything from their jewellery to their knickers.

More women are getting lap-dances from female strippers (a stripper once told me that women are the biggest troublemakers in clubs men know to keep their hands to themselves but female customers invariably try to go the grope). Hetero girls are pashing each other on the dance floor to attract male attention.

Levy reckons these girls are outdoing each other in the OTT sexy stakes in a bid to prove how comfortable they are with their sexuality. So, by definition, if you're not comfortable swinging around a pole or wearing explicit sex messages on your chest, you must be an uptight prude. And what modern young woman wants to risk being perceived as that?

In a desperate bid to prove her theory wrong, I quizzed a bunch of teenage girls about their favourite celebrities. The news was not great. "Jessica Simpson is so sexy," they said, "Paris Hilton is so cool." As a small consolation, they also rated the Veronicas and Missy Higgins. But let's look at Paris and Jessica for a moment.

Both have recently worn wet bikinis accessorised with a soapy sponge to gyrate around a car like a stripper around a pole. Quelle coincidence! Paris did it for a hamburger commercial and Jessica for a music video. Paris's fame break came after her sex tape hit the internet and she's about to release her first single, called Screwed. Jessica's break came via a reality show where she pretends to be dumb for laughs. At least I hope she's pretending.

Did someone say role models?

Confusingly, this new breed of out-there girl who wears her sexuality on her T-shirt isn't much interested in her own pleasure.

As Levy points out, the women they're paying ironic homage to porn stars and strippers are paid to fake it. Even Paris in her real sex tape looks utterly bored. Except when her mobile phone rings and she stops to answer it. Only then does she look a bit excited.

By her own admission, Paris insists: "I'm so not a sexual person, my boyfriends are all really surprised because I seem it from the outside." False advertising? Maybe that's what those teen T-shirts are all about. Here's hoping.

Mia Freedman's new book The New Black is out now. See www.miafreedman.com.au.

Barking glad

There's been a proliferation of posh doggy shops opening lately. The original was Dogue, who've been doing a brisk trade in fancy collars, beds and pet accessories (even Superman outfits) for five years. And their clientele aren't just posh women with handbag pooches. This growing industry is attracting every dog-loving demographic from teens to pensioners.

Idol treasures

I'm enjoying watching the Idol judges as much as the contestants this year. Kyle Sandilands is surprisingly superb, offering insightful, honest feedback. Marcia Hines exudes so much warmth and go-girl encouragement you want her to adopt you. And they're both united in their obvious disdain for Mark Holden, who is becoming more eccentric and isolated every time he opens his mouth.

© 2005 Sun Herald

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